What's up, family? This is Law & Disorder, and I'm your host, Kat Brooks. Our guest today is Chris Hedges. Hedges is the former Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times and Arabic speaker. He spent seven years covering the conflict between Israel and Palestine, much of that time in Gaza.
He's the author of 14 books and has taught at several universities, including Columbia, Princeton, and the University of Toronto. There's a new book out that we're discussing today. It's called A Genocide Foretold, Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. Welcome, Chris. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Kat.
I normally ask about the title of a book later in the interview, but that seems the place to start here. A genocide foretold. In what ways, given the history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine for so many decades, could we only have ended up exactly where we are?
Well, the Zionist project from the beginning was always about the seizure of the land of historic Palestine. And David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, is quite upfront about it. There was a split within the Zionist movement between messianic, religious, you could even call them fascistic Jews, like Vladimir Jabotinsky, who Mussolini called a good fascist, that's a quote,
and the liberal Zionists. The liberal Zionists spoke in the language of international law and human rights and all. campaigns of ethnic cleansing and atrocities that were carried out against the Palestinians were carried out while liberal Zionists ran the country. That was 1948, 750,000 people ethnically cleansed, thousands murdered in massacres.
In 1967, the 1967 war, when Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank. Now, of course, we have And there's a fascistic strain within Judaism, just as there is within the United States. Both of them are ascendant. And the liberal Zionists have been essentially marginalized. But that was always about presentation.
And so you had large campaigns of ethnic cleansing in 48 and in 67 and now. But you had a kind of creeping... ethnic cleansing, a slow motion ethnic cleansing, if that's the way to put it, in between these three big events.
So it's always been the goal to reduce the Palestinians in the West Bank to kind of Bantustans. These are, you know, essentially ringed enclaves, grounded by Jewish colonists, over 700,000 live in the West Bank. And then you have roads in the West Bank that only the colonists and the military can use.
And the flick of a switch, Israel just can shut it down. I was in the West Bank last summer. It's impossible to move. I mean, I crossed the King Hussein Bridge, it should take an hour to drive from roughly Jericho to Ramallah. It took me four hours because of all the checkpoints and the lines. Then Gaza,
especially after the election of Hamas, which was a free election in 2006, it just became a giant concentration camp. and then periodic military assaults, cast lead, all of these, all the people who were gunned down with this nonviolent protest and the Great March of Return. So yeah, it's always been the goal. And now,
I think many of us fear that we have reached the point where that kind of denouement, that final chapter is being written. Certainly in Gaza, I believe it's being written. And I think many of us expect the Netanyahu government to annex the West Bank. And if they get away with driving the Palestinians out of Gaza,
and of course, I don't see any impediment to it. The only way they could be stopped is by the United States, which at this point supplies all the war material. They've run out of their own stocks, cutting off aid. I don't see that happening. So yeah, we're watching the
the final chapter, but this was always meant to be the final chapter. I'm going to tug on that thread a little bit more in a minute. I do wonder if you can expand on this term liberal Zionist. Just more breast hacks. How would a liberal Zionist differ from, say,
the characters that make up the security cabinet of Israel now? Well, I lived in Jerusalem in the 1990s. And we had this rabid right-wing rabbi named Mer Kahana and his Koch party, which they were the heirs of Jabotinsky. And Jabotinsky always called for expelling all of the Palestinians from historic Palestine.
And the Koch party was outlawed and declared a terrorist organization by both Israel and the United States. Now, what you're seeing with the Netanyahu government, especially people like Ben Gavir and Smotrich, is that they are the heirs to the Koch party. Indeed, I think it was Ben Gavir or Smotrich, I think it was Ben Gavir visited the...
Kahana was assassinated in New York, visited Kahana's grave on the anniversary of his assassination. So that's a huge shift. But again, it's about presentation. It's not... It's not about actually providing the Palestinians with equal rights or human rights or rights under the law. Remember, the Palestinians are governed by military courts. So that's the difference.
But it was the face that they presented to the world. I mean, the Democratic Party does that too. You know, Biden was a huge enabler of of the genocide. But of course, he spoke in the language of international law and all this kind of stuff. And and Trump doesn't. But for a Palestinian, it makes, I mean,
virtually no difference whether it's Trump or Biden in office. I'm going to ask you even more specific to that point in a little bit. One more thread that I want to talk about, and it may seem a very novice question to ask, but to your point that this has always been the plan,
that the complete expelling of Palestinians or extermination of Palestinians has always been the plan. I think that that begs a question that you may or may not be able to answer, because I do think that there's a lot of folks that aren't as mired in all of this. as you have been for quite some time,
and a lot of us journalists have been now for several years, about how a people that suffered so greatly could turn around and do the same thing or worse to another group of people. And I think that part of some of the mainstream logic I've heard is that there's been so much distance between the Holocaust and now.
But if this was always the intent, how does one rationalize that? Well, because... and this is the theme of Norman Finkelstein's book, The Holocaust Industry, they weaponize the Holocaust. They constantly refer, even now, to the Palestinians as Nazis. They used to draw parallels between Yasser Arafat, the head of Fatah or the PLO, and Hitler.
And that if the Palestinians, who of course had nothing to do with the Holocaust, are as evil as the Nazis and bent on the wholesale extermination of Jews like the Nazis, well, then anything that is done to them is acceptable. And I love Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz, because I think he understood and he wrote about,
he was a very lonely figure, never honored in Israel. He called the Shoah, the Holocaust, and This is a quote, an inexhaustible source of evil, which is perpetrated 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. So you have IDF, Israeli soldiers will go to Auschwitz to be sworn in. And that's this whole campaign that the Holocaust or the Shoah is unique. Well, of course, it's not unique, as Ami Cesari points out in Discourse on Colonialism. And he writes that it appeared exceptionally cruel because the Nazis presided over,
and these are his words, the humiliation of the white man. But as Cesari writes, The Nazis had simply applied colonialist procedures, which until then had been reserved for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, or the blacks of Africa. So you had other holocausts, the slaughter of the Herero and the Namakwa by the Germans,
the Armenian Genocide, the Bengal Famine of 1943. And the British Prime Minister at the time, Winston Churchill, dismissed the deaths of three million Hindus in the famine by calling them, this is a quote, a beastly people with a beastly religion. But these Holocausts were never really acknowledged, and they still aren't acknowledged by the perpetrators.
And the sanctification of Jewish victimhood, which is very much a part of the Zionist project, is really a license to kill with impunity. That's what it's about. As Primo Levi noted, You say in the early pages of the book, the Palestinians want their land back, then they will talk of peace. Israelis want peace, but demand Palestinian land.
And that in three short sentences is the intractable nature of this conflict. I guess broadly, I'd like you to expound on that statement. And based on what we said the first time it was talking about, I'm sitting with the statement Israel wants peace, unless you mean to equivocate their definition of peace being the total
annihilation of Palestinians and Palestinian resistance. Well, sure. They would like peace if the Palestinians would acquiesce to their control. And that was really what the nature of the Oslo agreement was about. This was the peace plan that Yitzhak Rabin, who I knew and covered, uh, negotiated. Uh, and, uh, it was, uh, uh, Edward, the great Palestinian scholar,
Edward Said, for this reason, denounced it and called Arafat the Payton of the Palestinian people. Um, what Israel wanted was to essentially retain control because they would retain, retain control of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. So these were not states that, uh, you know, could, could, uh, they, they, they,
they had no external ability to, uh, confront those borders because they were in Israeli hands. Uh, what they wanted was to build a colonial police force. Uh, and, uh, That was their plan. But it was never a plan to create the so-called two-state solution. That was always a sham.
And then eventually Arafat just didn't become pliable enough the way Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the current Palestinian Authority, is. And I think there's pretty strong evidence that the Israelis poisoned him to death. But that was the goal. The goal was, yeah, they want
They want peace as long as the Palestinians are willing to be subjugated, in essence. You're listening to Law and Disorder. I'm your host, Kat Brooks, in conversation with Chris Hedges about his new book, A Genocide Foretold, reporting on survival and resistance in occupied Palestine. Chris, I just...
Got to have a conversation with Rami Khoury about his new book around Hamas. It's co-authored a series of essays. And I think it does something super important, right, which is force us to have a conversation about Hamas, which I think to the detriment of what's happening right now, a lot of people weren't willing to do.
You spent some time also talking about Hamas. You say that Hamas is as demonized as it is misunderstood and that this is a trait it has in common with other resistance groups. Can you say more about that? Well, it is a resistance group. I knew one of the co-founders of Hamas pretty well, Dr. Abdelaziz Rantisi.
And then after the Israelis assassinated him with his son, I knew Nizar Rayan as well. Then, of course, he was assassinated. I mean, they blew up his house and killed him and all of his children and his family. Sure, Hamas functions. It has broad populist support, or at least it did when it was elected.
I haven't been in Gaza since the genocide started. It functions as a resistance group. Does it use terror as a tactic? Yes, because it doesn't have an air force. It doesn't have mechanized units. It doesn't have all of the accoutrements of a modern industrial army.
But that's no different than what the Ergun or the Jewish radical groups did, not only in 1948 against the Palestinians, but against the British. I mean, they blew up the King David Hotel. I forget the numbers, it was like 60 or 90, 91 something, people were killed. They would capture British officers and kill them.
And the British occupied Palestine until 48. So resistance groups use terrorism, what we call terrorism, as does Hamas. But it's not a terrorist group in the sense that it's far more than that. When I was in Gaza, Hamas ran huge charitable organizations, especially in the refugee camps, Unlike the PLO, we're honest.
There was huge corruption within the PLO. When Arafat came back to Gaza, all of the PLO leaders were bringing in duty-free Mercedes and building villas on the beachfront along the Mediterranean. That's not true about Hamas. So, yeah, they've certainly committed not only acts of terrorism, but war crimes.
I mean, there were certainly war crimes committed on October 7th. There were firing rockets indiscriminately in civilian areas is a war crime. But when set against the war crimes that Israel perpetrates, it's minuscule. So... Yeah, I think Hamas is completely, completely misunderstood. There's also a water strategy, right, of colonists to demonize folks, you know,
subjected folks who have the audacity to resist. Yeah, of course. And they're always terrorists. I mean, look at the Iraqis who are defending their country or the Taliban. I mean, they were doing what anyone would do. I mean, even when the Nazis went after the resistance, you know, they defined them as terrorists. So yeah, colonists,
or look at the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, where the Kukuyu were fighting for their country, but the dispossession of their land by the British colonists, they were terrorists. I mean, that's, that's, uh, you know, and then, uh, Kumyara becomes the head of Kenya and they're not terrorists anymore. It's classic.
When I was in college, I took a course on U.S. policy in Latin America and also indigenous women's literature class, which meant that I spent a semester mired in reading about some of the most egregious and horrific acts of violence I'd ever, you know, 20, I guess, heard of in my life, which gave me nightmares. And
You know, I sit mired on a lot of really ugly stuff in the job that I do. How some ever reading your book and the very vivid, graphic, thorough reporting on what is happening in Palestine has had a profound impact on me, as I'm sure it will anybody that picks up their pages.
And I'm wondering about your process as a writer. I mean, I know you've been covering war for a long time, but your process as a writer, a journalist, the decision or the importance of getting into the granular, details of the kind of violence and impacts of that violence.
I think you only understand it when you understand the details. It's not pleasant to write. It's a lot less pleasant to witness. But it's the details that expose the reality. Often minutia. You know, the way the Israelis' target children. I was in Hanayunis. I wrote a piece with the great cartoonist Joe Sacco.
In 2001, we were in Hanayunis, a refugee camp in Gaza, and the piece was called The Gaza Diary. So it was just 10 days. We didn't interview any Palestinian officials, Israelis. We just wrote day by day what life was like. In the refugee camp, in one afternoon, we were watching these young boys, 10, 11, you know, 9,
come out of school. And we heard over the loudspeaker of the Israeli army jeep, ta'al ta'al, you know, which means come in Arabic. And then they started cursing them in Arabic. And then the little kids picked up rocks, and they couldn't even reach the jeep, which was behind cyclone fencing.
And the IDF soldiers got out and shot them. I saw it. And I've been in lots of wars, and I've seen children killed, including Sarajevo, with snipers. But I'd never seen children baited like mice into a trap and murdered. And it's when you capture scenes like that, which you can only get by being there,
that you expose the dark heart of the occupation. That is the voice of Pulitzer Prize winning former Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times, Chris Hedges, in conversation with me about the horrors that are moving through Palestine right now. Chris has spent many, many years covering Palestine, covering the region, and...
This book details not just what is happening right now, right in that first year from 2023 to 2024, but also how we got here and how many decades of horror have been taking place in the region. It goes into great detail, great graphic description and also great analysis, helping us connect the dots about what is happening.
In the aims, I believe, of doing what this show says our mission is, which is to expose and to agitate, right? To expose and to agitate. That's what we do on the show, expose, agitate, and build. And we do the building part with you so we can continue to expose and agitate,
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Today, as we go big or go home, I need all the help I can get. Bringing in to the conversation, the host of Upfront, my homie, my comrade, the one and only Brian Edwards-Teaker. Good morning, Brian. good morning cat cat it is not just the final thursday of the fun drive this is the
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Donate at KPFA.org or 1-800-439-5732. We are starting the $2,002 countdown now. Kat? Never thought about that leverage. If you want me to come back next week, you better pledge this week. KPFA.org, 1-800-439-5732. I'm going to go back to the interview. There's still nobody on the phone line. I can't see what people are doing on the website,
but I'm going to trust L&D listeners to handle their business. $2,002 to raise, nothing on the board. Let's get it, y'all. KPFA.org, 1-800-439-5732, 1-800. Hey, KPFA, let's roll that tape. the lobby as a very sophisticated, you know, propaganda machine in which they immediately want to attack anybody who stands up
for Palestinian rights as either being a Nazi or a member of Hamas. So if you remember when the genocide started, before there were any encampments or any protests, you already began, already saw these Zionist attacks on students and as being Hamas supporters. And Columbia University outlawed Jewish Voice for Peace. I mean,
let's also be clear that a significant percentage of these people are Jewish, these students. But they outlawed Jewish Voice for Peace, and they outlawed Students for Justice in Palestine before there were any protests. And then once the encampments were set up, and I was in the encampments in Princeton and in Columbia, And this really enraged me.
The press never bothered to actually report about what was happening in the encampments. They demonized them. And the New York Times was the worst as being anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, Hamas supporting. All of this was completely untrue. On Friday nights, for instance, they would set out a tarp and the Muslim students would have their prayers and the
Jewish students would then hold Shabbat on the same tarp. And this is the kind of world we want to create. The Jewish students who went to... So Columbia is near Jewish theological seminary. So the Jewish students would go to the kitchen for their kosher meals and be harassed by the Zionist Jews in the seminary. In fact,
I think the worst harassment and abuse was directed towards Jewish students with a conscience on these universities. But still to this day, when the New York Times writes about these encampments, they'll define them as harassing Jewish students, which is so... I mean, maybe there were some students harassed. I don't know.
But it's such a kind of distortion of the reality, because you had 100 protesting students arrested on the campus of Columbia. You had the administration bring in the New York City police three times. You had former IDF, Israeli soldiers who were students at Columbia, attack protesters with a chemical spray, we think it was skunk spray,
and hospitalized them. The students who suffered were the ones who protested. I mean, disproportionately, without question, but that's completely erased. So yes, and because of the long reach that the Zionists have within the media organizations, the coverage of the encampments or the incident you refer to just gets completely distorted in the press.
And just to add one more thing, that laid the groundwork for Trump. I mean, now you have the New York Times wondering, oh, how did this happen? No, you created the public perception that these students are a bunch of Hamas activists. You did it during Biden, before Trump. Now,
I'm really angry at the press because it's not it's just as a former reporter, you just you your job is to go out and report. You don't make it up. And they never even bothered to do the most basic aspect of journalism, which was to go down and find out and write it. They never even tried.
Chris, can you connect some dots there and then we'll move on? But how does that, the direction of, you know, whomever, the lobby, whomever, down to an outlet like the New York Times, down to a reporter like yourself, perhaps that's in the field about communicating what narrative is and is not acceptable to write?
The New York Times is a careerist. You know, most of the people in the New York Times are careerists. And they know what will advance their career. There are no rules written on the walls. But they know what will advance their career and what won't. And what will get them rewarded and what will get them promoted.
And if they rush off to Columbia and go straight to the Hillel House, their editors will be happy and they will be lauded. So you have, I would say, the vast majority of the reporters who care primarily about their career. will self-censor because they want to advance within the organization.
And those few reporters who attempt to do journalism, and I would say, they run into the iron wall of upper management, which doesn't want that kind of reporting printed within the New York Times. And there's a million ways they can marginalize you and punish you. in the newsroom, and they do.
I'm your host, Kat Brooks, in conversation with Chris Hedges. Chris Hedges has a new book out called A Genocide Foretold, Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. Chris Hedges, I want to go back to the final chapter of references that you were making earlier in the interview, and I want to start with this.
You touched on this theme a couple times in the book in different ways, but I think The way that sat with me, the deepest, was you said something akin to Israel speaks the language of death or violence to the Palestinians, which means that that is all Palestinians will be able to speak in return.
Say more about what that means for the ongoing conflict or this iteration or any possibility of it even coming to an end. And I've got a part two to that question, but go ahead and start with that. Well, it's always the oppressor who determines the nature of the resistance.
So Israel has shut down any peaceful process by which Palestinians can secure their rights. And with the election of Hamas, turned Gaza into an open air concentration camp. Remember, these people have no travel documents. They can't work. It's one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Israel is using attack aircraft to bomb it.
I mean, not before the genocide, periodically, often. I mean, I've been there when Israel bombed it. So they're the ones who determined the nature of resistance, which is why Norman Finkelstein, I think correctly, describes what happened on October 7th as a slave revolt and likens it to Nat Turner's slave revolt.
I mean, Nat Turner killed every white he saw. And that's basically what happened when they crossed the border, especially into where the rave was taking place. Although that rave was so close to the border, imagine. I mean, the Palestinians could hear it. It doesn't excuse.
To understand is not to condone, but we don't even make an effort to understand. When you as Israel has done, decide to speak to the Palestinians exclusively in the language of violence. That's the language the Palestinians are going to speak back. That is the voice of journalist Chris Hedges in conversation with me about his
latest book on Palestine, certainly not his first one. It's called A Genocide Foretold, Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine. It is yours for a pledge of $120 this morning at kpfa.org. That said, it is also your pledge for a sustaining donation of $12 a month, $12 a month going out of your account into
ours to ensure that we can continue to have conversations like this one with chris hedges on these airwaves um if you want more of what you're hearing on the air this morning and you want it live and in person in the flesh um chris hedges and i will
be in person next thursday the 29th at seven o'clock p.m. at first congregational church of oakland on harrison street talking about the book current events um his latest travels um Who knows at this point, right, what there will be to talk about by next Thursday.
But we know there will be plenty and there will be a lot and that these are the types of critical conversations. This is a piece of the activism, the organizing, the truth telling that has to absolutely has to happen in this moment. KPFA is one of the places that truth telling happens. It's one of the only places.
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This is the final day of fundraising for law and disorder, not on the air on Fridays. So it is your last chance to show love and support for Kat Brooks. On this final day of fundraising, Kat and Lawn Disorder have received the largest challenge either of us have faced in the morning. $2,002.
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A lot of people have been pledging for batches of tickets, and they are going fast. At the start of this hour, we were down to 120 left. That has already dropped by several more. We also have his new book, The Most Important. The important thing you get, though, is this radio station and this program.
And if that is the most important gift we can give you, then make sure you donate while we have a chance to bring in this enormous challenge. KPFA.org, 1-800-439-5732. I think the arc of Chris Hedges as a journalist is a testament to why it's important to have places like KPFA.
So he was on that career ladder he described at the New York Times. He was Middle East bureau chief for the Times, shared a Pulitzer Prize with his team for their reporting on the early years of the war on terror. He puts out this book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,
that is like the Chris Hedges you know. It was philosophy. It was history. It drew from a lot of different traditions and from his own firsthand experience and made some moral points about what war and empire do to people. And then he gets invited to give a commencement speech at Rockford College in Illinois,
two months into the invasion of Iraq, when this country's media had whipped the public up into a frenzy and makes points that would seem completely uncontroversial two years later, talking about the corrosive force of empire building and war on the souls of the people whose nation carries them out. And he is booed off the stage.
People rush the stage. His microphone is unplugged twice. He is escorted away by security. And then he is reprimanded by his superiors at the New York Times for comments that could jeopardize the appearance of impartiality of the newspaper. And he parted ways with the New York Times soon after because he felt like he
couldn't do his job as a journalist under those circumstances. And that might have been the last we heard from Chris Hedges. If it wasn't for the fact that shortly after he got booed off that stage, he was brought on to Democracy Now! to talk about what happened to a national audience.
If as soon as he left the New York Times, he wasn't brought on as a writing fellow at the Nation Institute. given a column at Truthdig, lifted up by this country's alternative media. He turned his efforts to publishing one book after another. And every time one came out,
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I'm going to trust you all to handle your business. We're going to bring you just a couple more minutes of Chris Hedges. Let's roll that tape. Often I wonder if an actual ceasefire happened, if Israel decided to say, yeah, we've gone too far, we'll stop now, or adopt a true two-state solution,
or where Palestine is autonomous and independent, even if that happened today, or Israel packed up and went somewhere. There's been so much wreckage, so much damage, so much trauma. I think in your book, you quote one of the co-founders of Hamas is saying something about, they planted hate in our hearts.
That I guess I can't even fathom how one will get to a place of peace or coexistence. And perhaps now, like I said, with the violence is so escalated and unceasing, isn't the time to talk about it. But I do wonder about that as I report on this issue every Monday on this show.
Do you sit in that at all? Looking at as long as much time as you spent there and looking at what's happened now and just go, you can't turn the clock back on this. No, you can't. I mean, the two-state solution was dead before the genocide began, but Gaza doesn't exist virtually. I mean,
there's 50 million tons of rubble and debris after, what, 18 months of these airstrikes, artillery barrages, missile strikes. There's no clean water. People are living in... improvised tents next to fetid pools of raw sewage. You've had, now I think it's 57 or 59 people. We're going to see mass starvation, mass malnutrition,
because Israel has cut off all humanitarian aid, including food, since March 2nd. You're already seeing widespread diseases and you know, nothing works. I mean, there are no shops or bakeries or schools, anything. It's gone. The United Nations Refugee Works and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA,
estimates that in order to clear Gaza of the rubble, it'll take 15 years, and it'll cost between $40 and $50 billion. But of course, both for the Trump administration and for the Israelis, the rebuilding of Gaza will not be done for the Palestinians. And you already have these Nakala, these far-right organizations in Israel, holding conferences,
recruiting Jewish colonists to go into Gaza. So right now, they're once again forcing the Palestinians out of northern Gaza, cramming them into the south, Although in the South, there's no food either, no medicine, no shelter, no clean water, nothing. And they're attacking them. Dozens are dying a day from not only disease and malnutrition or starvation,
but also from bombs and missiles and tank shells and everything else. And I think that many of us expect them to create a humanitarian crisis push everybody to the south along the border with Egypt, and on the other side of the border is the northern Sinai, and then at a certain point just breach the border.
And people, because they're so desperate, will stream out. I think that's the plan. I don't know. This is not reported. This is total conjecture, but that the goal is to depopulate all of Gaza. That is a public... wish on the part of the Israeli leadership. What they call voluntary, they constantly refer to Trump's voluntary deportation,
or I forget the exact term. It's not going to be voluntary, of course. But yeah, that's the goal. Chris, had his final thoughts before we say goodbye for now? Yeah, just one more point. And that's that, you know, the reason the far right embraces Israel is because of the nature of colonialism. Remember,
most of the Ashkenazi or Jews of European descent, like Netanyahu's family from Poland, they rule over people of color and they deny them rights and they flout international law. And I think that is a huge part of the attraction between the alt-right and Israel. because that's what, you know,
the people around Trump want to destroy a multicultural or multiracial democracy. They want only one narrative, their narrative, which is, of course, myth. It's fantasy, which celebrates white supremacy and what's his garden of heroes or what does he call it, you know, in all the textbooks and
just erasing the reality of those who were not patriarchal white males and benefited from the system. And that's, of course, we're watching it, it's happening here, but it's also happening in Israel. that is the voice of chris hedges in conversation with me about his new book about
what is happening in in palestine what in october 2023 i think we started talking about as a slow-moving genocide rapidly learned or experienced witnessed in horror that was a fast-moving genocide and to all of our horror has even upticked beyond that in in the the latest month since israel resumed the bombing post the the
so-called ceasefire, things could not get more urgent. Of course, we thought that a year ago when things are even more urgent today than even then, which I think is mind-blowing for so many of us. It is also why it is so important that we have space in place for voices like that of Chris Hedges.
It is so important that the conversations that are had inside of his book on these airwaves, are happening and happening in real time. This is actually part of the resistance that we're talking about it, that we're telling the truth, that we're uplifting the stories. I said earlier in the interview that the book was hard to get through.
It was truly. I kept having to put it down. I really and truly indeed woke up screaming, right? And it keeps us rooted in the reality of the horror that is happening. And if we're not grounded in reality, then we will never be grounded in the resistance.
We are offering Chris Hedges' book up this morning as the gift for your pledge to ensure that KPFA and this show stays on the air. $120 will get it for you by going to kpfa.org. I got a goal of six sustainers this hour because it's my last day to raise the
funds to make sure that we are still here and KPFA is still here. And so $12 a month will also get you a copy of the book. $25, and I would say you could do $25 a month, will get you in person in a seat with me and Chris Hedges next Thursday, May 29th at 7 o'clock p.m.
at First Congregational Church of Oakland on Harrison Street. where we'll be having a conversation about his book and so much more. Any bucks a month gets us closer to the largest challenge that either myself or Brian have seen in the morning during this fun drive.
$2,002 was the goal, which is, I'm not actually, you know, I was going to try to do math. I'm going to let Brian do that and I'm going to stay in my lane. But we can double that. We can double that amount for our station, right? Our collective station. KPFA.org. 1-800-439-5732. 1-800-HEY-KPFA. Brian. All right.
We're at exactly four minutes left. And thanks to donations that have just come through from Oakland, Kensington, from Wyn Marie in Grover Beach, and Aaron in Oakland, we are at exactly four minutes left. $301 left to raise. If we can raise $301 or more in the next three minutes and 50 seconds, we bring in 2002 for KPFA.
It is the final law and disorder of the fun drive. It is your last chance to show your love for Kat Brooks. If you want tickets to the Chris Hedges event next week, they are selling... quickly you might want to donate for them sooner than later kpfa.org 1-800-439-5732
his new book is a donation of 12 bucks a month that's in the featured box at kpfa.org if you want to throw an order a ticket onto the order you could get both for 15 bucks a month the book and the ticket
um obviously if you want to bring more people along you've got to add a little bit more sort that out at our website kpfa.org or call 1-800-439-5732 right now we have just one caller on the line that is terrifying because we have come so far but we
just have exactly three minutes left to raise that final 301 kpfa.org 1-800-439-5732 cat KPFA.org, 1-800-439-5732, 1-800. Hey, KPFA is where you go to make your pledge. $12 a month or $120 all at once will get you a copy of the book. $25 will get you a seat in the house. Tag 120 onto that.
You get a seat in the house and the book. Any bucks a month gets us closer to this challenge. I'll just really quickly. So when I came to KPFA, I think almost a decade ago now, I was fortunate enough to be able to join Brian on Upfront and have him mentor me
in what it meant to do radio. And everybody knew that Cat Brooks was going to come on and talk about police violence and that was fine. But we talk about a bunch of things, right? During the morning drive time hour. And I was really clear early on that I wanted to talk about Palestine.
And I was terrified about it because I felt like I knew it was wrong. I knew there was a genocide moving, right? And I had the politics around it, but I didn't have the details. I didn't understand how we had gotten from here to there. I didn't understand the history, right?
What were the complexities, et cetera, et cetera. And KPFA is where I've gotten to learn those things, right? That there was space in place for me to become far from an expert, but someone that can talk intelligently about this issue. And then lo and behold, who would have known that almost 10 years later,
that that space in place that was made for me meant that I then got to create space in place on a radio show to have in-depth, analytical, emotional, passionate, fiery, truth-telling conversations about the genocide that we are, I don't know where I'm getting emotional, the genocide that we are witnessing
on our phones, for God's sake, in Palestine moving right now, right? I was being shored up to do a job that I would only be allowed to do on this station, facts, period, in a discussion. There's nowhere else where I would be permitted to have the kinds of conversations
that we have here on Palestine Post every single Monday and every other chance that we get. If that matters to you, now is the time to show it, right? Now is the time to put some skin in the game. You do that by going to kpfa.org.
$120 all at once or $12 a month gets you a copy of the book. $25 gets you a seat in the house. I have to stop really quickly and tell you we are listening to KPFA 94.1 FM in Berkeley, KPFB 89.3 FM in Berkeley, KFCF 88.1 FM in Fresno, streaming online around the world at kpfa.org. One last...
Urging of you to pick your medium. Phone 1-800-439-5732. Website kpfa.org. You can pledge for the book. You can pledge for tickets. You can pledge for both. You can pledge for several tickets. The tickets are selling out. It is going to be a packed house. next Thursday at 7 o'clock at First Congregational Church with myself and Chris Hedges.
I would urge that whatever donation you make, you make it as a sustainer to be sure that your station is sustained from this fun drive to the next. The way you've been sustaining us for 76 years, ensure that we are here for another 76. Think about it.
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