Who in the hell is Chris Hedges?
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report.”
Hedges likely has more familiarity to the region than most folks.
The first article is about the prosecution of the war. It is an asymmetric war similar to Vietnam. The Palestinians know more Palestinians will be killed than Israeli soldiers due to superiority of Israeli weaponry. And most of the dead Palestinians will be civilians. Thus victory and progress cannot be measured with body counts. And the destruction of whole neighborhoods including schools & hospital does not translate into a defeat of the Palestinian resistance groups.
In the independence war in Algeria, between 1954 and 1962, upwards of 1.5 million Algerians — or around 10 percent of the population — were killed by the French. In the airport in Algiers, the country’s capital, is a huge sign that reads: “Welcome to Algeria. Land of a million Martyrs.”
“We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers,” he wrote.
The calculus of asymmetric warfare is very different from conventional war. And what Israel defines as success, including the seizing of territory, numerous deaths and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings, matters little to the resistance fighter. The goal of Palestinian fighters is to remain elusive, to carry out lightning strikes and recede back into the rubble or the vast tunnel network under Gaza.
The second article is about fascism & Israel.
the United States. I attended political rallies held by Benjamin Netanyahu, who received lavish funding from rightwing Americans, when he ran against Yitzhak Rabin, who was negotiating a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s supporters chanted “Death to Rabin.” They burned an effigy of Rabin dressed in a Nzi uniform. Netanyahu marched in front of a mock funeral for Rabin.*
Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 by a Jewish fanatic. Rabin’s widow, Lehea, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters for her husband’s murder.
Netanyahu, who first became prime minister in 1996, has spent his political career nurturing Jewish extremists, including Avigdor Lieberman, Gideon Sa’ar, Naftali Bennett, and Ayelet Shaked.
There has always been a strain of Jewish fascism within the Zionist project. Now it has taken control of the Israeli state.
“The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here,” Zeev Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and Israel’s foremost authority on fascism, warned in 2018, “the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people.” Sternhell added, “[W]e see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.”
The US White House has been a bit squeamish & troubled over the Israeli war plan.
“In private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II — including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — to try to defeat those countries,” the paper continued.
Israeli citizens in opposition to current Israeli prosecution face punishment by the current Israeli government.
The judiciary, according to plans put forward by Netanyahu, will be neutered. Public debate will wither. Civil society and the rule of law will cease to exist. Those branded as “disloyal” will be deported.
Gaza is the start. The West Bank is next.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/west-bank-violence-is-growing-will-it-open-another-front-in-the-israel-hamas-war/ar-AA1jPXKc
West Bank violence is growing. Will it open another front in the Israel-Hamas war?
Hedges picture of the current Israeli regime is certainly different than any US MSM picture I have seen.
Most recently due to the Hamas attack Netanyahu’s rule is endangered. But the public moody is for the total destruction of Hamas which in reality means the eradication of the Palestinian people.
“We have seen too many cycles in the past where pressure forced the government not to complete the mission and to leave Hamas in power,” he said.
“If the government will not deliver what it promised which is the eradication of Hamas, I am sure it will not be accepted - not by the public and not by the political system.”
What will be the response of the USA, UN, & the rest of the world?