A GENOCIDE FORETOLD

A furious attack on the Israeli state.

“Israel was founded largely on lies,” proclaims Hedges, including, by his lights, “the lie that it was Arab armies that started the 1948 war that saw Israel seize seventy-eight percent of historic Palestine.” The author and former New York Times journalist adds, “The Israeli public is infected with racism,” so much so that it tolerates “Israeli’s lebensraum master plan for Gaza,” a term fraught with echoes of Nazi “living space” expansionism, very much intended. And the vicious Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israeli civilians, among them attendees at a rock concert? Well, it “included atrocities,” Hedges allows, and Hamas, with a master plan of its own, may have enshrined the destruction of Israel in its foundational document, but even so, “Hamas is not, despite what Israel and Washington say, a terrorist organization.” However, Israel is, in Hedges’ view, alternately a member of a “cabal” of arms dealers “dedicated to permanent war” and a puppet master controlling the U.S. Congress, media, and academia through a combination of bribes and bullying. There is no doubt that Israel’s invasion of Gaza has been brutal, leading to a catastrophic loss of life. Many of Hedges’ hyperbolic accusations, though, long predate the war in Gaza, old tropes freshened by new broadside-of-the-barn charges: Columbia is “a Potemkin university,” both Americans and Israelis are “infected with the same white supremacy,” the Palestinian Authority is “a hated colonial police force,” and so forth.

If you’re looking for nuance, you won’t find it here.