Former New York Times middle east correspondent and celebrated author Chris Hedges spoke to an overflow crowd at an event organized by the Ottawa International Writers Festival. He was discussing his most recent book “Requiem for Gaza” in which he was trying desperately to document the Palestinian story in the face of Israeli attempts to erase it. Read more…

“Israel has always lied about its own history“, Chris Hedges told interviewer Yipeng Ge at an event at Library and Archives Canada. “It wants to hide what it has done, and is still doing, to the Palestinian people.”

Hedges spent seven years as a war correspondent and Middle east bureau chief for the New York Times. He travelled many times to Gaza – staying a week at a time or even longer. He speaks fluent Arabic and met many Israeli and Palestinian leaders, including Yasser Arafat and Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, a pediatrician who was a co founder of Hamas. Hedges left the NYT in 2005, when it would not publish some of his stories filed about the US war on Iraq. He is now a Pulitzer Prize winning independent author and commentator.

Hedges was in Ottawa at the Ottawa International Writers Festival to discuss his most recent book “Requiem for Gaza”. “When I saw what Israel was doing in Gaza, destroying libraries, universities and schools, and murdering journalists and intellectuals, I knew I needed to go back quickly to interview as many people as I could to record their stories before Israel erased the history of what it had done.”

Witness to history

The job of a journalist, Hedges told the audience, is to record the truth. Since launching its genocidal campaign on Gaza, Israel has tried to hide the truth from emerging while it lies consistently about what it is actually doing.

It has banned all foreign journalists from entering the area. The only available record of what is happening is in the hands of Palestinian journalists, who risk their lives to document Israeli crimes. Hedges told the audience that Israel deliberately targets journalists – in fact more journalists have been killed in Gaza in the last 3 years than in ALL other wars since 1945 combined.!!

In early 2025, Hedges and his friend and co-author Joe Sacco decided they needed to find Palestinian refugees to record their stories before it was too late. Sacco is a published author and “investigative cartoonist”, whose emotional drawings have garnered him a large audience. At first they had hoped to get into Gaza but that was denied so did their interviews in Egypt.

All the Palestinians were traumatized, of course, and many were in poor health. In the end, the Hedges and Sacco spent several months with the help of a translator, interviewing the members of 39 Palestinian families now refugees in Egypt, who had lost everything except their memories.

Both Sacco and Hedges found the experience “emotionally draining”.

“Requiem for Gaza” was published in early October, Since then Hedges has been on an international book launching tour, including several countries in Europe. The first printing sold out in France in a few days. However, the book has not been published in Germany. It is available in the USA despite attempts to smother it. His former employer, the New York Times, refused to print a review of the book. Ottawa is his only scheduled Canadian stop

For Canadians who were not able to attend his live presentation in Ottawa, here is a YouTube recording of his book launch event in Dublin a few weeks ago. CLICK HERE: HEDGES IN DUBLIN BOOK LAUNCH.

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