“Genocide is the moral imperative of our era,” declares Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in this episode of The Chris Hedges Reports as she continues her campaign for the U.S. presidency. Joined by running mate, Professor Butch Ware, the two make their case as to why they should earn the vote of every disenfranchised American, stuck in the woes of personal domestic struggles and the atrocities committed abroad on their behalf by a self-serving empire. Stein’s view is clear when looking at how the election is shaping up: “Forget the lesser evil, there is no lesser evil. You have two genocidal candidates, one conducting genocide right now and the other promising to finish the job.” Stein and Ware hammer down that while the military-industrial complex may seem like a foreign policy issue, tackling it is key to unlocking solutions at the domestic level. Stein says the bloated defense budget, which reaches into the trillions of dollars when all expenditures are accounted for, is one of the primary obstacles she aims to take down. “This is why we are not providing for the health care, the housing, the education, getting people out of debt, dealing with the climate emergency, ending the carceral state and having a restorative system of justice and addressing the issues of poverty and hopelessness, which drive crime in the first place,” she explains. Ware remarks that the dynamic between Americans who feel trapped into voting for Democrats out of fear of Trump is deeply toxic, fueled by the narcissism of the candidates themselves. “As soon as you sign on the dotted line, they get right back to business, murdering people with your tax dollars, putting it in their pocket, letting your neighborhoods dissolve and break down,” Ware tells Hedges. Ware makes clear that there is a choice for resistance and dissent on the ballot in November: “We have to end this toxic cycle of abuse, because they have people spellbound into thinking that there is no way to resist, but you absolutely can resist right now by voting Green.”

Eugene Rogan, a Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford, dives deep into the consequences of the Ottoman Empire's fall. He discusses how modern borders are influenced by colonial interests and the legacy of World War I. Rogan highlights the diverse dynamics of the war in the Middle East, the Ottoman alliance with Germany, and the tragic Armenian genocide. He also explores the realities of post-WWI politics and the misconceptions surrounding Muslim unity, shedding light on enduring regional conflicts shaped by history.

The Israel lobby wields some of the most influence over American politics than any lobbying group in Washington. As Ilan Pappé, the Israeli historian, professor and author, and host Chris Hedges detail in this latest episode of The Chris Hedges Report, the lobby’s rise to power consisted of diverging ideological factions uniting in pursuit of their shared interests in controlling the land of historic Palestine. The history and manifestation of this systemic corruption of the Zionist lobby, hyper-dependent on coercion and total control, is thoroughly described in Pappé’s new book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic.    Through Pappé’s historical accounts and analysis, he dispels the fabrication that Israel was created to protect the Jews of the world from systemic oppression. Those first involved in lobbying for Zionism were separated into two ideological groups; the religious Zionists, who actually believed in a messianic connection to historic Palestine, as well as protecting marginalized Jews, and those who the Israeli author describes as “more cynical”; the imperialists, or those “who saw the theological ideas as a good pretext for fulfilling more secular political roles…they wanted not only Palestine, but also Syria and Egypt to expand the British empire.”    Even the Zionists who sincerely wanted to help the oppressed Jews of the world, however, found themselves working with antisemitic bigots to achieve their goal. As Pappé states,    “One of the major motives for leaders of the Jewish community in Britain to support the idea of the Jews going from Russia to Palestine was the fear that these Jews would come to London.”     This sordid partnership highlights the way that the Zionist lobby has functioned since its inception. Pappé describes it as a system that is “a solution for a certain group of Jews that is developed by a certain group of Jews who are not part of that project, but that project serves other interests that they have.”      This idea is embodied in the current state of Israel, and the lobby’s obsession with controlling its “allies,” as opposed to actually pursuing policies and partnerships that benefit it:    “As we’ve seen, the way AIPAC decided who Israel’s enemies were often had very little to do with the actual policies, which were frequently to Israel’s advantage–they decided simply based on how obedient an administration was to the lobby. America’s endorsement of the Oslo Accords was not a milestone on the road to peace for AIPAC, but a testimony to its own failure to influence America’s policy.”    It is through this endemic toxicity that Israel may very well be leading itself, and Zionism with it, to its demise.

A significant justification for Israel’s existence relies on the narrative that, because of the inherent and rabid antisemitism of Arabs and Islam, the Jews of the Middle East never had a home. Without Israel, it is said, these Jews would be left on the fringes of Middle Eastern societies, marginalized for an irrational prejudice against their religion and ethnicity.  Historian and author Avi Shlaim details in his book, “Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab Jew,” through personal experience and historical analysis the lies that this narrative is constructed upon. “There was no history of antisemitism in the Arab world. Antisemitism is a European disease,” he tells Chris Hedges. “In the 1930s, antisemitism was exported from Europe to Iraq in particular, and it's striking that there was no antisemitic literature in Arabic. So antisemitic literature had to be translated from European languages into Arabic…”  Shlaim was born in Iraq, where a thriving, educated and economically diverse society existed for Jews. He describes how “It took Europe much longer than it took the Arab world to accept the Jews as equal citizens,” and how “[Jews] were very much part of the fabric of Iraqi society. We are not a foreign body. There were thriving Jewish communities throughout the Arab world, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Egypt, throughout North Africa, but the Jewish community in Iraq was the most successful, the most prosperous, and also the best integrated of all the Jewish communities.”  It was Israel, according to Shlaim, that brought the divide and plight of the Jews in the Middle East. Shlaim mourns a time where his family experienced peaceful coexistence: “Muslim [and] Jewish coexistence was not an abstract idea. It wasn't a distant dream. It was the everyday reality.” Shlaim’s accounts also turn parts of his memoir into an investigative account, diving into incontrovertible evidence he discovered that reveals false flag atrocities committed by Israelis against Jews themselves in the name of reinforcing the Jewish state. “[T]his false flag operation,” Shlaim said, referring to the 1950 and 1951 Israeli bombings of Iraqi Jews, “is a terrible indictment of the State of Israel, because Israel was created to provide a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution. Israel was not established in order to destabilize and frighten and create insecurity for the Jews of the diaspora.” “The real upheaval,” Shlaim recounts, “ happened when Israel was created in 1948 and as my mother said to me, when Israel was created, everything was turned upside down.”  

The latest chapter of Israel's occupation of Palestine has raged on for nearly the last year, marking a significant shift in the decades-long clash that has already initiated the demystification of the mythology behind Israel. Truth continues to be the first casualty of war in this particular struggle, as it has been massacred, through the killings of journalists in Gaza and the censorship of dissidents, throughout the conflict along with the Palestinians themselves. Unfortunately for Israel, however, the state’s lies and brutality this time are too severe to escape the eyes of the global stage, and even its own people.    As David Hearst, Editor-in-Chief of the Middle East Eye, states in this interview:    “There are huge tensions in Israel about how the war was prosecuted, particularly the central tension is the obvious fact that Israel has been killing its own hostages through military action, obviously. And the narrative from Israel that Israel is pushing Hamas to release hostages is nonsense. It is the exact opposite. The main killer of the hostages has been the bombing campaign. So there is a huge protest about getting the hostages home. And getting the hostages home means ending the war, basically.”   Hearst joins host Chris Hedges on the second episode of The Chris Hedges Report to offer a clear and direct explanation of the complexities surrounding the conflict, providing essential context on what to anticipate moving forward.   “What we've got to get really clear about is that our idea of left and right, or our idea of moderates and extremists, does not translate to Israeli realities. And when it comes to killing as many Palestinians as they can, everyone is up for it,” Hearst tells Hedges.   The brazen violence that journalists like Hearst and others have reported on is pulling Israel’s mask of nobility down, and revealing its true face as the “ugly, repressive, hate-filled apartheid regime it always has been.”    Hearst claims that “there is a blood lust going through Israel.” He proves this point through stories of the brutality, demonstrating how for Israel “there's absolutely no attempt to distinguish between someone carrying a gun or a rocket launcher and someone carrying a bottle of water.” In other words, all Palestinians are automatically “terrorists” — guilty of crimes punishable by death — to the Israelis.    This indiscriminate tactic of killing has exposed Israel for what it truly is. The livestreamed suffering of the Palestinians, and the violence of the Israelis, is too great for the apartheid regime to hide once the genocide is over. Israel will become synonymous with its victims, just as the violent regimes of the past have.

In this first episode of the new and independent iteration of The Chris Hedges Report, Palestinian novelist Atef Abu Saif and Hedges explore Saif's experiences under siege by the Israelis in Gaza, and the meaning behind them, in a substantive and powerful conversation. Through it, the texture of the genocide and the damage it inflicts on its victims is captured, as Saif’s eloquence and vulnerability reveals the weight of the tragedy in a way only facts and data simply cannot.