I agree with this essay. In the short term Israel may be successful in suppressing Palestinian resistance but in the long term through a combination of internal and external factors Israel as we known it will collapse and disappear. A racist, apartheid state that engages in genocide and ettnic cleansing is digging its own grave and will eventually collapse. The sad thing is that in the process many innocent people both Palestinian and Israeli will be hurt.
I appreciate the great work that Chris Hedges is doing in keeping the public aware of the tragic events that are occurring in Gaza. He is one of the most courageous, outstanding journalists of our times!
The moment I saw the vast numbers of Israel's migrating to Europe - you could taste the demise. I'm surprised Mr. Hedges did not also include the barbarism by these same Israel's on 10-07 when they slaughtered their own citizens. I believe it was Ron Unz and Max Blumenthal who stated the number of Israel citizens killed by Hamas - could be as low as a mere 100. The Hamas mission was to capture and not kill as many as possible whereas the Israel orders were to destroy anything and everything's that moved. The fact that all evidence continues to be destroyed, solidifies this. Israel even had the audacity to count the Hamas deaths as their own to inflate the numbers which or course continue to be corrected. The entire world is watching and Israel's billion dollar's PR campaign is failing spectacularly - the egregious lies are being debunked within hours.
The Palestinians were not antisemetic and they were tolerant of the Jewish settlers that first came. It was the Jewish settlers during the nakba that were intolerant and caused the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians which continues today in Gaza. Israel is digging its own grave in Gaza and it is going to eventually collapse!
Ah, there it is. I was waiting for you to wade in with your favourite name calling. Well done Frank. Job done. You can take the rest of the night off. Enjoy your Sunday evening pal.
Nope. Don't hate. Hate is a stupid and destructive emotion. However, I completely oppose, reject and want to see eliminated any terrorist or supporter of terrorism.
In that case, you will completely oppose and reject the governments of Israel and the US, who are currently the worst terrorist organizations in the world.
Oh your lefty campus brainwashing is well exposed. You wokesters are so fixated on language you would think you actually comply with real word meaning. Look up the word “terrorism” so you get back in touch with its real meaning. Check “genocide” too while you are at it.
Maybe you are too young or too Theory indoctrinated to understand that the US policed the world after the world wars because all those other idiot countries kept starting wars that killed millions… including Americans that got sucked in.
The idiocy of you terrorists is that the Israel population was moving toward an opinion to pull back on settlements and work to implement a two-state solution. However, you terrorists like to murder Israeli Jews with glee and Oct 7 destroyed all that public opinion in Israel. Because of the murder, rape and kidnapping of innocent Israeli Jews, even Israeli Arabs have turned to support the eradication of Hamas. After they are eliminated in Palestine then the rest of the free world can go to work dismantling Hezbollah. I am worried that they might find you as one of them. I hope you are just an independent idiot Jew-hater for your own safety.
One who is highly critical of Israel is not generally a "Jew hater." Just as a US citizen who criticizes American foreign policy or domestic politics is not "un-American." Too often Zionism, a wholly secular nationalist movement, is confused with Judaism. Judaism is one of the oldest and deepest of the great religious traditions. None of the great Jewish teachers needed or advocated for a Jewish state. This would include people like Maimonides, Luria, the Bal Shem Tov, Moses Mendelsohn, Menachem Schneerson and many, many more. Modern Israel, which began with great scholars and universities has greatly narrowed its vision due to its secular politicians' overemphasis on having more land for a "greater Israel," and depriving native Palestinians in order to to bring that about. One of the finest Israeli scholars who sympathizes with the plight of Palestine, recognizing the wrongheadedness of Israeli ethnocentrism has been Ilan Pappe ("Modern Palestine," "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine"). Pappe formerly taught at the University of Haifa, but growing ethnocentrism in Israel brought about his removal to the University of Exeter in the UK. Far from the great center of Jewish and cross-cultural learning that many of the early colonizers envisioned, Israel has turned into a garrison state given to a parochial, expansionist nationalism with little regard for the traditions of other Middle Eastern peoples.
Being critical of Israel has nothing to do with hating Jews. A great many Jews all the way back to the late1880s when the Zionist movement first started have opposed the creation of a Jewish state. Judaism is a faith and one of the great religious traditions. The tradition as a whole eschewed the founding of another Jewish state. Jewish Voices for Peace and If Not Now are two current Jewish organizations that oppose Zionism.
These incidents all came after the Zionists had already plotted and planned to usurp Palestine all for themselves. And the sad thing is, Palestinian Jews had long been living there peacefully alongside Muslim and Christian Palestinians. Jews fleeing persecution in Europe could have come and shared the land, but they got greedy.
What would you do if someone came to steal your home, your land, your legacy, everything you worked hard to earn -- or inherited from your ancestors and worked hard your whole life to nurture?
The Palestinians like you have a long history of Jew hating. They hated the Jews that migrated to Palestine. They starting killing Jews back them. Jews had to protect themselves and that is what we see today. Israel is in Gaza to kill Hamas so Israel is safer.
Baloney. What I see are a lot of Arab-haters. Lots of racism. And Ethiopian Jewish women were even sterilized against their will by their own government. Sweet, huh?
Obviously you don't see at all. You are blinded by ideological bias and your own hate.
There is a lot of justified hate for terrorists, terrorist supporters and terrorist sympathizers. They tend to be 95% Arab and Persian Muslims plus American Democrats. But I don't hate... it is a sign of uncontrolled emotions.
And how with your adopted gender ideology do you even define "women"? Maybe they were men in women's bodies? Sweet, huh?
I’m going to take Julio’s advice shortly and pay “Frank Lee” no mind. Someone who cannot see that genocide of human beings live on telly is not going to result in Israel being safer, as explained in the article by Chris Hedges which she’s supposed to have read, but in a wave of existential Middle Eastern revolt against Israel and possibly against all of our Western countries who have voted against ceasefire or abstained either doesn’t see injustice or doesn’t count with injustice being a recruiting sergeant for prolonged insurgencies, despite this dynamic being the central fact of the wars in Palestine and elsewhere, (she must have heard about a war in Vietnam!) “Frank Lee” should medevac herself out of the discussion, having not so much shot herself in the foot as blown her own legs out from under her.
“You’ve got to be taught
Before it’s too late
Before you are six, or seven, or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.”
Can’t these Trumpistas not even be aware of basic ideas like this, from paragons of Americana, Rogers and Hammerstein? Can they never audit their own rhetoric? Will she have to have her relatives being forced into unmarked cars by the Trump Forces of Good for not wearing enough camouflage before she realises that people are trying to form a conception of where the hell their civil society went and how to get it back, while she cheers on the forces which tear it apart?
There will come a time hopefully when people will be ashamed they ever identified with or believed a word written in these crazy holy books. I mean, God literally instructs his 'chosen people' to kill tribe after tribe after tribe.
If you are going to flex your muscles as The Strong in order to murder and take what The Weak have, it sure makes it morally easier to accept if you believe an imaginary sky-daddy holds you in favor and even blesses your action. When clearly it is just murder, robbery, and aggravated violence on a vast scale.
It is not just younger Jews who are fed up with Israel. I am Jewish and 73. I cannot stand the state of Israel and never have. Stealing land from others is horrible enough, but killing those people when they object to being stolen from is even worse. I grew up hearing that Jews were god's chosen people, and that's the real problem. Zionists really do believe they're better than anyone else and can do as they like because of it. I have a really close friend who is 71, Jewish, and has the same disregard for Israel that I do. I for one hope to live long enough to see Israel gone from the map. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." While this phrase most emphatically does not mean that all zionists should be killed, it most certainly means that the bastard state of Israel should be.
THESE are the stories you do not hear!!! Why I don't socialize per se - because people tend to speak with conjecture whereas I can and now will say I spoke with Jewish woman and this is how she felt!
So much for your mahjong game though huh? I'm what Nora Ephron called a Cashew - 1/2 Catholic 1/2 Jewish. I was actually raised by Jews you might say not that I converted or was one and just that growing up as a teenager I worked for them and they kind of took me under their wing,
Similar story here. My mother was Jewish. My father was your basic Southern Baptist rebel from Alabama. Raised as a teen around my mother’s family. According to Jewish law, if your mother is Jewish then so are you. My take on Israel really isn’t that unique. There are thousands of us in Jewish Voice for Peace.
I think you mean The Talmud, not the Torah. It truly is a horrible racist volume. You might enjoy reading Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Israel Shahak. He was an antizionist holocaust survivor.
I love precision in language. Thank you for the explanation and clarification. As a secular Jew, I didn’t pay much attention to the Torah, but after your mention of it, I did read Deuteronomy. It’s just plain awful.
The recent death of Henry Kissinger brought to light once again his famous quote: “As a Jew, I have to wonder: we’ve been hated persecuted and chased around the globe for millennia. There must be a reason.”
The paradox of the Jewish people is that among the brilliant and wonderful people of the group are also some of the most awful. Israel reflects a concentration of the awful. The majority of Israeli adults support the genocide, while Finklestein and Miko Peled are ostracized.
I see no future for the State of Israel. I just don’t think the world will put up with it. We can only hope that it can transform peacefully into a real democracy, a real home for its entire indigenous population, from the river to the sea.
To what extent does the revelation of Israel’s disrespect for international human rights reflect anything new, and what forces might emerge to compel the accountability to which this post alludes?
Put another way, does the increasingly vast recognition of Israel’s wanton criminality shift the equation beyond the long established baseline? Both Tel Aviv and Washington have long thumbed their noses at the international community, as well as institutions that enforce its commitments, like the International Criminal Court.
To the extent Israel will ever face accountability going forward, it will have to come from institutions and voices that have been less engaged in the past. I wrote a few weeks ago about the critical importance of organized labor in the United States, which has recently discovered its own grassroots power, but seemingly not yet the broader meaning of solidarity beyond the interests of union members. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/we-the-people-can-unplug-the-war
That's a very nice summary in your substack posting, the one you linked here. Thank you.
I appreciate very much the question you present here: what forces might emerge to compel accountability, forces sufficient enough to effect a fundamental change in the exercise of power, now held effectively by wealth, not the greater populations.
It would seem that change can only come about by the sheer power of numbers, and the question, I think, is how can this occur?
The correlation with the historic movement of labor opposing the oligarchs that you present does seem to offer some hope. But, how to shift the perceptions of sufficient members of the public, essentially a shift in mass perception? That is a great challenge, I think. There is some growth, and perhaps more can come. Forecasting social change is a tricky business, especially in this age, but I hope that you are right.
And at the same, time there is such a great danger in the destructive capability in the world now, truly unprecedented, the combination of technology and fervent ideologies.
The literal destruction of the state of Isreal seems unlikely, and if so, it would seem that others would fall, the reactions of the great powers, a larger unleashing of something like the catastrophic global unsettling during the last century, triggered by the shooting in Sarajevo.
Related questions:
If the ending of the state of Israel is considered as a literal possibility, when was there an occurrence of a powerful nation-state, a true dissolution/destruction, and what were the sequelae?
How can the situation in Israel/Gaza be remedied, and the fraught situation of the entire region, and the possibility of a widespread ideological (even perhaps global) war be de-escalated? It would almost have to seem to require a movement from within Israel.
I do think organized labor in the US is critical, particularly because I fear your point about sheer numbers offering our only hope might itself be too generous. I wrote earlier about how the genocide in Gaza presents a test of democracy in America, which our nation is unfortunately (and not for the first time) failing miserably. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/the-genocide-in-gaza-is-a-test-of
Sheer numbers only matter if governments are, in fact, accountable to public opinion. I fear they are more responsive to capital, and empirical analysis sadly supports that observation. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746.amp
Labor is uniquely positioned to force accountability by withholding a crucial resource from sectors that still rely on it, and on which the empire itself relies to operate. That's why I don’t know if there’s any substitute for solidarity from organized labor within critical industries, especially shipping.
Your question about the results of other nation states that have dissolved is provocative. Thank you for offering it. My mind particularly goes to the former Soviet union, and the aftermath suggests that crisis in transition could be more devastating than even a disturbing preceding baseline. The same pattern of leaping from frying pans into fires has emerged after seemingly every revolution from France to Iran.
Finally, with respect to the path forward, chaos across the Middle East—and far beyond it—would certainly escalate to the extent paramilitary groups would predictably proliferate in the wake of any shift in the existing nation state structure. The biggest hope of de-escalation seems to me to be the emergence of the BRICS alliance as an alternative pole challenging American hegemony.
I would hope to see a bigger role for BRICS and international institutions, which would require the United States resigning its commitment to use its veto on the UN security council to categorically defend Israel in any circumstance, however, heinous the human rights violation.
You alluded to movements within Israel, which have been more influential to this point in many American observers might realize. The resistance to Netanyahu’s attempts to marginalize the judiciary earlier this year were unprecedented in the country's history, and pressure from families of people taken hostage by Hamas in October mounted immense domestic political pressure, which was ultimately what forced Netanyahu’s hand when he accepted the “humanitarian pause” a meager alternative to the ceasefire demanded by voices around the world. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/an-escalating-uprising-demands-human
Thank you again for your thoughtful comment! I'd be eager to invite any further thoughts you might share.
So yes, the dilemma seems to remain: that of countering the interests that determine the policies of state action to the detriment of the greater populations of the world.
I think that it is not just a matter of economic power or the power of states.
The situation that we now have seems somehow not clearly one or the other, but lies somewhere in the relationship between myriad interests, economic, corporate, and state.
I am thinking here of the work of Sheldon Wolin, and the studies of Gilen and Page (and thank you for citing that link to the original paper, I had only read it in a reference by Peter Turchin).
I think that what we are seeing in variant forms globally, is a new type of power, an affiliative combination that operates neither as a state in a historical model, not quite as formal hereditary/oligarchic elite, nor as a formal corporation.
Broadly, it is the power of world markets, and the determinations of state that are in those interests.
It is a less clearly identifiable power that exists in their intersections and influences, that has a structure that is broadly corporate and privately held.
This situation allows power to have no accountability, it exists somewhere in markets, and those who have the greatest power and the greatest benefits, and is largely blind functionally to other ideological considerations.
It is not so much a clear central power along earlier models, bounded by nations, but does have different, sometimes rivalrous, centers of relative concentration with interests sometimes in common and sometimes conflicting.
But by it's very opaqueness, and it's corporate form, it is like trying to fight a hurricane by punching at it. There is nothing solid to engage with, and yet it has overwhelming force. (Have you had the experience of dealing with a health insurance that arbitrarily declines a payment? It's pretty much what it feels like.)
The machinations of state now increasingly have this quality as well.
They seem to have met in the middle.
And how can this be countered, when even the lines of power are largely opaque, metaphorically lying in shell structures, anonymous.
Reading this, it seems somewhat vague; it is difficult to describe.
It is like seeing parts of the elephant and imagining what it is.
To the question at hand: what you say about BRICS, yes this would offer some possibility of changing some of the current (im) balances.
And hopefully, within speific countries, the awareness of an informed, domestic pressure, within those countries in which it might make a degree of difference.
Even amelioration would be welcome.
Thank you for that. And my apologies, if you have been sent a notification in your email each time I have made the many revisions and typo corrections to this reply .
Afraid this course is set. For how many decades has the State of Israel gotten away with acts that no other nation, except the US, could? Mystique, indeed. The US lost its mystique and its moorings after 9/11, and we continue to pay a price for that fiasco; the same will hold for Israel after this spasm of murderous retribution ends. Many, many voices down the decades have warned, as Hannah Arendt did 75 years ago, that the presence of Arabs in Palestine can’t be altered, except perhaps by the decision of a totalitarian state and implemented by ruthless force.
The recent vote by the UN General Assembly demonstrates how isolated the US and Israel are on the world stage. The governments of both countries appear to be filled with such enormous arrogance that they are incapable of any form of compassion.
A simple conclusion; however, the vast majority of those who voted have no skin in the game that is being played. It is easy to be sanctimonious when your interests do not compete.
I wonder if Israel will now only attract the worst of people, the worst of visitors, the worst of business partners, the worst of Jewish settlers.
I find it hard to fathom that anti-Zionist Jews could abide living or visiting there ever again, given all that has been done in the name of Judaism and Israel.
I wish Israel economic failure. To suffer life hardships as a consequence of their own choice and determination to hate. To have the next generation of Israelis turn against their elders as they reject their difficult lives and abolish the state of Israel as it is today, and make reparations to the Palestinian people.
« If there is a country that has committed unspeakable strep cities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care. They don’t care for human beings. 57 years ago when Japan was retreating on all fronts, they decided to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and killed a lot of innocent people who are still suffering from the effects of those bombs. Those bombs were not aimed against the Japanese, they were aimed against the Soviet Union to say ´look, this is the power that we have: if you dare oppose what we do, this is what is going to happen to you. Because they are so arrogant, they decided to kill innocent people in Japan. Who are they now to pretend they are the policeman of the world? »
Naturally, Nagasaki and Hiroshima have to be brought up. You should read more history from that period to realize that those decisions involved more than just the US showing the Soviets what for. It is very easy to reflect on history from the comfort and security of today. For any complex problem it is easy in retrospect to imagine alternative and better outcomes.
For individuals like myself who are part of a generation whose fathers were preparing to invade Japan, I find your comments as sanctimonious. Many Americans my age would never have been born, because the Japanese home islands were going to be invaded and militarism in Japan was going to be eliminated. Millions more would have died and it would have been orders of magnitude more brutal. By time the invasion of Kyushu was scheduled the US would have possessed 6 plutonium bombs. They would have been used because Japan would be occupied just as Germany was occupied by both Allied and Soviet forces.
You may find realpolitik offensive and against your moral principles but like most people, you and I have little to no say in decisions of this kind. By the same token considering all amoral actions by those who govern as bereft of thoughtful consideration, morality, and analysis is just a part of alternative story telling and myth making.
I agree with Chris Hedges that war is the worst of crimes. Unfortunately, we, as a specious, still engage in it.
It seems you find Nelson Mandela sanctimonious too.
War is not a way to peace. It never was. It never has been.
War is an industry.
You may make excuses if you like.
My grandfathers fought in WW2. Which came about because of the outcomes of WW1.
The root, I believe, is colonialism.
I don’t think you need to put down other peoples opinions to elevate your own. It’s a cheap trick, in my view, and speaks to your character, and not my intellect.
I have no doubt you are a very well intended as are many people expressing their opinions in this conflict. I know full well that Nelson Mandela and Gandhi employed largely peaceful means to resolve their issues of oppression for their circumstances. Such techniques have never been employed to any degree in the Israeli/Palestinian problem.
Nelson Mandela had no role in the difficult decisions towards the end of WW2. He had absolutely no responsibility for the deaths of American GIs or the strategic objectives of the Allies in prosecuting the war. In my opinion, he has every right to criticize the US use of nuclear weapons but has no more moral authority in this respect than you or me. He has every right to his opinion but that is all it is, his opinion. It deserves no more weight than that.
War has been with humans since the beginning, it is only a matter of the scale of violence and the available tools. It existed long before "colonialism" was even thought of or logistically possible. What I found "sanctimonious" in your post is that you wish the chaos of economic ruin on the citizenry of Israel and the US.
Your original comments are in keeping with our times but are unhelpful. Wishing immiseration on the Israeli people or the American people because of the cynical strategic decisions of both extremist power elites in this conflict (HAMAS and Netanyahu's coalition) was made without consideration of consequences. Those comments can hardly be considered as stemming from fully considered paths to solutions or matters of justice.
As long as the governments of Israel and the US are acting in the people's name and the people don't object, they are complicit in the crimes of their governments. In that case, we deserve to suffer.
People get the government they deserve. And they get them by not demanding a better government.
It’s not true at all that peaceful methods have never been attempted, but it sounds like you have not heard of them. The 2018-2019 great march of return: I believe it was peaceful marches at the border every Friday. There was much footage of it internationally. The Israelis responded by shooting the unarmed peaceful protesters. They shot disabled people protesting. I hope you will look it up yourself to verify.
This, nitivly, happened after Hamas changed its charter significantly in 2017 in peace effort to work towards political solution and recognized the acceptability of the 1967 borders (this is what’s agreed internationally by all UN countries except U.S. and Israel, and they vote on it every year in the UN).
You dint need to believe or repeat the lie that a peaceful solution has never been sought. But when they are met only with force (far outmatched force) to peaceful resistance to occupation, what option is left? Remember the Jews in the Warsaw ghettos mounted a forceful resistance to the Nazi guards, and there’s no one in the world who thinks they were wrong to fight with all their might against their brutal occupiers.
Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia.
« At least 189 Palestinians were killed between 30 March and 31 December 2018.[30]: 6 [31][32] An independent United Nations commission set the number of known militants killed at 29 out of the 189.[5] Other sources claim a higher figure, of at least 40.[33][20][34][21][35] Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live ammunition.[36] According to Robert Mardini, head of Middle East for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), more than 13,000 Palestinians were wounded as of 19 June 2018. The majority were wounded severely, with some 1,400 struck by three to five bullets.[37] No Israelis were physically harmed from 30 March to 12 May, until one Israeli soldier was reported as slightly wounded on 14 May,[9] the day the protests peaked. The same day, 59 or 60 Palestinians were shot dead at twelve clash points along the border fence.[38] Hamas claimed 50 of them as its militants,[39][40] and Islamic Jihad claimed 3 of the 62 killed as members of its military wing.[41] Some 35,000 Palestinians protested that day, with thousands approaching the fence.[42][43]«
I disagree. We didn't have a say it those decisions at the time, but subsequent generations each endorse or oppose those decisions made by previous generations. We have a say now.
And I choose not to support those murderous decisions. Since they're still being made today, in our names, we have a duty to oppose them.
I think that the anticipated loss of life in invading the Islands of Japan to change the regime was probably the principal factor in using the atomic bomb, and maybe Truman also thought that this terrible rain of destruction would teach all future generations not to try to surprise America in war as the Japanese may have done at Pearl Harbour... if one doesn’t accept the view that Roosevelt let that happen so as to get the nation’s blood up to fight the war against fascism in Europe. I recently learned that a WWII Yugoslav playboy spy named Gogol warned the FBI and at a second visit, its director Hoover in person, that the Germans knew that the Japanese were planning an attack on Pearl from questions the Japanese had asked the Germans, known to a fellow spy who had joined the Abwehr.
To correct my text above, the spy who revealed the Japanese intention to attack Pearl Harbour to the FBI was named Popov not Gogol, my memory confused it with the character in James Bond, I think.
I agree that Israel is destroying itself along with Gaza. They have turned their enemies into global heroes. I don't know if Hamas was smart enough to achieve this outcome, but if they were, then they have surpassed their wildest dreams. Is the current Israeli government as stupid as they seem? They are blinded by their own hatred and fear. I cannot weep for them. My tears are all for the Palestinians and their children. If I earned enough money to pay taxes, I would refuse to pay a dime until my government stopped giving my money to Israel. All I can do is protest and give what I can to help the victims of this genocide.
Paula, I can and do weep for the Israelis as well as the Palestinians because they are simply as well as horribly caught up in intergenerational trauma and know not what they do, as a well known young rabbi said 2000 years ago. The very Yesheyahu Leibowicz to whom Chris refers in this piece of his on the death of Israel said soon after the 6-day war that if in the wake of their victory the Israelis did not make peace with the Palestinians then they as occupiers would turn themselves into Judeo-Nazis in betrayal of their own most precious Jewish values and tradition, which of course would become a matter for great lamentation.
Michael, I too weep for the Israeli people -- the citizens, not the government. I also deplore the settlers in the West Bank who act as if they are sanctioned military allowed to drive Palestinians out of their homes. They have gotten much worse since Oct.7th. It's unconscionable.
I know that this is beside the point, but taxes don't fund spending at the Federal level in the US or any country with a fiat currency. Congress has the ability to create money for spending on whatever it wants. Please learn Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) because it explains how the US monetary system works.
If you've heard anything "about" MMT, try to learn what it actually is before you decide that the gossip you heard is accurate. Knowing it can protect you from the lies that the politicians tell us, based on their trust that the people know nothing about it.
You can find it on The Rogue Scholar, MMT Mondays, Macro'n'Cheese, or Real Progressives on YouTube. Stephanie Kelton also has several great videos on YouTube about it.
1. The United States is a colonial settler regime and seems to be here for the foreseeable future.
2. "apparently escaped their captors and approached Israeli forces with their shirts off, waving a white flag and calling out for help in Hebrew is not only tragic, but a glimpse of Israel’s rules of engagement in Gaza. These rules are — kill anything that moves."
This blows up the idea that the killing would stop if only Hamas would throw themselves on the mercy of their tormentors.
Yes, you are right about the U.S. and I should have addressed this point. I added this paragraph to the column.
Settler colonial states that endure, including the Untied States, exterminate through diseases and violence nearly the entirety of their indigenous populations. Old World plagues brought by the colonizers to the Americas, such as smallpox, killed an estimated 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America. By 1600 less than a tenth of the original population remained. Israel cannot kill on this scale, with nearly 5.5 million Palestinians living under occupation and another 9 million in the diaspora.
The Israel apartheid appears as a kaleidoscope of hypocrisy, another symptom of our civilization’s dysfunction. If we aren’t consumed by nuclear war, this era will be known to history first and foremost for the Climate Breakdown, and the response, or lack of response, by the powerful people and groups in our world. Your point is well taken about Biden; he’s probably lost the young progressives by his unconditional support of Israel… it’s hard to believe he would make this misstep, which could throw us under the control of the fascists.
We are trapped into an ugly choice in our next election, aren't we? Once again it's about choosing the lesser of two evils. I am so f-ing tired of it being this way. Just once before I die, I hope to vote for a president I can actually believe in. I doubt it will ever happen. I am too old, and way too cynical.
Ro Khanna seems to have an idea which is better than the Wall Street dominated civilization we live in today. It reflects the American Dream prior to it being sold out by Bill Clinton and the Clinton Faction.
He has a very realistic concept of the origins of a wealthy civilization as opposed to the Plantation Mentality that has pervaded American Civilization since the start of the Reagan Revolution.
Paula, since you're f-n tired of having to vote for the lesser evil, why don't you check out and support STAR voting? -- score voting in which you can score /rate every candidate as you wish -- not merely rank 'em but say /how much/ you like or dislike 'em & thus top rate your favorite without any fear of helping to elect anyone else -- score voting followed by an automatic runoff between the top two scorers, which incentivizes you to vote honestly in order to have a say in the runoff. STAR voting -- Score Then Automatic Runoff voting. Check it out and Support it at www.starvoting.org and at www.equal.vote.
Except if all the candidates on the ballot are chosen for us by a corrupt establishment, ranked-choice voting will only select one choice that we ultimately don't want.
How things have changed since I wrote this! It's HAPPENING! I'M GETTING TO VOTE FOR SOMEONE I BELIEVE IN! America, we have a great opportunity to change for the better.... who knew the best kept secret in Washington was Kamala? She's been hiding in plain sight all along.
You forget there are factions within these parties - Biden has been polling at less that 20% for the past year - by the experts such as Martin Armstrong - and now you have Hillary joining his campaign (yeah right) which stinks of her underpinnings
Agree and thank you - this has nothing to do with him per se - she's just moving in and exploiting - she's coming back no doubt about it! The political debt she amassed touring the world under the guise of SOS collecting bribes via Clinton Foundation for when she became POTUS and then of course DIDN'T!
The situation in Gaza has her name written all over it - she is a staunch supporter of Israel and Israel's reputation throughout the world is now identical to hers! This is going to boil down to her and Trump yet again. WATCH! They've already started with the who do you want at 3am phone calls - but left her name out which is tantamount to using the world deplorables and not seeing the same correlation.
Putin has also been making tremendous strides in the Middle East I read an article which said this is the USA's greatest fear - and will all know she hates him as much as she hates Trump. She is clearly coming back - she's starting to circle the wagons - I saw a photo of her on Morning Joe and that other totally white trash show - The View.
I would not put anything past this war mongering whore - and would not doubt for one split second she is advising and encouraging Israel to destroy Gaza while the entire world is demanding a cease fire. You also have to wonder what clout Kissinger may've bestowed upon her on his death bed to continue his legacy of rampage?
Of course HRC is lurking, waiting in the wings, just in case Biden should happen to stumble.
Lady Macbeth can't do anything other than be Lady Macbeth. Take away The Will To Power, strip the mask away from a sociopath, and there is nothing else there. It's like staring into a void, a vacuum, a black hole.
Well you know there is no way Biden will be the nominee - according the the experts he's been polling at less than 20% and that was a while back - with his Israel stance you know it's even less than that.
Chris Hedges always brilliant and one of the most eloquent speakers on Social Justice movements and the world beyond America. 51% of Americans 18-25 that believe in the "death of Israel" and a Palestinian state led by Hamas (Harvard Harris poll). 85% of Americans overall approve of Israel. The young receive their information exclusively from the Internet and their peers and heavily influenced by Black Liberation movements and BLM exct. and not legacy media and less propagandized than the general American public. I have hope for the future dire as the present seems. Palestine exposed the lies, the propaganda, the war machine and it will bleed into social movements and ultimately the demise of US and maybe even immoral power and economic structures. Thank you Hedges for your always precise moral compass and courageous speech. For anyone who has not watched Hedges address Gaza Genocide https://youtu.be/ly6lfhOxTe0?si=gxkV9eRowIMA5xMM
While Chris is likely right about the long term death of Israel.......the fact remains that the world is helpless in front of whatever conflict the United States of America chooses to support....from VietNam to Cambodia, from Nicaragua to El Salvador ,Guatemala and Panama, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria.... the wars raged against the poor people of the world (falsely labelled wars against communism) have been the ugly signposts of my life.
In my 70's now and working as hard as I can against climate change and the fossil fuel cartels...I see American proxy wars as Petro Wars, American militarism as a consequence of the bloody Petro dollar.......and I grieve for all our children, past present and as yet to be born.
We don't give most of them a chance........and the ugly rhetoric we spin to justify our inaction, and callous indifference has made religion, or spirituality of any kind, for me, a cruel joke.
Were we a free people, a spiritual people, a people who loved life....and saw in other people's children the same divine spark as we experience in our own children....these wars would not be possible. We would all be in the street.........refusing to comply with civil society expectations until the murders ended....and the murderers were brought to justice.
These genocidal wars may spell the end of Empire....some sweet day....but they bring back none of the beautiful possibilities dying now...and not just in Gaza.....but dying now, because civil society is shown to be utterly helpless.........and too often, indifferent.
Shame on All of Us that we allow genocide to continue....and again, not only in Gaza.
We were just commenting on the money making machine in America where head hunters can charge the job seeker........up here in Canada that's against the law...its the employer who pays.
Our police have been a little rough in a couple of cases, but in general the weekly demonstrations go off without a hitch. Yesterday I was preparing a birthday dinner for a 16 year old, but my partner went and said there were well over a thousand people....
But it is still frightening....to see genocide playing out on the nightly news....and the leader of the 'free' world sending money to the military so intent on death they kill their own hostages.
What Chris says may be true in the long run, but right now, there are lives on the line. I firmly believe that trying to undo the sins of the nation state within the confines of the nation-state construct will lead to more death and destruction. Along with saving lives, part of what I want to do is to encourage more of us to think about new ways to think and act on this issue.
There must be a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, not with Palestinians suffering under oppressive conditions, but as a place where all live with peace and equality. It is time for Pope Francis to do more than talk. He must go to Gaza and make a stand for peace and freedom.
"There is nothing to stop the spiritual and moral darkness of state absolutism except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of society."
Interesting perspective. At last many decades after Seymour Benzer demonstrated that behavior is linked to genetics, humanity is beginning to better understand itself. Wet ware matters and that wet ware is laid down by the programming of DNA. Decades ago it was thought that the brain was "fixed" when in fact it remains "plastic" throughout life.
I've often thought that for many individuals and in particular groups of people, the prefrontal cortex is often employed to create plausible rationales to rationalize the desires of the amygdala and our more primitive brains. We humans can rationalize anything when it serves our interests, even genocidal acts.
In this case, that thinking applies to both HAMAS and Israeli leaderships.
Brilliant--as usual. I take strength from Mr. Hedges' well-informed passion and bravery and have relied on his observations for many years. From an elderly American woman who has marched side-by-side with Palestinian activists in DC and who is constantly disgusted by Israeli collective psychosis.
I agree with this essay. In the short term Israel may be successful in suppressing Palestinian resistance but in the long term through a combination of internal and external factors Israel as we known it will collapse and disappear. A racist, apartheid state that engages in genocide and ettnic cleansing is digging its own grave and will eventually collapse. The sad thing is that in the process many innocent people both Palestinian and Israeli will be hurt.
I appreciate the great work that Chris Hedges is doing in keeping the public aware of the tragic events that are occurring in Gaza. He is one of the most courageous, outstanding journalists of our times!
The moment I saw the vast numbers of Israel's migrating to Europe - you could taste the demise. I'm surprised Mr. Hedges did not also include the barbarism by these same Israel's on 10-07 when they slaughtered their own citizens. I believe it was Ron Unz and Max Blumenthal who stated the number of Israel citizens killed by Hamas - could be as low as a mere 100. The Hamas mission was to capture and not kill as many as possible whereas the Israel orders were to destroy anything and everything's that moved. The fact that all evidence continues to be destroyed, solidifies this. Israel even had the audacity to count the Hamas deaths as their own to inflate the numbers which or course continue to be corrected. The entire world is watching and Israel's billion dollar's PR campaign is failing spectacularly - the egregious lies are being debunked within hours.
Ditto, Phil Kind Man.
Ditto.
The Palestinians were not antisemetic and they were tolerant of the Jewish settlers that first came. It was the Jewish settlers during the nakba that were intolerant and caused the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians which continues today in Gaza. Israel is digging its own grave in Gaza and it is going to eventually collapse!
The sooner the better.
Hi there Jew-hater.
Ah, there it is. I was waiting for you to wade in with your favourite name calling. Well done Frank. Job done. You can take the rest of the night off. Enjoy your Sunday evening pal.
One can surmise you are an Arab hater, then.
Nope. Don't hate. Hate is a stupid and destructive emotion. However, I completely oppose, reject and want to see eliminated any terrorist or supporter of terrorism.
I trust you feel similarly about any homicidal, genocidal, psychopaths who see some of their fellow human beings as "sub-human animals"...
You mean how many Muslims see Jews and Christians? How American Democrats see Jews and Christians?
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/poll-shows-palestinians-back-oct-7-attack-israel-support-hamas-rises-2023-12-14/
In that case, you will completely oppose and reject the governments of Israel and the US, who are currently the worst terrorist organizations in the world.
Oh your lefty campus brainwashing is well exposed. You wokesters are so fixated on language you would think you actually comply with real word meaning. Look up the word “terrorism” so you get back in touch with its real meaning. Check “genocide” too while you are at it.
Maybe you are too young or too Theory indoctrinated to understand that the US policed the world after the world wars because all those other idiot countries kept starting wars that killed millions… including Americans that got sucked in.
You mean like the IDF? Now there's a terrorist organisation and it's supported by a government!
The idiocy of you terrorists is that the Israel population was moving toward an opinion to pull back on settlements and work to implement a two-state solution. However, you terrorists like to murder Israeli Jews with glee and Oct 7 destroyed all that public opinion in Israel. Because of the murder, rape and kidnapping of innocent Israeli Jews, even Israeli Arabs have turned to support the eradication of Hamas. After they are eliminated in Palestine then the rest of the free world can go to work dismantling Hezbollah. I am worried that they might find you as one of them. I hope you are just an independent idiot Jew-hater for your own safety.
Stephen Berk
One who is highly critical of Israel is not generally a "Jew hater." Just as a US citizen who criticizes American foreign policy or domestic politics is not "un-American." Too often Zionism, a wholly secular nationalist movement, is confused with Judaism. Judaism is one of the oldest and deepest of the great religious traditions. None of the great Jewish teachers needed or advocated for a Jewish state. This would include people like Maimonides, Luria, the Bal Shem Tov, Moses Mendelsohn, Menachem Schneerson and many, many more. Modern Israel, which began with great scholars and universities has greatly narrowed its vision due to its secular politicians' overemphasis on having more land for a "greater Israel," and depriving native Palestinians in order to to bring that about. One of the finest Israeli scholars who sympathizes with the plight of Palestine, recognizing the wrongheadedness of Israeli ethnocentrism has been Ilan Pappe ("Modern Palestine," "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine"). Pappe formerly taught at the University of Haifa, but growing ethnocentrism in Israel brought about his removal to the University of Exeter in the UK. Far from the great center of Jewish and cross-cultural learning that many of the early colonizers envisioned, Israel has turned into a garrison state given to a parochial, expansionist nationalism with little regard for the traditions of other Middle Eastern peoples.
Being critical of Israel has nothing to do with hating Jews. A great many Jews all the way back to the late1880s when the Zionist movement first started have opposed the creation of a Jewish state. Judaism is a faith and one of the great religious traditions. The tradition as a whole eschewed the founding of another Jewish state. Jewish Voices for Peace and If Not Now are two current Jewish organizations that oppose Zionism.
Yeah... tolerant... right.
1920s
-Battle of Tel Hai
-Nebi Musa riots
-Jaffa riots
-Jerusalem Stabbings
-Palestine riots of 1929
1930s
Jaffa riots (April 1936)
Arab General Strike
These incidents all came after the Zionists had already plotted and planned to usurp Palestine all for themselves. And the sad thing is, Palestinian Jews had long been living there peacefully alongside Muslim and Christian Palestinians. Jews fleeing persecution in Europe could have come and shared the land, but they got greedy.
What would you do if someone came to steal your home, your land, your legacy, everything you worked hard to earn -- or inherited from your ancestors and worked hard your whole life to nurture?
Uh... well... no.
The Palestinians like you have a long history of Jew hating. They hated the Jews that migrated to Palestine. They starting killing Jews back them. Jews had to protect themselves and that is what we see today. Israel is in Gaza to kill Hamas so Israel is safer.
Baloney. What I see are a lot of Arab-haters. Lots of racism. And Ethiopian Jewish women were even sterilized against their will by their own government. Sweet, huh?
Obviously you don't see at all. You are blinded by ideological bias and your own hate.
There is a lot of justified hate for terrorists, terrorist supporters and terrorist sympathizers. They tend to be 95% Arab and Persian Muslims plus American Democrats. But I don't hate... it is a sign of uncontrolled emotions.
And how with your adopted gender ideology do you even define "women"? Maybe they were men in women's bodies? Sweet, huh?
You obviously know nothing about me. And by the way, you never answered my question.
I’m going to take Julio’s advice shortly and pay “Frank Lee” no mind. Someone who cannot see that genocide of human beings live on telly is not going to result in Israel being safer, as explained in the article by Chris Hedges which she’s supposed to have read, but in a wave of existential Middle Eastern revolt against Israel and possibly against all of our Western countries who have voted against ceasefire or abstained either doesn’t see injustice or doesn’t count with injustice being a recruiting sergeant for prolonged insurgencies, despite this dynamic being the central fact of the wars in Palestine and elsewhere, (she must have heard about a war in Vietnam!) “Frank Lee” should medevac herself out of the discussion, having not so much shot herself in the foot as blown her own legs out from under her.
“You’ve got to be taught
Before it’s too late
Before you are six, or seven, or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.”
Can’t these Trumpistas not even be aware of basic ideas like this, from paragons of Americana, Rogers and Hammerstein? Can they never audit their own rhetoric? Will she have to have her relatives being forced into unmarked cars by the Trump Forces of Good for not wearing enough camouflage before she realises that people are trying to form a conception of where the hell their civil society went and how to get it back, while she cheers on the forces which tear it apart?
Anyone with any sense agrees with Israel to eradicate Hamas... apparently your brothers.
Check the polls. You are the extremist.
Wow Jon, you hang your Jew-hating out there for everyone to see. Do you have any train cars in your back yard?
There will come a time hopefully when people will be ashamed they ever identified with or believed a word written in these crazy holy books. I mean, God literally instructs his 'chosen people' to kill tribe after tribe after tribe.
If you are going to flex your muscles as The Strong in order to murder and take what The Weak have, it sure makes it morally easier to accept if you believe an imaginary sky-daddy holds you in favor and even blesses your action. When clearly it is just murder, robbery, and aggravated violence on a vast scale.
It is not just younger Jews who are fed up with Israel. I am Jewish and 73. I cannot stand the state of Israel and never have. Stealing land from others is horrible enough, but killing those people when they object to being stolen from is even worse. I grew up hearing that Jews were god's chosen people, and that's the real problem. Zionists really do believe they're better than anyone else and can do as they like because of it. I have a really close friend who is 71, Jewish, and has the same disregard for Israel that I do. I for one hope to live long enough to see Israel gone from the map. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." While this phrase most emphatically does not mean that all zionists should be killed, it most certainly means that the bastard state of Israel should be.
WOW! God bless Debbie! Masel Tov!! I intend to share your chutzpah with all! The last line was great!
Thank you, BJ.
THESE are the stories you do not hear!!! Why I don't socialize per se - because people tend to speak with conjecture whereas I can and now will say I spoke with Jewish woman and this is how she felt!
So much for your mahjong game though huh? I'm what Nora Ephron called a Cashew - 1/2 Catholic 1/2 Jewish. I was actually raised by Jews you might say not that I converted or was one and just that growing up as a teenager I worked for them and they kind of took me under their wing,
Similar story here. My mother was Jewish. My father was your basic Southern Baptist rebel from Alabama. Raised as a teen around my mother’s family. According to Jewish law, if your mother is Jewish then so are you. My take on Israel really isn’t that unique. There are thousands of us in Jewish Voice for Peace.
God Bless all of you Debbie because this situation and it's ramifications is catastrophic
And you, too, BJ. I am happy to know that I have comrades out there n
I think you mean The Talmud, not the Torah. It truly is a horrible racist volume. You might enjoy reading Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Israel Shahak. He was an antizionist holocaust survivor.
The Talmud is one of the most horrific racist books I’ve ever encountered.
I love precision in language. Thank you for the explanation and clarification. As a secular Jew, I didn’t pay much attention to the Torah, but after your mention of it, I did read Deuteronomy. It’s just plain awful.
The recent death of Henry Kissinger brought to light once again his famous quote: “As a Jew, I have to wonder: we’ve been hated persecuted and chased around the globe for millennia. There must be a reason.”
The paradox of the Jewish people is that among the brilliant and wonderful people of the group are also some of the most awful. Israel reflects a concentration of the awful. The majority of Israeli adults support the genocide, while Finklestein and Miko Peled are ostracized.
I see no future for the State of Israel. I just don’t think the world will put up with it. We can only hope that it can transform peacefully into a real democracy, a real home for its entire indigenous population, from the river to the sea.
...and bravo Chris Hedges for another brave and profound essay.
To what extent does the revelation of Israel’s disrespect for international human rights reflect anything new, and what forces might emerge to compel the accountability to which this post alludes?
Put another way, does the increasingly vast recognition of Israel’s wanton criminality shift the equation beyond the long established baseline? Both Tel Aviv and Washington have long thumbed their noses at the international community, as well as institutions that enforce its commitments, like the International Criminal Court.
To the extent Israel will ever face accountability going forward, it will have to come from institutions and voices that have been less engaged in the past. I wrote a few weeks ago about the critical importance of organized labor in the United States, which has recently discovered its own grassroots power, but seemingly not yet the broader meaning of solidarity beyond the interests of union members. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/we-the-people-can-unplug-the-war
That's a very nice summary in your substack posting, the one you linked here. Thank you.
I appreciate very much the question you present here: what forces might emerge to compel accountability, forces sufficient enough to effect a fundamental change in the exercise of power, now held effectively by wealth, not the greater populations.
It would seem that change can only come about by the sheer power of numbers, and the question, I think, is how can this occur?
The correlation with the historic movement of labor opposing the oligarchs that you present does seem to offer some hope. But, how to shift the perceptions of sufficient members of the public, essentially a shift in mass perception? That is a great challenge, I think. There is some growth, and perhaps more can come. Forecasting social change is a tricky business, especially in this age, but I hope that you are right.
And at the same, time there is such a great danger in the destructive capability in the world now, truly unprecedented, the combination of technology and fervent ideologies.
The literal destruction of the state of Isreal seems unlikely, and if so, it would seem that others would fall, the reactions of the great powers, a larger unleashing of something like the catastrophic global unsettling during the last century, triggered by the shooting in Sarajevo.
Related questions:
If the ending of the state of Israel is considered as a literal possibility, when was there an occurrence of a powerful nation-state, a true dissolution/destruction, and what were the sequelae?
How can the situation in Israel/Gaza be remedied, and the fraught situation of the entire region, and the possibility of a widespread ideological (even perhaps global) war be de-escalated? It would almost have to seem to require a movement from within Israel.
Thank you again.
Thank you for your kind feedback!
I do think organized labor in the US is critical, particularly because I fear your point about sheer numbers offering our only hope might itself be too generous. I wrote earlier about how the genocide in Gaza presents a test of democracy in America, which our nation is unfortunately (and not for the first time) failing miserably. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/the-genocide-in-gaza-is-a-test-of
Sheer numbers only matter if governments are, in fact, accountable to public opinion. I fear they are more responsive to capital, and empirical analysis sadly supports that observation. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746.amp
Labor is uniquely positioned to force accountability by withholding a crucial resource from sectors that still rely on it, and on which the empire itself relies to operate. That's why I don’t know if there’s any substitute for solidarity from organized labor within critical industries, especially shipping.
Your question about the results of other nation states that have dissolved is provocative. Thank you for offering it. My mind particularly goes to the former Soviet union, and the aftermath suggests that crisis in transition could be more devastating than even a disturbing preceding baseline. The same pattern of leaping from frying pans into fires has emerged after seemingly every revolution from France to Iran.
Finally, with respect to the path forward, chaos across the Middle East—and far beyond it—would certainly escalate to the extent paramilitary groups would predictably proliferate in the wake of any shift in the existing nation state structure. The biggest hope of de-escalation seems to me to be the emergence of the BRICS alliance as an alternative pole challenging American hegemony.
I would hope to see a bigger role for BRICS and international institutions, which would require the United States resigning its commitment to use its veto on the UN security council to categorically defend Israel in any circumstance, however, heinous the human rights violation.
You alluded to movements within Israel, which have been more influential to this point in many American observers might realize. The resistance to Netanyahu’s attempts to marginalize the judiciary earlier this year were unprecedented in the country's history, and pressure from families of people taken hostage by Hamas in October mounted immense domestic political pressure, which was ultimately what forced Netanyahu’s hand when he accepted the “humanitarian pause” a meager alternative to the ceasefire demanded by voices around the world. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/an-escalating-uprising-demands-human
Thank you again for your thoughtful comment! I'd be eager to invite any further thoughts you might share.
Hi Shahid,
Thank you for your response.
So yes, the dilemma seems to remain: that of countering the interests that determine the policies of state action to the detriment of the greater populations of the world.
I think that it is not just a matter of economic power or the power of states.
The situation that we now have seems somehow not clearly one or the other, but lies somewhere in the relationship between myriad interests, economic, corporate, and state.
I am thinking here of the work of Sheldon Wolin, and the studies of Gilen and Page (and thank you for citing that link to the original paper, I had only read it in a reference by Peter Turchin).
I think that what we are seeing in variant forms globally, is a new type of power, an affiliative combination that operates neither as a state in a historical model, not quite as formal hereditary/oligarchic elite, nor as a formal corporation.
Broadly, it is the power of world markets, and the determinations of state that are in those interests.
It is a less clearly identifiable power that exists in their intersections and influences, that has a structure that is broadly corporate and privately held.
This situation allows power to have no accountability, it exists somewhere in markets, and those who have the greatest power and the greatest benefits, and is largely blind functionally to other ideological considerations.
It is not so much a clear central power along earlier models, bounded by nations, but does have different, sometimes rivalrous, centers of relative concentration with interests sometimes in common and sometimes conflicting.
But by it's very opaqueness, and it's corporate form, it is like trying to fight a hurricane by punching at it. There is nothing solid to engage with, and yet it has overwhelming force. (Have you had the experience of dealing with a health insurance that arbitrarily declines a payment? It's pretty much what it feels like.)
The machinations of state now increasingly have this quality as well.
They seem to have met in the middle.
And how can this be countered, when even the lines of power are largely opaque, metaphorically lying in shell structures, anonymous.
Reading this, it seems somewhat vague; it is difficult to describe.
It is like seeing parts of the elephant and imagining what it is.
To the question at hand: what you say about BRICS, yes this would offer some possibility of changing some of the current (im) balances.
And hopefully, within speific countries, the awareness of an informed, domestic pressure, within those countries in which it might make a degree of difference.
Even amelioration would be welcome.
Thank you for that. And my apologies, if you have been sent a notification in your email each time I have made the many revisions and typo corrections to this reply .
Afraid this course is set. For how many decades has the State of Israel gotten away with acts that no other nation, except the US, could? Mystique, indeed. The US lost its mystique and its moorings after 9/11, and we continue to pay a price for that fiasco; the same will hold for Israel after this spasm of murderous retribution ends. Many, many voices down the decades have warned, as Hannah Arendt did 75 years ago, that the presence of Arabs in Palestine can’t be altered, except perhaps by the decision of a totalitarian state and implemented by ruthless force.
Israel and the United States increasingly rely upon coercion and naked force.
The recent vote by the UN General Assembly demonstrates how isolated the US and Israel are on the world stage. The governments of both countries appear to be filled with such enormous arrogance that they are incapable of any form of compassion.
Very like all the Empires before them.
A simple conclusion; however, the vast majority of those who voted have no skin in the game that is being played. It is easy to be sanctimonious when your interests do not compete.
Both are also in their last and final throws
Many wish it to be so but wishing and the occurrence are separate things. The US has been doomed from its very beginning.
Finally!
I wonder if Israel will now only attract the worst of people, the worst of visitors, the worst of business partners, the worst of Jewish settlers.
I find it hard to fathom that anti-Zionist Jews could abide living or visiting there ever again, given all that has been done in the name of Judaism and Israel.
I wish Israel economic failure. To suffer life hardships as a consequence of their own choice and determination to hate. To have the next generation of Israelis turn against their elders as they reject their difficult lives and abolish the state of Israel as it is today, and make reparations to the Palestinian people.
I wish the same for the U.S.
Very sanctimonious of you.
Is Nelson Mandela sanctimonious too?
« If there is a country that has committed unspeakable strep cities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care. They don’t care for human beings. 57 years ago when Japan was retreating on all fronts, they decided to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and killed a lot of innocent people who are still suffering from the effects of those bombs. Those bombs were not aimed against the Japanese, they were aimed against the Soviet Union to say ´look, this is the power that we have: if you dare oppose what we do, this is what is going to happen to you. Because they are so arrogant, they decided to kill innocent people in Japan. Who are they now to pretend they are the policeman of the world? »
Naturally, Nagasaki and Hiroshima have to be brought up. You should read more history from that period to realize that those decisions involved more than just the US showing the Soviets what for. It is very easy to reflect on history from the comfort and security of today. For any complex problem it is easy in retrospect to imagine alternative and better outcomes.
For individuals like myself who are part of a generation whose fathers were preparing to invade Japan, I find your comments as sanctimonious. Many Americans my age would never have been born, because the Japanese home islands were going to be invaded and militarism in Japan was going to be eliminated. Millions more would have died and it would have been orders of magnitude more brutal. By time the invasion of Kyushu was scheduled the US would have possessed 6 plutonium bombs. They would have been used because Japan would be occupied just as Germany was occupied by both Allied and Soviet forces.
You may find realpolitik offensive and against your moral principles but like most people, you and I have little to no say in decisions of this kind. By the same token considering all amoral actions by those who govern as bereft of thoughtful consideration, morality, and analysis is just a part of alternative story telling and myth making.
I agree with Chris Hedges that war is the worst of crimes. Unfortunately, we, as a specious, still engage in it.
It seems you find Nelson Mandela sanctimonious too.
War is not a way to peace. It never was. It never has been.
War is an industry.
You may make excuses if you like.
My grandfathers fought in WW2. Which came about because of the outcomes of WW1.
The root, I believe, is colonialism.
I don’t think you need to put down other peoples opinions to elevate your own. It’s a cheap trick, in my view, and speaks to your character, and not my intellect.
I have no doubt you are a very well intended as are many people expressing their opinions in this conflict. I know full well that Nelson Mandela and Gandhi employed largely peaceful means to resolve their issues of oppression for their circumstances. Such techniques have never been employed to any degree in the Israeli/Palestinian problem.
Nelson Mandela had no role in the difficult decisions towards the end of WW2. He had absolutely no responsibility for the deaths of American GIs or the strategic objectives of the Allies in prosecuting the war. In my opinion, he has every right to criticize the US use of nuclear weapons but has no more moral authority in this respect than you or me. He has every right to his opinion but that is all it is, his opinion. It deserves no more weight than that.
War has been with humans since the beginning, it is only a matter of the scale of violence and the available tools. It existed long before "colonialism" was even thought of or logistically possible. What I found "sanctimonious" in your post is that you wish the chaos of economic ruin on the citizenry of Israel and the US.
Your original comments are in keeping with our times but are unhelpful. Wishing immiseration on the Israeli people or the American people because of the cynical strategic decisions of both extremist power elites in this conflict (HAMAS and Netanyahu's coalition) was made without consideration of consequences. Those comments can hardly be considered as stemming from fully considered paths to solutions or matters of justice.
As long as the governments of Israel and the US are acting in the people's name and the people don't object, they are complicit in the crimes of their governments. In that case, we deserve to suffer.
People get the government they deserve. And they get them by not demanding a better government.
It’s not true at all that peaceful methods have never been attempted, but it sounds like you have not heard of them. The 2018-2019 great march of return: I believe it was peaceful marches at the border every Friday. There was much footage of it internationally. The Israelis responded by shooting the unarmed peaceful protesters. They shot disabled people protesting. I hope you will look it up yourself to verify.
This, nitivly, happened after Hamas changed its charter significantly in 2017 in peace effort to work towards political solution and recognized the acceptability of the 1967 borders (this is what’s agreed internationally by all UN countries except U.S. and Israel, and they vote on it every year in the UN).
You dint need to believe or repeat the lie that a peaceful solution has never been sought. But when they are met only with force (far outmatched force) to peaceful resistance to occupation, what option is left? Remember the Jews in the Warsaw ghettos mounted a forceful resistance to the Nazi guards, and there’s no one in the world who thinks they were wrong to fight with all their might against their brutal occupiers.
Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia.
« At least 189 Palestinians were killed between 30 March and 31 December 2018.[30]: 6 [31][32] An independent United Nations commission set the number of known militants killed at 29 out of the 189.[5] Other sources claim a higher figure, of at least 40.[33][20][34][21][35] Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live ammunition.[36] According to Robert Mardini, head of Middle East for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), more than 13,000 Palestinians were wounded as of 19 June 2018. The majority were wounded severely, with some 1,400 struck by three to five bullets.[37] No Israelis were physically harmed from 30 March to 12 May, until one Israeli soldier was reported as slightly wounded on 14 May,[9] the day the protests peaked. The same day, 59 or 60 Palestinians were shot dead at twelve clash points along the border fence.[38] Hamas claimed 50 of them as its militants,[39][40] and Islamic Jihad claimed 3 of the 62 killed as members of its military wing.[41] Some 35,000 Palestinians protested that day, with thousands approaching the fence.[42][43]«
You miss the point entirely and really have a hard-on for ethno-supremacy as a unique Abrahamic behavior. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I disagree. We didn't have a say it those decisions at the time, but subsequent generations each endorse or oppose those decisions made by previous generations. We have a say now.
And I choose not to support those murderous decisions. Since they're still being made today, in our names, we have a duty to oppose them.
As is your right.
Your support of HAMAS will strengthen the Likud Party, Iranian influence, and further death of innocents.
You are consistent Jon, though you ignore completely the depredations of non-Abrahamic ethnic groups. Very convenient to your world view.
I think that the anticipated loss of life in invading the Islands of Japan to change the regime was probably the principal factor in using the atomic bomb, and maybe Truman also thought that this terrible rain of destruction would teach all future generations not to try to surprise America in war as the Japanese may have done at Pearl Harbour... if one doesn’t accept the view that Roosevelt let that happen so as to get the nation’s blood up to fight the war against fascism in Europe. I recently learned that a WWII Yugoslav playboy spy named Gogol warned the FBI and at a second visit, its director Hoover in person, that the Germans knew that the Japanese were planning an attack on Pearl from questions the Japanese had asked the Germans, known to a fellow spy who had joined the Abwehr.
To correct my text above, the spy who revealed the Japanese intention to attack Pearl Harbour to the FBI was named Popov not Gogol, my memory confused it with the character in James Bond, I think.
Well not that is a generalizing.
I agree that Israel is destroying itself along with Gaza. They have turned their enemies into global heroes. I don't know if Hamas was smart enough to achieve this outcome, but if they were, then they have surpassed their wildest dreams. Is the current Israeli government as stupid as they seem? They are blinded by their own hatred and fear. I cannot weep for them. My tears are all for the Palestinians and their children. If I earned enough money to pay taxes, I would refuse to pay a dime until my government stopped giving my money to Israel. All I can do is protest and give what I can to help the victims of this genocide.
Paula, I can and do weep for the Israelis as well as the Palestinians because they are simply as well as horribly caught up in intergenerational trauma and know not what they do, as a well known young rabbi said 2000 years ago. The very Yesheyahu Leibowicz to whom Chris refers in this piece of his on the death of Israel said soon after the 6-day war that if in the wake of their victory the Israelis did not make peace with the Palestinians then they as occupiers would turn themselves into Judeo-Nazis in betrayal of their own most precious Jewish values and tradition, which of course would become a matter for great lamentation.
Michael, I too weep for the Israeli people -- the citizens, not the government. I also deplore the settlers in the West Bank who act as if they are sanctioned military allowed to drive Palestinians out of their homes. They have gotten much worse since Oct.7th. It's unconscionable.
I think you’re referring to the Talmud, which I agree is a horrible racist book. My mother’s family preached this disdain loudly.
I know that this is beside the point, but taxes don't fund spending at the Federal level in the US or any country with a fiat currency. Congress has the ability to create money for spending on whatever it wants. Please learn Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) because it explains how the US monetary system works.
If you've heard anything "about" MMT, try to learn what it actually is before you decide that the gossip you heard is accurate. Knowing it can protect you from the lies that the politicians tell us, based on their trust that the people know nothing about it.
You can find it on The Rogue Scholar, MMT Mondays, Macro'n'Cheese, or Real Progressives on YouTube. Stephanie Kelton also has several great videos on YouTube about it.
We can free ourselves with accurate knowledge!
We do need a General Strike, but please read my answer to Paula Dean about taxes funding anything at the Federal level
1. The United States is a colonial settler regime and seems to be here for the foreseeable future.
2. "apparently escaped their captors and approached Israeli forces with their shirts off, waving a white flag and calling out for help in Hebrew is not only tragic, but a glimpse of Israel’s rules of engagement in Gaza. These rules are — kill anything that moves."
This blows up the idea that the killing would stop if only Hamas would throw themselves on the mercy of their tormentors.
Yes, you are right about the U.S. and I should have addressed this point. I added this paragraph to the column.
Settler colonial states that endure, including the Untied States, exterminate through diseases and violence nearly the entirety of their indigenous populations. Old World plagues brought by the colonizers to the Americas, such as smallpox, killed an estimated 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America. By 1600 less than a tenth of the original population remained. Israel cannot kill on this scale, with nearly 5.5 million Palestinians living under occupation and another 9 million in the diaspora.
I wish that you were not correct.
The Israel apartheid appears as a kaleidoscope of hypocrisy, another symptom of our civilization’s dysfunction. If we aren’t consumed by nuclear war, this era will be known to history first and foremost for the Climate Breakdown, and the response, or lack of response, by the powerful people and groups in our world. Your point is well taken about Biden; he’s probably lost the young progressives by his unconditional support of Israel… it’s hard to believe he would make this misstep, which could throw us under the control of the fascists.
We are trapped into an ugly choice in our next election, aren't we? Once again it's about choosing the lesser of two evils. I am so f-ing tired of it being this way. Just once before I die, I hope to vote for a president I can actually believe in. I doubt it will ever happen. I am too old, and way too cynical.
Ro Khanna seems to have an idea which is better than the Wall Street dominated civilization we live in today. It reflects the American Dream prior to it being sold out by Bill Clinton and the Clinton Faction.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/magazine/ro-khanna-interview.html
He has a very realistic concept of the origins of a wealthy civilization as opposed to the Plantation Mentality that has pervaded American Civilization since the start of the Reagan Revolution.
Paula, since you're f-n tired of having to vote for the lesser evil, why don't you check out and support STAR voting? -- score voting in which you can score /rate every candidate as you wish -- not merely rank 'em but say /how much/ you like or dislike 'em & thus top rate your favorite without any fear of helping to elect anyone else -- score voting followed by an automatic runoff between the top two scorers, which incentivizes you to vote honestly in order to have a say in the runoff. STAR voting -- Score Then Automatic Runoff voting. Check it out and Support it at www.starvoting.org and at www.equal.vote.
Except if all the candidates on the ballot are chosen for us by a corrupt establishment, ranked-choice voting will only select one choice that we ultimately don't want.
Why don't we try the choice of NOT VOTING? If no one voted and their candidate won anyway, their scam would be exposed for what it is.
We need a General Strike including a strike of the polls. Just stop cooperating. We can do this.
How things have changed since I wrote this! It's HAPPENING! I'M GETTING TO VOTE FOR SOMEONE I BELIEVE IN! America, we have a great opportunity to change for the better.... who knew the best kept secret in Washington was Kamala? She's been hiding in plain sight all along.
You forget there are factions within these parties - Biden has been polling at less that 20% for the past year - by the experts such as Martin Armstrong - and now you have Hillary joining his campaign (yeah right) which stinks of her underpinnings
"Biden and Clinton have not always been close — she elbowed him out of running in 2016 — but the president is thirsty for allies right now..."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/hillary-clinton-joe-biden-campaign-rcna128190
Agree and thank you - this has nothing to do with him per se - she's just moving in and exploiting - she's coming back no doubt about it! The political debt she amassed touring the world under the guise of SOS collecting bribes via Clinton Foundation for when she became POTUS and then of course DIDN'T!
The situation in Gaza has her name written all over it - she is a staunch supporter of Israel and Israel's reputation throughout the world is now identical to hers! This is going to boil down to her and Trump yet again. WATCH! They've already started with the who do you want at 3am phone calls - but left her name out which is tantamount to using the world deplorables and not seeing the same correlation.
Putin has also been making tremendous strides in the Middle East I read an article which said this is the USA's greatest fear - and will all know she hates him as much as she hates Trump. She is clearly coming back - she's starting to circle the wagons - I saw a photo of her on Morning Joe and that other totally white trash show - The View.
I would not put anything past this war mongering whore - and would not doubt for one split second she is advising and encouraging Israel to destroy Gaza while the entire world is demanding a cease fire. You also have to wonder what clout Kissinger may've bestowed upon her on his death bed to continue his legacy of rampage?
Just my thoughts . . . .
Of course HRC is lurking, waiting in the wings, just in case Biden should happen to stumble.
Lady Macbeth can't do anything other than be Lady Macbeth. Take away The Will To Power, strip the mask away from a sociopath, and there is nothing else there. It's like staring into a void, a vacuum, a black hole.
Well you know there is no way Biden will be the nominee - according the the experts he's been polling at less than 20% and that was a while back - with his Israel stance you know it's even less than that.
My thoughts too
Which is why she's around
Chris Hedges always brilliant and one of the most eloquent speakers on Social Justice movements and the world beyond America. 51% of Americans 18-25 that believe in the "death of Israel" and a Palestinian state led by Hamas (Harvard Harris poll). 85% of Americans overall approve of Israel. The young receive their information exclusively from the Internet and their peers and heavily influenced by Black Liberation movements and BLM exct. and not legacy media and less propagandized than the general American public. I have hope for the future dire as the present seems. Palestine exposed the lies, the propaganda, the war machine and it will bleed into social movements and ultimately the demise of US and maybe even immoral power and economic structures. Thank you Hedges for your always precise moral compass and courageous speech. For anyone who has not watched Hedges address Gaza Genocide https://youtu.be/ly6lfhOxTe0?si=gxkV9eRowIMA5xMM
Get enraged and then ready to cry.
From your lips to God's ears
While Chris is likely right about the long term death of Israel.......the fact remains that the world is helpless in front of whatever conflict the United States of America chooses to support....from VietNam to Cambodia, from Nicaragua to El Salvador ,Guatemala and Panama, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria.... the wars raged against the poor people of the world (falsely labelled wars against communism) have been the ugly signposts of my life.
In my 70's now and working as hard as I can against climate change and the fossil fuel cartels...I see American proxy wars as Petro Wars, American militarism as a consequence of the bloody Petro dollar.......and I grieve for all our children, past present and as yet to be born.
We don't give most of them a chance........and the ugly rhetoric we spin to justify our inaction, and callous indifference has made religion, or spirituality of any kind, for me, a cruel joke.
Were we a free people, a spiritual people, a people who loved life....and saw in other people's children the same divine spark as we experience in our own children....these wars would not be possible. We would all be in the street.........refusing to comply with civil society expectations until the murders ended....and the murderers were brought to justice.
These genocidal wars may spell the end of Empire....some sweet day....but they bring back none of the beautiful possibilities dying now...and not just in Gaza.....but dying now, because civil society is shown to be utterly helpless.........and too often, indifferent.
Shame on All of Us that we allow genocide to continue....and again, not only in Gaza.
We were just commenting on the money making machine in America where head hunters can charge the job seeker........up here in Canada that's against the law...its the employer who pays.
Our police have been a little rough in a couple of cases, but in general the weekly demonstrations go off without a hitch. Yesterday I was preparing a birthday dinner for a 16 year old, but my partner went and said there were well over a thousand people....
But it is still frightening....to see genocide playing out on the nightly news....and the leader of the 'free' world sending money to the military so intent on death they kill their own hostages.
Oh well......accidents happen....I guess.
What Chris says may be true in the long run, but right now, there are lives on the line. I firmly believe that trying to undo the sins of the nation state within the confines of the nation-state construct will lead to more death and destruction. Along with saving lives, part of what I want to do is to encourage more of us to think about new ways to think and act on this issue.
There must be a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, not with Palestinians suffering under oppressive conditions, but as a place where all live with peace and equality. It is time for Pope Francis to do more than talk. He must go to Gaza and make a stand for peace and freedom.
Please sign the petition and share widely.
https://chng.it/CRQ7qw4Gzn
Two more petitions:
Codepink:
https://www.codepink.org/cnngaza?utm_campaign=12_15_pali_update_alert_3&utm_medium=email&utm_source=codepink
Ceasefire Now
https://www.change.org/p/sign-and-share-this-urgent-petition-calling-for-a-ceasefirenow-in-gaza-and-israel
These are a few small things we can do. If we can do more, let us do more.
Thanks for sharing - it would be really good for Catholics to see what "pro-life" actually looks like.
Thank you for sharing those!
Signed ✔️✔️
For a neuropolitical perspective on the Death of Isreal and the US:
https://meyerja.substack.com/p/a-measure-of-democracy
"There is nothing to stop the spiritual and moral darkness of state absolutism except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of society."
Amen to that!
Neuropolitical. What a great word.
Wow. I just read your essay. Absolutely brilliant. A huge "AHA!" moment for me. I thank you. And recommend everyone read it.
Whoa! Joe! Great article! So much in here I connect to. Especially with a tertery mental health degree. Thanks.
Interesting perspective. At last many decades after Seymour Benzer demonstrated that behavior is linked to genetics, humanity is beginning to better understand itself. Wet ware matters and that wet ware is laid down by the programming of DNA. Decades ago it was thought that the brain was "fixed" when in fact it remains "plastic" throughout life.
I've often thought that for many individuals and in particular groups of people, the prefrontal cortex is often employed to create plausible rationales to rationalize the desires of the amygdala and our more primitive brains. We humans can rationalize anything when it serves our interests, even genocidal acts.
In this case, that thinking applies to both HAMAS and Israeli leaderships.
Brilliant--as usual. I take strength from Mr. Hedges' well-informed passion and bravery and have relied on his observations for many years. From an elderly American woman who has marched side-by-side with Palestinian activists in DC and who is constantly disgusted by Israeli collective psychosis.