Veteran war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has called the unfolding events in Gaza “genocide,” arguing that they reveal a brutal continuity of colonial violence now masked in modern garb. In a powerful reflection shared widely on social media, Hedges dismantled the notion that humanity is advancing morally, declaring, “Brutality has not vanished; it has simply become more efficient.”

As Gaza’s people endure relentless bombardment, famine, and disease, Hedges pointed to the stark reality that aid remains blocked at the borders while civilians are killed daily. He warned that one in five Palestinians in Gaza now faces the risk of starvation, a result of an unrelenting siege that has lasted for months.

Drawing from reports of closed-door discussions, Hedges accused Israeli leadership of openly discussing the total destruction of Gaza and the forced displacement of its population. In his words, the aim is no longer hidden: to erase Palestine and ensure its people have nothing to return to.

He described Gaza’s southern border as a symbolic frontier between the Global South and the privileged North—a line across which law, mercy, and humanity no longer pass. For Hedges, what is taking place is not an aberration, but the consequence of a long legacy of colonial domination, now recast in the language of “security” and “self-defence.”

Recalling the warnings of history’s thinkers, Hedges concluded with a call to collective resistance. In a world spiralling toward extermination as policy, he urged that solidarity and action are all that remain to preserve what is left of our shared humanity.