Journalist and one-time New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges tackles the war in Gaza, taking a wide-angle look, similar to several other recent publications on the matter. Like many journalists who have covered the Israel-Palestine conflict, Hedges wound up with his sympathies firmly with the Palestinians. His reporting these days, which he combines with his role as a Presbyterian minister, is decidedly more partisan than in the days when he worked for the Times, though not, to be fair, lacking in objectivity.
The book’s subtitle gives the promise of reporting from Palestine, though there are only a few chapters of that, beginning with the first, where Hedges recounts time spent in the West Bank last year. Even then, he relies heavily on long extracts from his friend Atef Abu Seif’s Don’t Look Left, a diary, published last year, of Abu Seif’s experience of living in Gaza during the first 80 days of Israeli attacks. You presume Abu Seif was happy to have large tracts of his text lifted; those who have already read his book might, however, feel a bit short-changed.
The rest of the book is analysis of the decades that have got us to this pass. Hedges looks at the deleterious effects of the occupation of the West Bank and the history of Zionism, which, he says, never had any intention other than dispossession of the Palestinians.
He also outlines the murky way in which the Israel lobby in the United States targets and smears pro-Palestinian activists through initiatives such as the Canary Mission and the Maccabee Task Force, using targeted Facebook ads. While the ads are often effective in a localised sense, the Israel lobby also acknowledges it is fighting a losing battle for the hearts and minds of Americans on the subject of Israel-Palestine.
Hedges makes an impassioned argument for the Palestinians and also excoriates the cowardice and indolence of authorities in the United States (he has little to say about Europe) in their blind support for Israel and their countenancing of the harassment and vilification of pro-Palestinian sympathisers.
A Genocide Foretold is a lucid, if at times hectoring, short book, even if, it must be said, it does not have a great deal to separate it from the many on the same subject that have been recently published.
