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The National Press Club of Australia Cancels My Talk on Our Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published October 3, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.I was scheduled to give a talk at the National Press Club of Australia on October 20 called “The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.” It was to focus on the amplification of Israeli lies in the press, which most reporters know are lies, betraying Palestinian colleagues who are slandered, targeted and killed by Israel. But, perhaps inadvertently proving my point, the chief executive of the press club, Maurice Reilly, cancelled the event. The announcement of my talk disappeared from the web site. Reilly said “that in the interest of balancing out our program we will withdraw our offer.”The Israeli Ambassador, retired Lt. Colonel Amir Maimon, who spent 14 years in the Israeli military, is reportedly being considered to speak.It is true that I know only one side of the picture from the seven years I spent covering Gaza. I was on the receiving end of Israeli attacks, including being bombed by its air force and fired upon by its snipers, one of whom killed a young man a few feet away from me at the Netzarim Junction. We lifted him up, each person taking hold of an arm or a leg, and lumbered up the road as his body swayed like a heavy sack. I saw small boys baited and shot by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Younis. The soldiers swore at the boys in Arabic over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep. The boys, about 10 years old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle and the soldiers opened fire, killing some, wounding others.I was present more than once as Israeli troops shot Palestinian children. Such incidents, in the Israeli lexicon, become children caught in crossfire. I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets bombed overcrowded hovels in Gaza City. I saw the corpses of the victims, including children. This became a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. I have watched Israel demolish homes and entire apartment blocks to create wide buffer zones between the Palestinians and the Israeli troops that ring Gaza. I have interviewed the destitute and homeless families, some camped out in crude shelters erected in the rubble. The destruction becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists. I have stood in the gutted remains of schools as well as medical clinics and mosques and counted the bodies. I have heard Israel claim that errant rockets or mortar fire from the Palestinians caused these and other deaths, or that the buildings were being used as arms depots or launching sites.I, along with every other reporter I know who has worked in Gaza, including the over 278 Palestinians journalists and media workers who have been killed by Israel since the start of the genocide, many in targeted assassinations, have reported a reality in Gaza that bears no resemblance to how it is portrayed by Israeli politicians, its military and many media outlets that serve as Israel’s echo chamber.Lt. Colonel Maimon can obviously, if he chooses, enlighten us about the artificial intelligence-based program known as “Lavender” and how it selects people, along with their families, in Gaza for assassination. He can explain how Israel determines the quotas of civilian dead, how soldiers are permitted to kill as many as 20 civilians in order to target a Palestinian fighter and hundreds for a Hamas commander. He can let us know why Israel continues the mass slaughter when an internal Israeli intelligence database indicates that at least 83 percent of Palestinians killed are civilians. He can tell us how Palestinian civilians are abducted, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, have their hands tied, and are then forced to walk as human shields in front of Israeli troops into buildings and underground tunnels that are potentially booby-trapped. He can explain how the special unit called the “Legitimization Cell” carries out propaganda campaigns to portray Palestinian journalists as Hamas operatives to justify their assassinations. He can detail the targeting, bombing and controlled demolitions that have damaged or destroyed 97 percent of Gaza’s educational system, including every university and nearly all its hospitals. He can explain how, after Israel blocked all humanitarian aid on March 2 to starve the Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli officials set up the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to lure emaciated and malnourished Palestinians to four aid hubs in the south — aid hubs with little food and which Human Rights Watch calls “death traps” and Doctors Without Borders calls “orchestrated killing.” These hubs, open only an hour, usually at 2:00 am, ensure a chaotic scramble for scraps of food. Israeli soldiers, along with U.S. mercenaries, who include members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club, a self-professed anti-“radical jihadist” biker group that counts members with Crusader tattoos among its ranks, fire live rounds into the crowds killing over 1,400 Palestinians and injuring thousands more in and around the hubs since May. He can lay out the plans for the concentration camps in southern Gaza and the efforts to ultimately expel the Palestinians from Gaza and repopulate it with Jewish colonists. He can explain why Israel abandoned its own hostages, why it fired on vehicles headed into the Gaza strip on October 7 carrying Israeli captives and why it used Hellfire missiles to obliterate the Erez Crossing installation when it was seized by Palestinian fighters knowing that dozens of Israeli soldiers were inside.If Lt. Colonel Maimon spoke with this honesty and candor we could call this balance. It would fill in a side of the equation I glimpse from the outside. It would complete the circle. It would match truth with truth.But Lt. Colonel Maimon, I see from his past statements, will spew out the mendacious narratives used by Israel to justify genocide — Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields, it operates command centers in hospitals, it sexually assaulted Israeli women on October 7 and beheaded babies. He will make the spurious claim that Israel “has the right to defend itself,” ignoring the fact that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups, which lack an air force, mechanized units, artillery, a navy, fleets of militarized drones and missiles, pose no existential threat to Israel. More important, he will not address Israel’s flagrant violation of international law by occupying and settling colonists on Palestinian land and carrying out a livestreamed genocide.This is not balance, unless we accept a world where truth is balanced by lies. It is an abandonment of the fundamental mission of journalists — to hold power accountable. But most egregiously, it is a terrible betrayal of our colleagues in Gaza who have been killed for chronicling the daily savagery in Gaza, for doing their job.No doubt, the corporate sponsors and wealthy donors of the press club are pleased. No doubt, the club is able to slither away from its journalistic integrity. No doubt, it is spared the attacks that would come from allowing me to speak.But please, have the decency to remove the word press from your club.PhotosAustralia’s 48th Parliament Sits For The First TimeCANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - JULY 22: Ambassador for Israel Amir Maimon (L) and Shadow Minister for Small Business of Australia Tim Wilson (R) at the ecumenical service at Wesley Churc on July 22, 2025 in Canberra, Australia. Parliament reopened on Tuesday following Labor’s decisive election win. (Photo by Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images)Israeli attacks over Gaza continueISRAEL - OCTOBER 07: Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes targeted residential areas in the Gaza Strip, as seen from Israel near the border, on October 07, 2025. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)Palestinians Clash With Israeli Soldiers Near Neve DekalimKHAN YOUNIS REFUGEE CAMP - GAZA STRIP - SEPTEMBER 01: Palestinian boys run away from an Israeli tank as it opens fire during clashes near the vacant Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim on September 1, 2005 in the southern Gaza Strip. (Photo by Abid Katib/Getty Images)Israeli military mobility on the northern border of GazaGAZA CITY, GAZA - MAY 29: Military mobility of tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks and military jeeps belonging to the Israeli army continues on the northern border of Gaza on May 29, 2024. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-MIDEAST-GAZA-PULLOUT-YOUTHTOPSHOT - Palestinian kids throwing stones run towards an Israeli tank near the fence separating the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunes and the Israeli settlement of Ganei Tal 06 September 2005. AFP PHOTO/ROBERTO SCHMIDT (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP) (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)IDF And Greek Air Force Joint Military ExerciseEILAT, ISRAEL - DECEMBER 09: An Israeli F-16 jet takes off on December 9, 2014 at the Ovda airbase in the Negev Desert near Eilat, southern Israel. (Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)Israel’s Military Leaders At Odds With Netanyahu Over Gaza PlanSOUTHERN ISRAEL, ISRAEL - JULY 3: Smoke rise over the Gaza Strip after an Israeli bombardment as seen from a position on the Israeli side of the border on July 3, 2024 in Southern Israel, Israel. Recent press reports have suggested Israel’s military leadership wants a ceasefire in the war with Hamas, which has raged since the Oct. 7 attacks. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - This picture shows people walking amid tents set up next to the rubble of destroyed buildings at the Jabalia camp for displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip on April 8, 2025. Israel resumed major strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-GAZA-MEDIATOPSHOT - Demonstrators gather in solidarity with journalists killed by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, during a protest organised by the Gaza Journalists Syndicate, in Gaza City, on August 26, 2025. Gaza’s civil defence agency said five journalists were among at least 20 people killed on August 25 when Israeli strikes hit a hospital in the south, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressing regret over the “tragic mishap”. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP) (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTTOPSHOT - Palestinian women and children hold out their empty pots in front of a charity kitchen in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on August 21, 2025. Rights group Amnesty International earlier this week accused Israel of enacting a “deliberate policy” of starvation in Gaza. Israel heavily restricts aid coming into Gaza but has repeatedly rejected claims of deliberate starvation. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-GAZATOPSHOT - A ball of fire erupts from the Jala Tower as it is destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, controlled by the Palestinian Hamas movement, on May 15, 2021. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP) (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-US-GAZA-AIDTOPSHOT - People carry relief supplies from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private US-backed aid group that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in the territory, as displaced Palestinians return from an aid distribution centre in the central Gaza Strip on June 8, 2025. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP) (Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images)PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICTA female journalist comforts a distressed woman as injured and killed Palestinians are brought to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, following the Israeli bombardment of a residential apartment in Deir al-Balah and an area of al-Maghazi, on June 8, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

We Are All Antifa Now - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published September 18, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: Trump’s designation of the amorphous group antifa, which has no formal organization or structure, as a terrorist organization permits the state to charge us all as terrorists. The point is not to go after members of antifa, short for anti-fascist. It is to go after the last vestiges of dissent. When Barack Obama oversaw the coordinated national campaign to shut down the Occupy encampments, antifa -- so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass and seek physical confrontations with police – was the excuse.“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”I have no love for antifa. The feeling is mutual. I was a fierce opponent of the Black Bloc anarchists who identified with antifa. They embedded themselves in Occupy encampments and refused to take part in the collective decision making. They carried out property destruction and initiated clashes with the police. Occupy activists were antifa’s human shields. I wrote that antifa was “a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state.”David Graeber, whose work I respect, wrote an open letter criticizing my position.I was doxed. My lectures and events, which received phone threats forcing venues to hire private security, including bodyguards, were picketed by men dressed in black, their faces were covered by black bandanas. They all carried the same sign, no matter which city I was in, that read: “Fuck You Chris Hedges.” During a debate with an anarchist supporter of antifa in New York City, several dozen black-clad men in the audience jeered and interrupted me, often yelling out sarcastically “amen.”The state effectively used antifa -- I am certain antifa was heavily infiltrated with agents provocateurs -- to shut all of us down. The corporate state feared the broad appeal of the Occupy movement, including to those within the systems of power. The movement was targeted because it articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines.Antifa, let me be clear, is not a terrorist organization. It may confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution, but its designation as a terrorist organization has no legal justification.Antifa sees any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, as the enemy. They oppose all organized movements, which only ensures their own powerlessness. They are not only obstructionist, but obstructionist to those of us who are also trying to resist. They dismiss anyone who lacks their ideological purity. It does not matter if individuals are part of union organizing, workers’ and populist movements or radical intellectuals and environmental activists. These anarchists are an example of what Theodore Roszak in “The Making of a Counter Culture” called the “progressive adolescentization” of the American left.John Zerzan, one of the principal ideologues of the Black Bloc movement in the United States, defended “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the rambling manifesto by Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, although he did not endorse Kaczynski’s bombings. Zerzan dismisses a long list of supposed “sellouts” starting with Noam Chomsky and including myself.Black Bloc activists in cities such as Oakland smashed the windows of stores and looted them. It was not a strategic, moral or tactical act. It was done for the sake of destruction. Random acts of violence, looting and vandalism are justified, in the jargon of the movement, as components of “feral” or “spontaneous insurrection.” These acts, the movement argues, can never be organized. Organization, in the thinking of the movement, implies hierarchy, which must always be opposed. There can be no restraints on “feral” or “spontaneous” acts of insurrection. Whoever gets hurt gets hurt. Whatever gets destroyed gets destroyed.“The Black Bloc movement is infected with a deeply disturbing hypermasculinity,” I wrote. “This hypermasculinity, I expect, is its primary appeal. It taps into the lust that lurks within us to destroy, not only things but human beings. It offers the godlike power that comes with mob violence. Marching as a uniformed mass, all dressed in black to become part of an anonymous bloc, faces covered, temporarily overcomes alienation, feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness and loneliness. It imparts to those in the mob a sense of comradeship. It permits an inchoate rage to be unleashed on any target. Pity, compassion and tenderness are banished for the intoxication of power. It is the same sickness that fuels the swarms of police who pepper-spray and beat peaceful demonstrators. It is the sickness of soldiers in war. It turns human beings into beasts.”But while I oppose antifa, I do not blame them for the state’s response. If it was not antifa it would be some other group. Our rapidly consolidating police state will use any mechanism to silence us. It actually welcomes violence. Confrontational tactics and destruction of property justify draconian forms of control and frighten the wider population, driving them away from any resistance movement. It needs antifa or a group like it. Once a resistance movement is successfully smeared as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob — which those in the Trump administration are working hard to do — we are finished. If we become isolated, we can be crushed.“Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality,” I wrote. “The continuing attempt by the state to crush peaceful protesters who call for simple acts of justice delegitimizes the power elite. It prompts a passive population to respond. It brings some within the structures of power to our side and creates internal divisions that will lead to paralysis within the network of authority. Martin Luther King kept holding marches in Birmingham because he knew Public Safety Commissioner ‘Bull’ Connor was a thug who would overreact.”“The explosive rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement came when a few women, trapped behind orange mesh netting, were pepper-sprayed by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna,” I went on. “The violence and cruelty of the state were exposed. And the Occupy movement, through its steadfast refusal to respond to police provocation, resonated across the country. Losing this moral authority, this ability to show through nonviolent protest the corruption and decadence of the corporate state, would be crippling to the movement. It would reduce us to the moral degradation of our oppressors. And that is what our oppressors want.”I saw how antifa was weaponized to break the Occupy movement. Now it is being weaponized to throttle any resistance, no matter how tepid and benign.This justification for widespread repression is absurdist theater, characterized by fictions, including the supposed “Red-Green” alliance of Islamists and the “radical left.” Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy adviser, insists there was an “organized campaign” behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whose martyrdom has turbocharged state repression. Any Trump opponent, including billionaire financier George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, will soon be caught in the net.We are all antifa now.Photos Occupy Wall Street Holds Major Day Of Action In New York CityNEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 17: Occupy Wall Street protesters clash with police in Zuccotti Park on November 17, 2011 in New York City. Protesters attempted to shut down the New York Stock Exchange today, blocking roads and tying up traffic in Lower Manhattan. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)Protesters Gather At State Capitols On Presidential Inauguration DayDENVER, CO - JANUARY 20: Members of the Communist Party USA and other anti-fascist groups burn an American flag on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol on January 20, 2021 in Denver, Colorado. Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States with Vice President Kamala Harris at an inauguration ceremony in Washington DC earlier in the day. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)May Day Protesters In ParisPARIS, FRANCE - MAY 01: Masked demonstrators wave flares during the Labor Day demonstration on May 1, 2018 in Paris, France. According to the police around 1200 Black Bloc demonstrators took to the streets. (Photo by Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)No Future For YouThe Baffler presents “No Future for You: David Graeber versus Peter Thiel” at General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen on Friday night, September 19, 2014.This image:The anthropologist David Graeber in a debate.(Photo by Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-ECONOMY-PROTESTS-STRATEGYTOPSHOT - “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators occupy a park near Wall Street in New York, October 3, 2011. The protestors, speaking out against corporate greed and other issues carried on their occupation of Zuccotti Park, near the New York Stock Exchange, despite mass arests over the weekend. AFP PHOTO/Emmanuel Dunand (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP) (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images)TOPSHOT-US-PROTEST-FINANCE-OCCUPY WALL STREETTOPSHOT - Members of Occupy Wall Street are arrested as they struggle with police during a celebration march after learning that they can stay on at Zuccotti Park in New York, October 14, 2011. (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP) (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images)John ZerzanJohn Zerzan discusses The Coming Insurrection during a lecture at the 2010 San Francisco Anarchist BookfairAuthorities Escorting Unabomber Theodore KaczynskiPolice officers bring Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, to court for arraignment, April 4, 1996. Kaczynski later pled guilty to the mail bomb attacks that killed three people and injured 23. (Photo by © Ralf-Finn Hestoft/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)Protestors In Seattle Rally Against Police Brutality In Death Of George FloydSEATTLE, WA - MAY 30: Protesters riot in the streets following a peaceful rally expressing outrage over the death of George Floyd on May 30, 2020 in Seattle, Washington. Protests have erupted nationwide after Floyd died while in the custody of police in Minneapolis. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)May Day DemonstrationsBERLIN - MAY 01: Demonstrators clash with riot police during May Day clashes in Kreuzberg on May 1, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin police arrested 57 people in protests that turned violent. A police spokesman said 48 police officers were injured during the clashes. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)Protesters Demonstrate In D.C. Against Death Of George Floyd By Police Officer In MinneapolisWASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 01: A demonstrator is doused with water and milk after being hit with pepper spray from law enforcement during a protest on June 1, 2020 in downtown Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)Martin Luther King With Civil Rights MarchersDr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (center) with John Lewis,(2d from left) of SNCC, King’s aide, Rev. Ralph Abernathy (3d from l), Dr. Ralph Bunche (5th from l), Mrs. King (next to King), and Rev. Hosea Williams (carrying little girl, r) arrive in Montgomery, Alabama. King leads an estimated 10,000 or more civil rights marchers out on last leg of their Selma-to-Montgomery march.Protesters Being Hosed by Fireman(Original Caption) Firemen bear in on a group of African Americans who sought shelter in a doorway as hoses and dogs were used in routing anti-segregation demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, 3rd May 1963.US-POLITICS-SHOOTING-KIRKWhite House Deputy Chief of State Stephen Miller speaks during the public memorial service for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on September 21, 2025. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)Memorial Service Held For Slain Conservative Activist Charlie Kirk At State Farm StadiumGLENDALE, ARIZONA - SEPTEMBER 21: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaks during the memorial service for political activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium on September 21, 2025 in Glendale, Arizona. Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed on September 10th while speaking at an event during his “American Comeback Tour” at Utah Valley University. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)Milliardär George SorosMilliardär George Soros, Deutschland, Berlin, Eröffnung des Europäischen Roma Instituts für Kunst und Kultur (ERIAC) durch StM/AA Roth, 08.06.2017 (Photo by Popow/ullstein bild via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Death of the Holocaust Industry - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published September 10, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: Nearly all Holocaust scholars, who see in any criticism of Israel a betrayal of the Holocaust, have refused to condemn the genocide in Gaza. Not one of the institutions dedicated to researching and commemorating the Holocaust have drawn the obvious historical parallels or decried the mass slaughter of Palestinians.Holocaust scholars, with a handful of exceptions, have exposed their true purpose, which is not to examine the dark side of human nature, the frightening propensity we all have to commit evil, but to sanctify Jews as eternal victims and absolve the ethnonationalist state of Israel of the crimes of settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide.The hijacking of the Holocaust, the failure to defend Palestinian victims because they are Palestinian, has imploded the moral authority of Holocaust studies and Holocaust memorials. They have been exposed as vehicles not to prevent genocide but to perpetrate it, not to explore the past, but manipulate the present.Any tepid recognition that the Holocaust may not be the exclusive property of Israel and its Zionist supporters is swiftly shut down. The Holocaust Museum LA deleted an Instagram post that read: “NEVER AGAIN” CAN’T ONLY MEAN NEVER AGAIN FOR JEWS” after a backlash. In the hands of Zionists, “never again” means precisely that, never again only for Jews.Aimé Césaire, in “Discourse on Colonialism,” writes that Hitler seemed exceptionally cruel only because he presided over “the humiliation of the white man,” applying to Europe the “colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India and the nègres d’Afrique.”It was this distortion of the Holocaust as unique that troubled Primo Levi, who was imprisoned in Auschwitz from 1944 to 1945 and wrote “Survival in Auschwitz.” He was a fierce critic of the apartheid state of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. He saw the Shoah as “an inexhaustible source of evil” that “is perpetuated as hatred in the survivors, and springs up in a thousand ways, against the very will of all, as a thirst for revenge, as moral breakdown, as negation, as weariness, as resignation.”He deplored “Manichaeanism,” those who “shun nuance and complexity” and who “reduce the river of human events to conflicts, and conflicts to duals, us and them.” He warned that the “network of human relationships inside the concentration camps was not simple: It could not be reduced to two blocs, victims and persecutors.” The enemy, he knew, “was outside but also inside.”Levi writes about Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a Jewish collaborator who ruled the Lodz ghetto. Rumkowski, known as “King Chaim,” turned the ghetto into a slave labor camp which enriched the Nazis and himself. He deported opponents to death camps. He raped and molested girls and women. He demanded unquestioned obedience and embodied the evil of his oppressors. For Levi, he was an example of what many of us, under similar circumstances, are capable of becoming.“We are all mirrored in Rumkowski, his ambiguity is ours, it is our second nature, we hybrids molded from clay and spirit,” Levi wrote in “The Drowned and the Saved.” “[H]is fever is ours, the fever of our Western civilization that ‘descends into hell with trumpets and drums,’ and its miserable adornments are the distorting image of our symbols of social prestige.”“Like Rumkowski, we too are so dazzled by power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility,” Levi adds. “[W]illingly or not, we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death and that close by the train is waiting.”These bitter lessons of the Holocaust, which warn that the line between the victim and victimizer is razor thin, that we can all become willing executioners, that there is nothing intrinsically moral about being Jewish or a survivor of the Holocaust, are what Zionists seek to deny. Levi, for this reason, was persona non grata in Israel.Holocaust studies, which exploded in the 1970s and were epitomized by the deification of the Holocaust survivor and fervent Zionist Elie Wiesel — literary critic Alfred Kazin called him a “Jesus of the Holocaust” — have now surrendered any claim to championing universal truths. These Holocaust scholars use a benchmark evil, as Norman Finkelstein points out, “not as a moral compass but rather as an ideological club.” The mantra “Do not compare,” Finkelstein writes, “is the mantra of moral blackmailers.”Zionists find in the Holocaust and the Jewish state a sense of purpose and meaning, as well as a cloying moral superiority. After the 1967 war, when Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank, Israel, as Nathan Glazer approvingly observed, became “the religion of the American Jews.”Holocaust studies are based on the fallacy that unique suffering confers unique entitlement. This was always the purpose of what Finkelstein calls “The Holocaust Industry.”“Jewish suffering is depicted as ineffable, uncommunicable, and yet always to be proclaimed,” writes the European historian Charles Maier in “The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity.” “It is intensely private, not to be diluted, but simultaneously public so that gentile society will confirm the crimes. A very peculiar suffering must be enshrined in public sites: Holocaust museums, memory gardens, deportation sites, dedicated not as Jewish but civic memorials. But what is the role of a museum in a country, such as the United States, far from the site of the Holocaust? … Under what circumstances can a private sorrow serve simultaneously as public grief? And if genocide is certified as a public sorrow, then must we not accept the credentials of other particular sorrows too? Do Armenians and Cambodians also have a right to publicly funded holocaust museums? And do we need memorials to Seventh Day Adventists and homosexuals for their persecution at the hands of the Third Reich?”Any crime Israel carries out in the name of its survival — its “right to exist” — is justified in the name of this uniqueness. There are no limits. The world is black and white, a never-ending battle against Nazism, which is protean depending on who Israel targets. To challenge this bloodlust is to be an anti-Semite facilitating another genocide of Jews.This simplistic formula not only serves the interests of Israel, but also the interests of colonial powers that carried out their own genocides, ones they seek to obscure. What was the annihilation of Native Americans by European settlers, the Armenians by Turks, the Indians in the Bengal famine by the British or the Soviet-orchestrated famine in the Ukraine? What was the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Is Manifest Destiny any different from the Nazis’ embrace of the concept of Lebensraum? These too were holocausts, fueled by the same dehumanization and bloodlusts.The sacralization of the Nazi Holocaust offers a bizarre quid pro quo. Arming and funding the state of Israel, preventing U.N. resolutions and sanctions from being adopted to condemn its crimes, and demonizing Palestinians and their supporters, is proof of atonement and support for Jews. Israel, in return, absolves the West of its indifference to the plight of Jews during the Holocaust, and Germany for perpetrating it.Germany uses this unholy alliance to separate Nazism from the rest of German history, including the genocide German colonists carried out against the Nama and Herero in German South-West Africa, now Namibia.“[S]uch magic,” Israeli historian and genocide scholar Raz Segal writes, “legitimizes racism against Palestinians at the very moment that Israel perpetrates genocide against them. The idea of Holocaust uniqueness thus reproduces rather than challenges the exclusionary nationalism and settler colonialism that led to the Holocaust.”Segal, the director of the program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University in New Jersey, wrote an article on Gaza on Oct. 13, 2023 — six days after the incursion by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters into Israel — titled: “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” This denunciation from an Israeli Holocaust scholar, whose family members perished in the Holocaust, was a very lonely stance.Segal saw in the Israeli government’s immediate demand that Palestinians evacuate the north of Gaza, and the blood-curdling demonization of the Palestinians by Israeli officials — the defense minister said Israel was “fighting human animals” — the stench of genocide.“The whole idea about prevention and ‘never again’ is that — as we teach our students — there are red flags that once we notice them, we're supposed to work in order to stop the process that could escalate to genocide,” Segal said when I interviewed him, “even if it's not genocidal yet.”You can watch my interview with Segal here.“Holocaust studies as a field might be dead, which is not necessarily a bad thing,” he continued. “If indeed Holocaust studies is intertwined from the beginning with the ideology of global Holocaust memory, maybe it's good that we won't have Holocaust studies anymore. And maybe it will open the door for even more interesting and important research on the Holocaust as history, as real history.”Segal paid for his courage and his honesty. The offer to lead the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies — which has issued no condemnation of the genocide — was revoked.Nearly two years into the genocide, the International Association of Genocide Scholars finally issued a statement saying that Israel’s conduct meets the legal definition set out in the U.N. Convention on Genocide.But the vast majority of Holocaust scholars remain mute, endlessly condemning the atrocities committed by Hamas while ignoring those committed by Israel. They were mute when South Africa argued before the International Court of Justice that Israel was committing genocide. They were mute when Amnesty International published a report in December 2024 accusing Israel of genocide.“How many Palestinian students apply to graduate programmes in Holocaust and Genocide Studies around the world? Usually none. How many Palestinian scholars identify themselves as scholars in this field? They, too, can be counted on one hand,” Segal writes in a co-authored article in the Journal of Genocide Research.Genocide is coded in the DNA of Western imperialism. Palestine has made this clear. The genocide is the next stage in what the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalization, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.”The funding and arming of Israel by the United States and European nations as it carries out genocide has imploded the post-World War II international legal order. It no longer has credibility. The West cannot lecture anyone now about democracy, human rights or the supposed virtues of Western civilization.“At the same time that Gaza induces vertigo, a feeling of chaos and emptiness, it becomes for countless powerless people the essential condition of political and ethical consciousness in the twenty-first century — just as the First World War was for a generation in the West,” Pankaj Mishra writes in “The World After Gaza.”The ability to peddle the fiction that the Nazi Holocaust is unique, or that Jews are uniquely entitled, has ended. The genocide presages a new world order, one where Europe and the United States, along with their proxy Israel, are pariahs. Gaza has illuminated a dark truth — barbarism and Western civilization are inseparable.Photos Israeli Soldier Apprehending CivilianPalestinians and Israelis clash on the streets of Hebron on the day of the signing of an accord granting the city self-rule. One of the oldest cities in the world and a center of Islam, Hebron has been a frequent source of controversy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Photo by Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)Portrait Of Primo Levi By Larry RiversNEW YORK - FEBRUARY 10: Portrait of Primo Levi by Larry Rivers on February 10, 1988 in New York, New York. (Photo by Santi Visalli/Getty Images)Primo LeviItalian writer Primo Levi, circa 1980. (Photo by Marcello Mencarini/Getty Images)Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, head of the Council of Elders meets with German officials on a street of the ghetto.Ghetto Lodz, Litzmannstadt, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, head of the Council of Elders meets with German officials on a street of the ghetto, Poland 1940, World War II. (Photo by: Dukas/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Elie Wiesel1986: A portrait of Romanian-born author and concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel sitting at a desk in front of bookshelves, leaning his head on one hand. (Photo by Nancy R. Schiff/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)US academic Norman Finkelstein arrested in protest against Israeli assaults on GazaNEW YORK, UNITED STATES - JULY 29: Police officers intervene protesters during a rally against the Israeli strikes on Gaza strip, organized by Jewish and a prominent pro-Palestinian activist Norman Finkelstein, in New York outside the UN office, on July 29, 2014. (Photo by Lewaa Khalek/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)Nathan GlazerHead-shot portrait of American sociologist Nathan Glazer, seated in a library, wearing a dark suit, with a pencil poking out of his jacket packet, wearing thick, dark glasses, with a serious facial expression, 1969. (Photo by JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado/Getty Images).South Africa's genocide case against Israel begins at International Court of JusticeTHE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS - JANUARY 11: Public hearings in South Africa's genocide case against Israel began on Thursday at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands on January 11, 2024. (Photo by Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty ImagArjun Appaduraihttps://trafo.hypotheses.org/3951/030_0180Israeli forces increase measures near the Gaza borderISRAEL - OCTOBER 12: Israeli tanks move near Gaza border as Israeli army deploys military vehicles around the Gaza Strip, Israel on October 12, 2023. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published September 11, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: The assassination of Charlie Kirk presages a new, deadly stage in the disintegration of a fractious and highly polarized United States. While toxic rhetoric and threats are lobbed across cultural divides like hand grenades, sometimes spilling over into actual violence — including the murder of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband and the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump — Kirk’s killing is a harbinger of full-scale social disintegration.His murder has given the movement he represented — grounded in Christian nationalism — a martyr. Martyrs are the lifeblood of violent movements. Any flinching over the use of violence, any talk of compassion or understanding, any effort to mediate or discuss, is a betrayal of the martyr and the cause the martyr died defending.Martyrs sacralize violence. They are used to turn the moral order upside down. Depravity becomes morality. Atrocities become heroism. Crime becomes justice. Hate becomes virtue. Greed and nepotism become civic virtues. Murder becomes good. War is the final aesthetic. This is what is coming.“We have to have steely resolve,” said conservative political strategist Steve Bannon on his show “War Room,” adding, “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.”“If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die,” wrote Elon Musk on X.“The entire Right has to band together. Enough of this in-fighting bullshit. We are up against demonic forces from the pit of Hell,” wrote commentator and author Matt Walsh on X. “Put the personal squabbles aside. Now’s not the time. This is existential. A fight for our own existence and the existence of our country.”Republican Congressman Clay Higgins wrote that he will use, "Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk..." He further states "I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination."Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale capitalized on Kirk’s death to advocate for a takedown of the “red-green alliance” of “Communists and Islamists” who he claims have united to destroy Western civilization. He proposes an app where citizens can upload pictures of crime and homelessness in exchange for “property-tax rebates.”Far-right comedian Sam Hyde, who has nearly half a million followers on X, wrote in response to Trump’s announcement of Kirk's death that it is, "Time to do your fucking job and seize power… if you want to be more than a footnote in the ‘American Collapse’ section of future history books, it's now or never.” In his tweet, he tags members of the administration and private military contractors.Conservative actor James Woods warned, “Dear leftists: we can have a conversation or a civil war. One more shot from your side and you will not get this choice again.” His tweet was reposted by almost 20,000 people, received 4.9 million views and over 96,000 likes.These are a sample of the slew of vitriolic sentiments shared and cheered on by tens of millions of Americans.The dispossession of the working class, 30 million who have been laid off because of deindustrialization, has engendered rage, despair, dislocation, alienation and fostered magical thinking. It has fed conspiracy theories, a lust for vengeance and a celebration of violence as a purgative for social and cultural decay.Christian fascists — like Kirk and Trump — have astutely preyed on this despair. They stoked the embers. Kirk’s killing will set it alight.Dissidents, artists, gays, intellectuals, the poor, the vulnerable, people of color, those who are undocumented or who do not mindlessly repeat the cant of a perverted Christian nationalism, will be condemned as human contaminants to be excised from the body politic. They will become, as in all diseased societies, sacrificial victims in the vain attempt to achieve moral renewal and recapture a lost glory and prosperity.The cannibalization of society, a futile attempt to recreate a mythical America, will accelerate the disintegration. The intoxication of violence — many of those reacting to Kirk’s killing seemed giddy about a looming bloodbath — will feed on itself like a firestorm.The martyr is vital to the crusade, in this case ridding America of those Trump calls the “radical left.”Martyrs are memorialized in ceremonies and acts of remembrance to remind followers of the righteousness of the cause and the perfidy of those who are blamed for the martyr’s death. This is what Trump did when he called Kirk “a martyr for truth and freedom” in a video message on September 10, awarded Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom and ordered flags to be flown at half-staff until Sunday. It is why Kirk's casket will be flown back to Phoenix, Arizona on Air Force Two.Kirk was a poster child for our emergent Christian Fascism. He peddled the Great Replacement Theory, which claims liberals or “globalists” allow immigrants of color into the country in order to replace whites, distorting immigration trends into conspiracy. He was Islamophobic, tweeting “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” and that it is “not compatible with western civilization.”When children’s YouTuber Ms. Rachel said “Jesus says to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself,” Kirk retorted that “Satan has quoted scripture plenty” and added “by the way Ms. Rachel, you might wanna crack open that Bible of yours, in a lesser referenced part of the same part of scripture is in Leviticus 18, is that thou shall Lay with another man and be stoned to death.”He demanded we roll back the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and disparaged civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King. He was demeaning towards Black people, “If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman...is she there because of affirmative action?” He said “prowling Blacks” are targeting white people “for fun.” He blamed Black Lives Matter for “destroying the fabric of our society."Kirk insisted the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. He founded Professor Watchlist and School Board Watchlist to purge professors and teachers with what he called “radical leftist” agendas. He advocated televised public executions which he insisted should be mandatory viewing for children.The idea that he championed free speech and liberty is absurd. He was an enemy of both.Kirk, who was a cheerleader for the cult of Trump, embodied the hypermasculinity that is at the core of fascist movements. This was perhaps his primary attraction to youth, especially white men. He claimed there is “a war on men,” fetishized guns and sold Trump to his followers as a man’s man.“There’s a lot you can call Donald Trump,” he wrote. “No one has ever called him feminine. Trump is a giant middle finger to all the screeching hall monitors that attacked young men for just existing. He’s a giant F YOU to the feminist establishment that was never challenged before he came down the golden escalator. Most of the media missed this. Young men did not.”History has shown what comes next. It won’t be pleasant. Kirk, elevated to martyrdom, gives those seeking to extinguish our democracy the license to kill, just as Kirk was killed. It lifts what few constraints still exist to protect us from state abuse and vigilante violence. Kirk’s name and visage will be employed to accelerate the road to tyranny, which is as he would have wanted it.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.PhotosTOPSHOT-SAFRICA-US-HOMOCIDE-MEDIA-POLITICS-CRIMETOPSHOT - A general view of a wreath laid by mourners outside the US Embassy in Pretoria on September 11, 2025 following the fatal shooting of US youth activist and influencer Charlie Kirk while speaking during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, United States. US youth activist and influencer Charlie Kirk, a major ally of President Donald Trump, was shot on September 10, 2025 at a US university. (Photo by Phill Magakoe / AFP) (Photo by PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP via Getty Images)Conservatives Gather For Annual CPAC Conference In Washington DCOXON HILL, MARYLAND - FEBRUARY 20: Steve Bannon, media personality and political strategist, speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on February 20, 2025 in Oxon Hill, Maryland. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 - Day 3NEW YORK, NY - MAY 01: Joe Lonsdale of Formation 8 speaks onstage with Alexia Tsotsis at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 at The Manhattan Center on May 1, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch)FILES-US-POLITICS-SHOOTING-KIRKUS right-wing activist Charlie Kirk (R) speaks on stage with President Donald Trump at America Fest 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 22, 2024. Right-wing youth activist and influencer Charlie Kirk, a major ally of President Donald Trump, was shot dead on September 10, 2025 in a murder that sparked fears of more political violence in an increasingly febrile United States. Trump confirmed on social media that Kirk, 31, had died from his injuries. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON / AFP) (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)US-POLITICS-HOMICIDE-MASS-MEDIA-CRIMEA photo of youth activist and influencer Charlie Kirk is seen at his makeshift memorial at Orem City Center Park in Orem, Utah, a day after he was shot during a public event at Utah Valley University on September 11, 2025. (Photo by Melissa MAJCHRZAK / AFP) (Photo by MELISSA MAJCHRZAK/AFP via Getty Images)VP Vance Transports Charlie Kirk's Body Back To Phoenix Via Air Force TwoPHOENIX, ARIZONA - SEPTEMBER 11: The casket containing the body of Charlie Kirk is removed from Air Force Two at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on September 11, 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona. Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed on Wednesday in Utah. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)Room To Grow's 25th Anniversary Gala - ArrivalsAron Accurso and Ms. Rachel a.k.a. Rachel Griffin-Accurso at Room To Grow's 25th Anniversary Gala held at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on October 25, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images)Politicon 2018 - Day 1LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 20: Charlie Kirk speaks onstage during Politicon 2018 at Los Angeles Convention Center on October 20, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Politicon)US-POLITICSUS conservative political activist and YouTuber, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, speaks at University of Nevada in Reno during his "You're Being Brainwashed" tour, October 8, 2024. (Photo by Andri Tambunan / AFP) (Photo by ANDRI TAMBUNAN/AFP via Getty Images) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe

Abolishing the First Amendment - Read by Eunice Wong

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actorText originally published July 28, 2025.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Full Text: I testified at the New Jersey state capital in Trenton last week against Bill A3558, which would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.“This is a dangerous assault on free speech by seeking to criminalize legitimate criticism of Israeli policies,” I said. “The Trump administration’s campaign to ostensibly root out antisemitism on college campuses is clearly a trope to shut down free speech and deport non-citizens, even if they are here legally. This bill falsely conflates ethnicity with a political state. And let’s be clear, the brunt of repression on college campuses is directed against students and faculty who oppose the genocide in Gaza, 3,000 of whom were arrested and hundreds of whom were censored, suspended or expelled. Many of these students are Jewish. What about their rights? What about their constitutional protections?”“I have had numerous relationships with Israeli journalists and political leaders,” I went on. “I knew, for example, former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who negotiated the Oslo peace agreement. Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli ultranationalist who opposed the peace accord. Rabin stated bluntly on numerous occasions that the occupation was harmful to Israel. Israeli colleagues frequently criticize Israeli policies in the Israeli press in language that would be defined as antisemitic by this bill.”“For example,” I continued, “the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who served in the Israeli army and writes for the newspaper Haaretz, has called for sanctions to be imposed on Israel to stop the slaughter in Gaza, saying ‘Do to Israel what you did to South Africa.’”“Omer Bartov, who served as an Israeli company commander in the 1973 war, is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University,” I said. “He stated in an article on July 15 in The New York Times that his ‘inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.’”“These kinds of statements, and many more I can quote from Israeli colleagues and friends, would see them under this bill criminalized as antisemites,” I added.Committee chairman Robert Karabinchak, a Democrat, muted my microphone, banged his hammer for me to stop and allowed gaggles of Zionists, who openly harassed and insulted Muslims in the room, to jeer and shout me down.There I was arguing that this bill would curtail my free speech, at the same time I was being denied free speech.You can see my full testimony here.This cognitive dissonance defines the United States and Israel.The committee chairman also muted Raz Segal, the Israeli historian and genocide scholar and, in an especially callous move, chastised Mehdi Rabee, whose 14-year-old brother Amer was killed by Israeli soldiers in April 2025.“My 14-year-old brother who was from Saddlebrook, New Jersey, was murdered by the IDF,” Mehdi, his voice shaking with emotion, told the committee. “All he was doing was picking olives from an olive tree with his friends, which we have been doing as Palestinians for thousands of years. My brother, whom I will never see again, my brother who my parents will never watch graduate from high school or college. Assemblywoman Swain, my father and the Palestinian-American Community Center tried reaching out to you over and over. And all that we were met with was nothing but silence. Given your silence, you should not have the right to even consider voting for this bill until you meet with my family, who are under your district.”“I am going to ask you to stick to the bill,” Karabinchak interrupted.“This bill puts at risk my First Amendment right to criticize Israel for what they have done to my brother,” he went on. “I have a right to call Israel whatever I want to call it. When their policies mirror that of the Nazis, I have a right to call it as it is. I call on you to vote no in remembrance of my brother.”You can see Mehdi’s statement here.Karabinchak, angered that supporters gave Rabee a standing ovation, reduced all testimonies critical of the bill from three minutes to one minute.“Time is down to one minute,” he told the crowd of about 400 in the committee and four overflow rooms. “I’m going to ask everybody now to speak, who wants to speak, is going to say ‘I oppose the bill’ or ‘I support the bill.’”He paused.“Let’s have some more claps,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s be happy now, right? I didn’t throw you out like I said I was going to. So now you just stifled the other people who have a right to speak. That’s what you just did! Understand what you did! Okay? One minute. One minute. That’s it. And I’m not going to be nice and say let’s rap it up. I’m going to shut the mic off. ”Our sin was that we dared to mention the unmentionable – the genocide in Gaza.The Zionists in the room were verbally and physically abusive to the Muslims who had come to oppose the bill. One Zionist repeatedly shoved himself into the bodies of those outside the state capital holding a rally against the bill.You can see his harassment here.Amy Gallatin, who is on the commission of the West Orange Human Relations Commission, “established by municipal ordinance in 1992 in order to create and foster values of diversity, equity and inclusion among groups in the community,” pulled up pictures on her iPad in one of the overflow rooms and said to those seated around her “Look, it’s Mohammed!”You can see her Islamophobic hate speech here.When Rabbi Yitzchok Deutsch made an emotional plea to save the people of Gaza Lisa Swain of District 38 and Assemblyman Avi Schnall of District 30, both Democrats, snickered and laughed as he spoke.You can see their reactions to Rabbi Deutsch here.Zionists, who painted lurid pictures of Jews living under harassment and in fear for their lives, and of Nazism supposedly running amok on the streets of New Jersey, were not muted, although their statements were hyperbolic to the extreme and often a product of over-active imaginations. They openly salivated at the adoption of the bill, which they said would give law enforcement the tools to criminalize those who engage in hate speech, which, if you read the “contemporary examples of antisemitism,” that accompany the IHRA, include speech that criticizes Israeli policies.The IHRA has been adopted by 35 states, the District of Columbia and universities such as Harvard and Columbia.“The IHRA working definition of antisemitism includes protected criticism of Israel and its policies,” writes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “For example, the definition declares that ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,’ ‘drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,’ and ‘applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’ are all examples of antisemitism.”“If the Department of Education were to adopt this definition, and investigate universities for Title VI complaints based on it, college and university administrators would likely silence a range of protected speech including criticism of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, analogies likening Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany, or sharing differing beliefs about the right to a Jewish state,” the ACLU continues. “People may disagree about whether such speech is antisemitic, but that debate is irrelevant to the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from censoring or penalizing core political speech.”U.S. attorney Kenneth S. Stern — a self-professed Zionist and the lead drafter of what became the IHRA definition of antisemitism — laments that the IHRA has been “grossly abused” to “restrict academic freedom and punish political speech,” including “pro-Palestinian speech.”The five committee members, who had clearly made up their minds before they entered the packed hearing room, unanimously passed the measure, which will go to the floor of the State Assembly for a vote. They will, like all politicians who bow before the dictates of the Israel lobby, no doubt, be compensated for their perfidy.America, like Israel, exists in a parallel reality. It denies the stark and incontrovertible reality of the live-streamed genocide. It slanders anyone, including Israeli holocaust scholars such as Professor Segal, as antisemites.I know, sadly, where this goes. I witnessed it in the many dictatorships I covered as a foreign correspondent for two decades in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Those of us who fight for an open society are silenced, attacked as traitors and criminals. We are blacklisted, censored and at times, locked up. If we can escape in time, we are forced into exile. As we are silenced, the sycophants, grifters, Christian fascists, billionaires, Zionists and thugs, elevated to the highest positions in the federal government by the Trump White House, are rewarded with absolute power, luxury and debauchery.Our corporate-indentured ruling class has no genuine political ideology. Political parties are a farce, a species of entertainment to beguile the population in our pretend democracy. Liberalism, and the values it claims to represent, is a spent and bankrupt force.The burlesque in the committee room in Trenton was another depressing reminder that there is little now that will halt our path towards an authoritarian state, not the press, not the universities, not the courts, which cannot enforce the few rulings made by courageous judges, not the political class, including the Democratic Party, and not the electoral process.We must resist, if only to assert our integrity and dignity, if only to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, if only to slow the consolidation of tyranny, if only to revel in the small pyrrhic victories that resistance alone makes possible.But we should not be fooled.Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chrishedges.substack.com/subscribe