In this special Indy Eye podcast, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalistChris HedgesjoinsMichelle Pinito discuss"blowback" from the ongoing Gaza genocide, the shocking Bondi attack andthat"interview" with David Marr.

Watch the full video podcastHERE:

TRANSCRIPT

MICHELLE PINI:Helloand welcome to Indi Eye. I'm Michelle Piniand I'm joined today by ChrisHedges.

Chris Hedges is aPulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Presbyterian minister andauthor. He is the former head of the New York Times Middle East bureau and publisher of the Chris Hedges Report.

Chris Hedges, welcome to Indi Eye.

CHRIS HEDGES:Thanks, Michelle.

MP:I thought we might go firstly tothe horrific Bondimassacre, where 16 people are now dead and 40 injured. And I believe thatyou know, in terms of the war in Gaza at the moment, of course,this is a very significant issue. A lot of peopleare, I guess, chiming inand speaking up about this and itssignificance on anti-semitism and all of those things. What are your thoughts on that?

CH:Well, it's blowback. I mean, so you've had over two years of genocide. Before this ceasefire, it's not really much of a ceasefire. Over 300 Palestinians have been killed. Hundreds more injured. Anywhere between six to20 a day are killed. During the quote-unquote "ceasefire",the second day of the ceasefire, 150 Palestinians were killed.

And there is, I've spent a lot of time in the Muslim world, in the Arabworld in particular, since October 7th, long trips to Egypt, Qatar, two trips toQatar. I was in Jordan, the West Bank. And there is a very understandable rageon the part of the Arab world that, not only are Western nations, includingAustralia, of course, which provides parts for F-35s, not halting this genocide, but theyare sustaining it. In particular, the United States, with over $22 billion worthof weapons since October 7th.

But not just the United States, the UK, Germany, as a major arm supplier. Even though there's been a rhetorical shift with countries like Australia and the UKrecognising a Palestinian state, the UK only cut its arms shipments by 10%. Sothere is a feeling, and I think a legitimate feeling,that and of course we all condemn and are outraged about whathappened in Australia.

But I think there's a legitimate feeling that when it's brown bodies, they don't count.It doesn't matter. Where was the outrage before this faux ceasefire? It'snot really a ceasefire. It's just a slow-motion genocide now. When Israelwas killing 250 people a day, including thousands of children, therevarious figures, but at least 10,000 children.

MP:I believe it's as high as 20,000.

CH:It may be 20, exactly, so nobody actually knows the numbers because thousandsupon thousands of people are unaccounted for, as somebody I worked for seven years in Gaza, many friends in Gaza and likeI many, many people who know people in Gaza we would hear from peoplesporadically and then just stop hearing from them. They're no doubt buried under the rubble.

A good friend of mine, agreat Palestinian novelist, Adu Abus safe. Hissister's family wascompletely killed. Well, his niece survived. She lost both her legs, but everyone else was killed. And they'renot counted among the dead because they're just the whole apartment building came down. Nobody in that apartment building is counted becausethey didn't recover the bodies. And so we don't actually know thenumbers. People have estimated as high as 100 160,000.

We don't know, butcertainly much, much higher. And it's been very frustrating for all of us who have decried this mass slaughter fromthe beginning. So, you know, what do we expect?

There's a terrible frustrationin the Muslim world that doesn't in any way condone, and I don't want to condone any of this violence. But,you know, to understand is not to condone.

We have to understand that this is what the CIA, after Afghanistantermed blowback. It's blowback. And I think all of us who have spentsignificant time in the Middle East warned that this is inevitable, especially since we haven't even begun to seePalestinian reprisal attacks.

Palestinians, I was in Cairo last Spring, and with thecartoonistJoe Saccowe extensively interviewed 29 families from Gaza writing a book about the genocide through the experiences of those 29 families. Every single one of them hasbeen devastated. I mean, with counting extended families, cousins thatwe're talking about dozens of dead. Nobody's escaped. And so there is a very legitimate rage in the Arabworld and particularly among Palestinians, and they don't have the mechanisms that Israel has.

They don'thave an army, a navy, an air force, mechanised units, missiles. They don't have thatsupport. Yeah, so they will respond in the crude forms of violence,which is called terrorism. And that is what,you know, history has borne thatout. It's what Zionist groups did before 1948, including blowing up theKing David Hotel. I think there were 91 casualties or something.

So, you know,that's what we've spawned. This isn't going to be the end of it. It'shorrible. It's frightening, but it's totally it would have been totally preventable if Israel was held accountto the rule of law and to the ICJ, to the Geneva Convention and everythingelse, but they have not. It's been a it's been unmitigated state terror for overtwo years.

MP:But what do you think, though I mean, I think I heard you on another YouTube video, actually describing it as "a gift to Netanyahu", this shooting inAustralia. How do you think that's going to play out?

I mean, in one way, it probablydoes, you know, it's already been weaponised here by sections of the media, of course, and also by theConservative Opposition party, in terms of you know, Albanesenot beingstrict enough on anti-semitism, Prime Minister Albanesethat is andso forth.

So, how do you think that will play out from here and what shouldthe PM and Australia's position be on this?

CH:Well, Australia should have been muchmore rigorous in terms of opposing the genocide. they should, you know, thisidiotic response that they're provide non-lethal parts to the F-35s. Well, theF-35 is quitea sophisticated killing machine. It doesn't have any non-lethalparts. Um, but that Australia's just done what the rest of industrialisednations in the north have done, which is sustain the genocide.

Israellong, months and months ago, went through all of its stockpiles. It'sdependent on all sorts of engines for its I mean its entire airfleet isfrom the United States, but it depends on that constant resupplyin order this genocide would not have been able to be sustained if these countries had not decided to continuearm shipments. And in the case of the United States, billions of dollars of arms shipmentsto perpetuateit. So they should have stopped the genocide. I mean, that's not a political position. That is asking them to abideby international law. And that's what's so frightening.

The message this delivers to the global south is that youknow it doesn't matter. Law doesn't matter. Or maybe it matters for you, but it doesn't matter for us. And that'sjust not a world we want to live in. I covered the war in Bosnia. I can tell you that when the world breaks down intothose Hobsian nightmares and the people with the guns rule, it's a veryfrightening place.

MP:Yeah. But why do you think that the media has, for so long, basicallyeffectively covered this up and misrepresented what's going on inGaza? Why do you think that's the case? Well, two re I mean two reasons. So, Imean, first, as someone who covered the Middle East,and I worked for the New York Times, these large mediaorganisations, above everything else, prize access. So, if you're going to hold Israel to account like Al Jazeera, which has been expelled from Israel you're not going to get aplace at the table. You're not going to be invited to the background briefings. You're not going to get your spot on thelittle dog and pony show where the IDF takes you out for a couple of hours in Gaza with, you know, Israeliunits. And large organisations like the New York Times they don'twant to get cut off. That'sfirst.

The second thing is thatthere's a price to pay. If you challenge that dominant narrative, they're going to come for you. And it'snot good for your career. It's not good for your news organisation. And most journalists especially at thelevel of journalism that I was at, at the Times they are consummate careerists.

They know very well what's good for their careerand they're not going to do anything to jeopardise it. I mean, Iwas pushed out of the New York Times because I denounced Bush's call to invade Iraq. I spent months of my lifein Iraq I knew.And seven years in the Middle East, and I'm an Arabic speaker. I knew this was the debacle that itbecame. But to say that at the time was to be a pariah. Andthere was no difference, in my opinion, my assessment, from any of the otherreporters in the Middle East. They just were smart enough to keep their mouth shut. So that's it. That's it.

And ifyou pedal the false narrative that Israel perpetually doles out to the press,you're not going to pay a price. If you challenge that narrative, they're going to come for you.

MP:Yeah. Absolutely. And so, I mean, we'reno strangers, of course, to that narrative in Australia and Independent Australiais an outlier, if you like, from the mainstream what Ilike to call the mainstream media club, here. And, of course, your experience with that club was, let's say,less than positive.In terms ofhaving been invited out here to speak.

For those who don't know, Chris was invited out to Australia tobe a keynote speaker at the National Press Club and then thatinvitationwas rescinded. And of course,my favourite line, Chris, is whereyou did say,'Please have the decency to remove the word "press" from your club',about the National Press Club of Australia.

Now, how did that actually transpire, andwhy do youthink that firstly they invite you and then they change their mind?

CH:Well, I can only speculate. So I wasinvited to give the Edward Said annual lecture at the University of Adelaide and then, of course, other eventsrespond from that initial invitation, including an address of the NationalPress Club.

I think the National Press Club saw Pulitzer Prize, American, NewYork Times, and thought thatI was going to regurgitate the usual garbage, the mainstream press regurgitates.Andthat they probably did a little research, including reading a column that I had written called 'The Betrayalof Palestinian Journalists', and they decided absolutely not. That'smy guessbecause we were scheduled, we had a confirmation letter and theyhad posted on their site.

What was surprising to me was that they lied outright. Now that was verysurprising. They should have done that with more finesse. They said that the event had never been confirmed. It hadbeen confirmed. I had the confirmation letter, and we shared it with many media organisations in Australia and, it had,somebody had thankfully taken a picture of the website.

So, they said it wasn'tposted on the website, is completely untrue. And then I had heard fromsomeone inside, that they were reaching out to the Israeli ambassador,who has spoken there before to see if he could speak in the name of balance.They'd gotten blowback on a previous event.

So yeah,that's what happened. And it's not actually new. I've got to knowthose of us whospeak about Palestinian rights and confrontIsrael in the Zionist lobby, this is kind of, you know, not uncommon.

What was surprising was that thesepeople were a press club was so utterly mendaciousabout what happened.

MP:Welcome to Australia, Chris!

CH:I don't know. The United States probably isn't any better.

MP:I know. But I'm interested in this idea of thebalance that you spoke of just then, which is frequently quoted in themedia here and is a real bugbear of Independent Australia andour editorial position because, you know, there are certain issuesin which there simply are not two sides.

For example andI'm not suggesting war, of course but things such as you know, climatechange. People say, well, we need to have two sides of climate change. To me, it's a bit like saying there aretwo sides to gravity. You know, there are not two sides. Climate change is a scientific fact. There seems to be this obsession with this faux balance. Well, whatare your thoughts on that?

Well, because what it does is protect journalists from powerfulentities thatwould go after them for speaking an unvarnished truth. But it'svery cynical because what you're doing is, in the name of balance,essentially allowing propagandists, people who peddle lies, to quote/unquote "balance" out thetruth.

So, you know, Israel,I covered, you know, I lived in Gazafor months at a time and watched Israeli lies. Israel lies like itbreathes. And so, you know, the frustrating part for those ofus who are on the ground is thatthe truth, the reality that wesought to impart as journalists to the rest of the world, was constantly obscured by Israeli lies. And thejournalists at my own newspaper who were peddling those lies, they knew they were lies.

I mean, maybe if you're ifDavid Maher in Australia, you don't know they're lies, but the people on the ground in Jerusalem, they allknow that Israel is lying.

I saidin that column that I wrote I wrote a column about being cancelled Ican't remember the title of it, by the press club. And I talked about the Israeli ambassador.

I said, well, yes,he could provide balance if he was honest. He could tell us aboutLavender,the AI system that targets Palestinians in Gaza. He could talk about the quotasthatup to ten or 20 civilians can be killed if you're trying to target aHamas fighter. Up over a hundred can be killed if you're trying to target a Hamas commander. I mean, that would bebalanced because I'm not on the inside of the IDF. I mean, I know, you know, as a reporter, I can glean stuff on theoutside. That would be balance. That would kind of create the circle. It would broaden our understanding of thetruth.

But that, of course, is not what he does, or Israeli officials do. Andso, yeah, balance has become a way to obscure truth, not enhance it. And thathas been, you know, one of the frustrating things about dealing with Israel for all the years that I'vedealt with them.

MP:And so do you see apositive here in terms of the world view shifting somewhat? Certainly in Italy,where you've just returned from, joined by Greta Tunberg, FrancescaAlbanese and Yanis Varoufakis,with the strikes there against thisgenocide in Gaza. What are your thoughts on that? Are people waking up? Is there a way forward?

CH:Yeah, people have woken up, and the government's response has been very heavy-handed censorship and repression.So, they've shut down theuniversity encampments. They have expelled Imean, Columbia University, I live in Princeton, so I was at that encampment a lot, but I was also at Columbia hundreds of students were expelled. Professors Katherine Frankie, the constitutional law expert, I mean, she's quitean eminent figure,taught at the law school for 25 years thrown out.

Rashid Khalidi, one of the great historians of the Middle East, becauseof the new rules, will not even teach a survey course because they would be inviolation.

It's that whole conflation of criticism of Israel withanti-semitism. I mean, this is, and also let's be clear, in these encampments, a roughestimate, 20 or 30% of the students were Jewish. Certainly the the largest ethnic group was probably Jewish. So yeah,I mean, 77% of registered Democrats want to halt arm shipments toIsrael, which is part of the reason Kamala Harris lost, because they were just so tone-deaf that they didn't listen totheir base.

I just testified afew weeks ago at the state house in Trenton, New Jersey, about adoptingtheIHRA, which is this bill that conflates criticism of Israel withanti-semitism.

I was there testifying with a Holocaust scholar, an IsraeliHolocaust scholar namedRaz Seagulla very courageous and brilliant Holocaustscholar. And when we were trying to speak, the chairman muted our microphones so no one could hear us.

So therewe were, attempting to argue that this bill would shut down free speech while they were shutting downfree speech. So yeah, that's the response. I think most people, I meanin I don't know Australia, but certainly within the United States and this, you've seen it even on the right, whichis why figures like Charlie Kirk, a very repugnant racist, homophobic, Islamophobic,who's now been deified by the Trump Administration.

But even he had to shift because young people, even youngRepublicans, are not buying this anymore. I mean, how could you? It's two years of live-streamed horror.

So, yeah,but the response of the state and the response ofmediaorganisations.I mean, we've seen in the United States,Larry Ellison, one of the richest people in the United States, hasbought up CBS. He's trying to buy TikTok; he's probably going to get it,CNN.And their response is justwholesale censorship. They've appointed this really repugnant, irresponsibleand dishonest figure,Bari Weiss, to run CBS News.

I mean, the onlygood thing is that she's so incompetent, it isn't going to work. But yeah, it's censorship. It'sreallybecause they don't have any other answer, at this point.

So yeah, I think there's beena huge, huge shift. And that frightens Israel, and it frightens the Zionists,or the Israel lobby. And it frightens those in powerwho,I mean, first of all, the weapons manufacturers, who've made a killing off the war in or the genocide in Gaza inthe same way they've made a killing off of Ukraine. So yeah, there are powerful entities that find thisthreatening.

MP:And you know, given that our job as you've said many times and we sayfrequently as well, is, as journalists, to report the truth, with these changes withthese very wealthy people buying out all our, not only mediaorganisations but social media organisations,how are people going to be able to getthe message out and, you know, and actually report the truth?

CH:Right, so it doesn't work. I mean, what they're trying to do doesn't work, and the best example is Turkey. I used tocover, spend a lot of time in Turkey. So, Erdoan destroyed the Turkish press by the way was one of the most vigorous andrespected press in, let's call it the Muslim world, Turkey's not technically, I think in the Middle East.

ButHrriyet,I mean, these were amazing press organisations. I mean, these journalists were really, reallygood and Erdoan destroyed it. Well, nobody readsHrriyet anymore. They all like, gravitate topodcasts by Turkish journalists who are living in exile in Germany.

So,it isn't going to work. I mean, it is,the idea that they are going to be able to disseminate these kinds offalsehoods is a pipe dream. They, you know, ifthey shut down TikTok, people will find other ways to get information.

Thatwas true in the old Soviet Union. You know, where they would send outmimeographnewsletters. That's, I think, howSolzhenitsyn, first disseminated parts ofGulag Archipelago.

These people have nocredibility left. So they can buy up all these media organisations, do everything they want, but people are going to walkaway.

MP:They're going to listen to people like us, hopefully.

CH:Yeah. They're going to listen to people who are attempting to actuallygrapple with the truth rather than sell propaganda.

MP:And so on that, I mean, I'm not sure if you're aware, but Australia has passednew legislation actuallycovering social media for those under 16. It is now illegal for peopleunder 16 to access social media. How how do you think that's going toplay out?

CH:Well, I have kind of conflicted emotions about it because, assomeone who teaches, well, yeah, Ialways find that I think all of us who've taught for a long time arefinding that that kind of addiction to social media has destroyed attention spans even at elite universities andmade it hard for people to concentrate and read.

Because as soon as you get on social media, you know, you stopreading. So, there's that aspect of it. I mean, I fear a post-literate culture and with AI, a culture that no longerknows how to write, and when you don't know how to write, you don't know how to organise your thoughts. You don't know how to think clearly. So, there'sthat aspect. On the other hand, of course, there's a censorship aspect.

MP:Yeah.

CH:The idea that you can stop people from seeing the horror in Gaza oraccessing information that challenges whatever the power elites want you tobelieve. I mean, that element is there without question andwe're probably about to see TikTok seized by Ellison and Zionists.

But Idon't think it ultimately works. I don't think I think people, even if they don't know exactly what's happening,they do know they're being lied to.

MP:Right. Well, that's a very positive way to look atit and I really appreciate that because yes, like you, I am conflicted. You know, I have their grown children now, but the whole social medialandscape has been troubling for a long time. And also the way in which it's controlled and the way in whichthe algorithms, I guess, force feed information funnel information ina certain way to people, and, you know, shadow ban independent news mediaorganisations. All of those things are very troubling.

However, the idea thatwe can just go, right, that's it, you're no longer able to access information I find that also quiterepugnant and difficult to grapple with. So, I think this ideathat people know they're being lied to, even if they don't actually know the full circumstances behind events andso forth,but we'll try and seek out the truth I find that very comforting in a way.

So, yeah, thank you, Chris.

And, so lastly, how do you feel, asjournalists, we need to move forward from here? How do we actually navigate thedifficulties with AI,ChatGPTkind of dominatingpeople's Google searches? Thedifficulty in accessing social media andbeing made available for people.

Whatshould we be doing to actually get to the truth, which isour job? It's our one job.We've got one job!

CH:Yeah, the problem is these media platforms are owned by these largecorporations, Meta and others, that are completely tied to the national security state. And of course, I'm a victim ofthat. You know, I had a show on RT America. It wasn't on Russia. It was onthe United States. And as soon as they shut RT down, YouTube disappeared all six years of my show.

Sotheentities that we use to essentially reach an audience are entities that arecontrolled by people who are antagonistic to the message that we're trying to send. And that is a big, bigproblem. Something actually Julian Assange predicted and wrote about in his book,Cypherpunks.

I'm a friend ofJulian. So, and let me just, you know, again hold him up, as I did when Iwas in Australia, along with John Pilger. I think I said you produced some of the best journalists of our era and some ofthe worst. I was actually thinking of Murdoch, but we can include David Mahr, too.

MP:Do we really call him a journalist?

CH:No, he's not a journalist. He's what we call a throat. Yeah. You know, somebody who sits in front of a microphone andyou know, stares at his own reflection, in essence.

I told him that when I walkedout.I mean, the first thing I said to him was that "You're a piece of shit". And the second thing I said, "In ourbusiness, we call you a throat, right? Which I have no respect for them at all. So, yeah.

MP:I was referring to Murdoch, by the way, but yeah, sure.

CH:Yeah. You know we have to fight the battles. But people know when you areattempting to be honest. I mean peoplesense that. People understand that.

I mean, I was, a few months ago, standing in line for a train at the Washington UnionStation in Washington DCand the woman behind me said, "Oh, I know who you are, and I respect what you do, and I votedfor Trump."

And I thought, but at least she knows I'm trying to be honest. I mean,I loathe Trump, of course, but I thought, you know, at least she knows I'm not trying to spin her.

MP:Yes. And that's a very interesting point. But you know, I guess Trump is the elephant in the room for us in many ways becausethere's no escaping him, even though, you know, he's not the president of Australia but he influences the "free world" as we like to refer to it. And we find it quite astoundingthat he would be returned. And, I know it's too late to kind of go over that now, but...

CH:Yeah, that's a long discussion, butit really comes from the orchestration of social inequality, massive social inequality. And a system that funnels wealth upwards into the hands of a billionaire class, Jeff Bezos andothers,Palantir[Peter Thiel] and all these figures.

MP:And Musk and Zuckerberg...

CH:And so people know they've beenbetrayed. And they've been betrayed by both the quote-unquote "liberal class", the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. And so,they, you know, Trump is worse, but he's people are desperate. He expresses a kind of rage and calls for vengeance. Of course, what he does,like all demagogues, is focus that vengeance on the vulnerable.On Muslims,undocumented people, etcetera, who are not the people who created the mess.

Butthat's what classically what demagogues or authoritarian states always do.Trump is not the disease. He's the symptom. And it's the Obamasand the Bidens, and the Clintons and the Bushes, that essentially destroyedour democracy piece by piece.

Sheldon Wolin, the great political philosopher, calls it a "corporate coup d'tatin slowmotion". No, that's actuallyJohn Ralston Saulsorry, the Canadian philosopher. Butyeah, that's right. That's whathappened. And so people are grasping, and people are desperate. People say, youknow, they're suffering. I mean, 60% of the people in the United States don't have $400 for an emergency bill.

Well, that when societies break down like that you

MP:Sixty per cent?!

CH:Yeah, 60% of the United States is living paycheck to paycheck, really struggling. And wedon't have universal health care. Over half of, about 500,000 people a year whohave health insurance go bankrupt, I mean, the whole system is so predatory, so mercenary.

You know, student debt, personal debt, suppression of wages, I mean it's United States is a very cruel, cruel place. Not to mention the fact that we have mass shootings almost on adaily basis. We just had one at Brown University. Soit's ... and that'swhat happens.

I mean, I saw it in the former Yugoslavia when the economic collapse of Yugoslavia andhyperinflation led to the rise of these, you know, figures likeRadovan KaradiandSlobodan MiloeviandFranjo Tumanand others. Or you go back toWeimar. I mean, this is what happens.

MP:Go back to Germany.

CH:Yeah. And Trump is just, you know, he embodies,he personally embodies the diseased society itself. He is an expression of adeeply diseased society.

MP:Chris, it's been such a eyeopening andamazing time having you here today. I'd like to do it again, hopefully,in a little while. But doyou have any closing thoughtsbefore we go?

CH:No.Just my warning to Australiais, you know, don't let the United States turn you into a colony because that's what they're trying to do. Youdon't want to get sucked into our military adventurism,probably against China. That's a really,really bad idea for us. And for Australia.

MP:Yeah. And I think you know in many ways,of course, we identify because we started out as a colony,with that kind, of youknow, having thisbig brother looking out for us. And I think that is a huge issue and one of the reasons,one of the things that we rail against here. You know, trying to actually have an independentnation independent of the monarchy and of the U.S. military machine.

Butthank you very much for that. I really appreciate it, and all your insightsinto the world today. A little bit bleak, but you know, it is our job to talk about it, isn't it?

CH:Yeah. Thanks, Michelle.

MP:Thank you.