The last days of Gaza – a rebuttal
A letter from an amateur to a 'journalist'.
Yesterday the Israeli Armed Forces enacted a well overdue pre-emptive strike on the ‘head of the snake,’ the IRGC. While world powers allowed themselves to be duped like fools by the Islamic regimes lies and subterfuge over the past few decades, Israel understood, almost uniquely, that to allow the regime to successfully arm nuclear warheads was not an option. There is a time for war and a time for peace. Until the Islamic Regime of Iran falls, there will be no stability or peace in the region. Evil cannot be reasoned or bargained with.
A fellow Substacker sent me a link to this article during the week1. This is not the first time this reader has urged me to rethink my position on the Israel / Gaza war. And I am all for reading opposing opinions. So yes I read it, but I was immediately perplexed by the article by Chris Hedges2, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist.
What I am not ‘all for’ is ‘journalists’ who without a doubt have credentials and an audience that I will never have, who are paid for telling the truth with evidence based research, fabricate a biased article which is no more that an opinion piece, which leaves out so much key data to truly understand what has taken place over the last twenty months, that I was taken aback by the irresponsibility of the article.
For transparency, I am not a journalist, I have never proclaimed to be. I don’t get paid by anyone to write. I write because I value the truth, and I value a balanced approach. It’s not actually that difficult to research and back up your claims with evidence. I don’t make wild unverified claims. It appears very odd to me that a girl from the suburbs of Melbourne has more journalistic integrity that a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. But please, read on, and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
The first two sentences of Mr Hedges article goes like this; “This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide.” I hope you are right Chris, I certainly hope for everyones sake that this is the end, but it is not and has never been a ‘genocide’. As a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, one would expect you to know the difference between a retaliatory war and a genocide.
The miss-use of the world genocide has gone viral, I will give you that. But you are not a Tiktok influencer or a miss-guided privileged Ivy League student who has no knowledge of the complexity of the region. As a foreign correspondent you should understand the nature of a true genocide—you know, like what has been taking place in Sudan by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) over the last few years? This slaughter is still going on today, with little to no media attention, and has claimed more than 150,000 lives, in what the United Nations has called the world's largest humanitarian crisis, about 12 million people have been forced to flee their homes.3
No humanitarian corridors, no forcing the RSF to supply millions of meals to the Sudanese, no world-wide protests, no global outcry. No bleeding heart descriptions of starving children, dead shrouded babies. No mention of it by you. Why then the laser focus on Israel?
The people of Gaza have endured the only ‘genocide’ in the history of civilisation who have had opportunity after opportunity to end the war, have been offered safe harbour outside of the ‘war zone’ and have chosen time and time again to continue the war. The only genocide in history that could have ended before it even began on October 8 2023, or on any day since then by returning the hostages and laying down arms.
Shame on you for exploiting the people of Gaza and knowingly using a loaded holocaust comparison by calling it a genocide. You even had the audacity in your article to compare the Holocaust with what is taking place in Gaza. Really? You compare the extermination of 6 million Jews, who did NOTHING to the Germans to around 40,000 lives lost (an estimated 15,000 of those military aged combatants) during a war started by the Palestinians? Talk about a biased selective narrative.
Your next paragraph lead with this ripper; “Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt.”
Wow. So let me get this straight, you are chastising Israel for feeding the people of Gaza, yet make no mention of their own sadistic governing body who have strategically starved their own people and profited from hoarding international aid and selling it back to their own people so they can buy their wives Birkin Bags and bombs?
So Israel halt aid because Hamas are stockpiling it and selling it for profit, and you accuse Israel of starving the people. So they provide aid and you accuse them of sadistically baiting the Palestinians? What the actual fuck? Is anybody actually buying this bullshit?
And interesting that you mention the Egyptian border? It seems like you have given Egypt a free pass in all this? I notice you failed to mention that Egypt could have opened their borders to their muslim brothers and sisters to alleviate the ‘genocide’ and ‘starvation’ happening at their neighbourly fence line? But they have not. Egypt want nothing to do with the Palestinians, have you written about the sadistic evil Egyptians? How much food and aid have the Egyptians supplied to their Arab mates? Instead you crucify Israel—interesting.
Then you asked what comes next? Well I think its obvious what you would like to come next Chris. I think you would like to see Israel eradicated from the map. But it appears you don’t actually have the balls to say that. So you hide behind miss information and grandiose words like ‘genocide’, which I may add has never been verified or proven in any international court, or by any independent body, and has been debunked time and time again by actual experts who deal in facts, no anti-Israel feelings.4
I can tell you Chris what I hope WONT happen next. The continuation of the same bullshit violent hateful ideology that has marred the region surrounding Israel for the last 75 years to carry on, over and over again to the same end. Greed, terrorism, indoctrination, theocracy, patriarchy and human rights abuses. You seem to think that Israel is the problem, yet you don’t have to look far to see the human rights failures of the theocratic muslim-majority countries. Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon. They are all fucking disasters. Don’t you think that the Palestinians deserve better than to condemn them to another century of corruption and poverty at the hands of their Islamist masters?
How many more opportunities should Israel give the people of Gaza to give up their genocidal intentions of eradicating the ‘Yahud’, and turning Israel into another Gaza-like terrorist hotbed shithole? At what point will you stop infantilising these people and hold them accountable for their own decisions?
Naming streets after terrorists who blow up buses, or glorifying leaders that have stolen billions of dollars from their own people to set up in penthouses in Qatar? Or how about holding macabre family outings celebrating the black coffins of two little innocent red-haired baby boys that were strangled to death? Are these the type of peace loving innocent oppressed people that you see such a lovely future for?
You have mentioned that you have “Stopped looking at the images. The rows of little shrouded bodies”. But you have failed to mention with any transparency that the only ‘journalists’ allowed in Gaza are there on the behest of Hamas. We have no independent proof that these photos are legit. You are a fucking journalist—do better!
But not one single mention of the verified slaughter, rape and bloody violent massacre that took place that started this whole set of dominoes to fall. Not one fucking word.
You are manipulating your audience by creating emotionally charged images of children dying in the mind of your readers, without any context at all. I expect this from amateurs, but from you this is irresponsible.
Journalistic integrity refers to the principle that a journalist must maintain honesty, fairness, and independence in their work. It encompasses a commitment to accuracy, objectivity, and the pursuit of truth while respecting the rights and dignity of others.
So why have you with held important data, such as the remarkably low combatant to civilian death toll in Gaza that the IDF have managed through precision strikes, which is one of the lowest in any known conflict?5 Where is your objectivity? Where is your pursuit of truth? How can you continue to call yourself a journalist?
Where are your footnotes to your article giving us references to your claims?
Then you wrote this; “Does anyone expect Palestinians to act differently?” Yes Chris I do. Unlike you, I don’t think the Palestinians are useless little children who have no agency over their own decisions. I don’t think that raping innocent women at a festival is resistance, or slaughtering families in their pyjamas in their homes is ever acceptable. In fact I think it very telling that you have not once mentioned the huge ground swell of brave Gazan’s who have been protesting against the tyranny of Hamas, and thanking the US and the IDF for freeing them from their Hamas over lords.
I hope that the Palestinians have been brought to their knees to a degree that they decide that enough is enough. I hope that they choose peace and prosperity for their children over hatred of the infidel. That their pathological hatred of their neighbours has caused them untold hardship, and gained them nothing but an endless procession or death and pain.
Israel has always been willing to live in peace with their neighbours, 20 percent of Israel is made up of Arabs for Gods sake. Israel is not the problem. But after the atrocity of October 7, its now up to the Palestinians to prove to Israel that they no longer pose a threat to their safety. I guarantee you, if the Palestinians choose peace, there will be peace.
If they continue to choose terrorism and violence, then that is their choice, and choices have consequences. Stop babying them.
And until every single fucking hostage is returned home to Israel, the war will not end. Not one single mention of them from you Chris— it’s like they don’t even exist for you.
Unlike the ‘journalists’ in Gaza, or who work for Al Jazeera, you Chris write from a place of ‘freedom of speech’— what a privilege that is, not one that a journalist with integrity would take lightly. Maybe its time for some self-honesty, maybe it’s time to get back to the roots of why you wanted to be a journalist in the first place—or maybe rebrand yourself as a fiction writer.
chris hedges
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1162416
https://www.icj-cij.org/node/203454
https://unwatch.org/item7_response/claim-43-israel-has-killed-more-than-30000-innocent-palestinians-since-october-7th/
Hedges is not just anti Israel. He has called for a moratorium on arms shipments to Ukraine. Hedges describes himself as a socialist and an anarchist. The man knows much less than you do Kelli about Israel and the war in Gaza. He did not deserve any prize for his writing, except perhaps the booby prize for stupidity.
Thank you Kelli for another succinct and fact based article. You claim you’re not a journalist but you’re so much better than many actual ‘journalists’.