Chris Hedges, a former New York Times correspondent who somehow won a Pulitzer Prize before completely going off the leftist deep end, claims that he has been banned from speaking at a University of Pennsylvania conference concerning peace in the Middle East because he compared the founders of Israel to the founders of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
The modern state of Israel was founded in May 1948 by a proclamation of David Ben-Gurion, a longtime labor activist. President Harry S. Truman officially recognized Israel on behalf of the United States on the day of its founding.
ISIS — an offshoot of al-Qaida — was established in June 2014 when Sunni Muslim extremist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself “the caliph” and “leader for Muslims everywhere.” The dream of ISIS is to turn a huge swath of territory spanning across substantial parts of both Syria and Iraq into a radical Sunni empire. (RELATED: Don’t Be Alarmed But Radical Muslims Just Declared Their Own Empire Across Much Of Middle East)
Hedges, who spent four years as the Middle East bureau chief for the totally unbiased Times, said the International Affairs Association at Penn had invited him to speak at a conference scheduled on April 3, according to The Jewish Daily Forward.
However, students organizing the conference at the fancypants Ivy League school informed Hedges he was no longer invited after he penned a mid-December commentary at the website Truthdig entitled “ISIS — the New Israel.”
Hedges opined, in part:
“ISIS, ironically, is perhaps the only example of successful nation-building in the contemporary Middle East, despite the billions of dollars we have squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its quest for an ethnically pure Sunni state mirrors the quest for a Jewish state eventually carved out of Palestine in 1948. Its tactics are much like those of the Jewish guerrillas who used violence, terrorism, foreign fighters, clandestine arms shipments and foreign money, along with horrific ethnic cleansing and the massacre of hundreds of Arab civilians, to create Israel.”
Hedges called the move “desperation” and blamed “the Israel lobby” for his plight.
“Being banned from speaking about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, especially at universities, is familiar to anyone who attempts to challenge the narrative of the Israel lobby,” he wrote in a follow-up Truthdig column. “This is not the first time one of my speaking offers has been revoked and it will not be the last.”
Hedges is a real piece of work.
Last year, the intrepid ex-reporter joined Bernie Sanders and Naomi Klein, among others, to support the People’s Climate March. He also participated in a protest called “Flood Wall Street.”
Also in 2014, he excitedly announced to the world that he and his family have become vegans “to save the planet and its species.”
In 2013, Hedges was a vocal supporter of Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning), the Army private who leaked a record-setting amount of classified documents.
During the 2012 U.S. presidential election, Hedges announced his support for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. He also delivered the keynote address at the radical left-wing party’s New Jersey state convention.
In 2011, Hedges appeared on Canada’s CBC to tell Canucks why he supported the Occupy Wall Street protests. A CBC co-host blasted Hedges for sounding “like a left-wing nutbar,” according to The Globe and Mail.
In 2003, Hedges was accused of blatantly plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in a book, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The book, “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” is currently ranked number 19,946 in books at Amazon.
Also in 2003, Hedges was invited as the commencement speaker at Rockford College. Instead of giving the students at the small Illinois liberal arts college any kind of rousing sendoff, Hughes gave a strident speech against the war in Iraq.
Students and parents roundly booed him off the stage, to the chagrin of leftist hothouses nationwide.
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