(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The award-winning Hedges is one of the internationally best-known critics of Israel's policy in the Middle East. Not least, he is known in USA, where he himself was educated at the prestigious Harvard University. He has felt on his body what it is like to be branded an anti-Semite after a long life as an anti-racist and in the fight against the oppression of minorities in the twenty wars he has covered as a journalist for decades. Hedges are concerned with the oppression of minorities and dissidents, but are themselves victims of oppression and marginalization.
As a journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner is Chris Hedges a highly sought-after lecturer and prolific journalist who has also written a number of books. It was thought-provoking to read his War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning > (2003). The book became a bestseller and was nominated for a number of awards.
ISIS and Israel?
Hedges' invitation to attend a peace conference at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 was canceled (reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz). The reason was that he had compared Israel to ISIS (The Islamic State). As a former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times, he wrote a column in which he compared ISIS's tactics today to those of the Jewish guerrillas in 1948. The organizer said that because of his "views" Hedges was not suitable to speak at the peace conference. Hedges calls this "a sign of Israel's desperation".
Hedges' comparison was described in his then-weekly column for the website Truthdig: He had been invited to speak at a conference sponsored by the Penn International Affairs Association on April 3, 2014. On December 15, 2013, Hedges wrote the following:
“Ironically, ISIS is perhaps the only example of successful nation-building in the modern Middle East, despite the billions of dollars we have squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. ISIS's quest for an ethnically pure Sunni state mirrors the quest for a Jewish state that was eventually established in Palestine in 1948. ISIS's tactics are very similar to those used by the Jewish guerrillas with violence, terrorism, foreign fighters, clandestine arms shipments and foreign money, in combination with horrific ethnic cleansing and the massacre of hundreds of Arab civilians, all to create Israel.”
Hedges writes that after the publication of said column, Zachary Michael Belnavis, a member of the Pennsylvania student group, sent an email to the agency that had involved Hedges: "We regret to inform you that we do not believe that Chris Hedges will fit into our planned peace conference. This in light of a recent article he has written in which he compares the organization ISIS to Israel... In light of such a claim, we do not think he would be suitable as a speaker where the theme is 'Living together'."
Hedges used his next article on Truthdig to refute Belnavis' claims, saying that “Exclusion from speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially at universities, is familiar to anyone who tries to challenge the narrative of the Israel lobby. This is not the first time an invitation to speak has been withdrawn, and it probably won't be the last.”
In accordance with UN resolutions
Hedges goes on to say that “the charge that I am against coexistence cannot be substantiated by anything I have said or written. And those of us who urge Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders are, after all, only demanding what is required by international law and a number of UN resolutions".
Hedges then lists the various speakers the University of Pennsylvania has hosted, saying they "spread disturbing racist stereotypes of Muslims and justify indiscriminate violence against Muslims": Daniel Pipes, Nonie Darwish and retired Israeli army chief Efraim Eitam, who in 2004 told The New Yorker that “I don't call these people animals. These are creatures that came crawling out of the depths of darkness". He is referring to the Palestinians.
He continues: “Our universities …. like our corporate-controlled media, are little more than echo chambers for the elites and the powerful. The bigger and more prestigious the university, the more determined it seems to be to have its students and faculty sing in chorus to please their Zionist donors.”
Hedges concludes that "The crude attempts to suppress the debate will backfire on Israel." They are "a sign of Israel's desperation".
