With intimate and harrowing portraits of the human consequences of oppression, occupation, and violence experienced in Palestine today, Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges issues a call to action urging us to bear witness and engage with the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
Hedges wrote the first section of the book when he was in Ramallah in July 2024, and he draws from his experience doing extensive reporting from the Middle East, including Gaza, for the New York Times.
Requiem for Gaza confronts the stark realities of life under siege in Gaza and the heroic effort ordinary Palestinians are waging to resist and survive. Weaving together personal stories, historical context, and unflinching journalism, Chris Hedges provides an intimate portrait of systemic oppression, occupation, and violence. The book includes chapters on:
• What life is like in Gaza City and Ramallah in the midst of approaching bombs and gunfire.
• The history of the dispossession of Palestinians of their land in relation to the ideology of Zionism.
• A portrait of Amr, a 17-year-old highschool student who is forced to evacuate his village with his family.
• Psychoanalysis of the state of permanent war that has led to the destruction of hospitals, telecommunications centers, governmental buildings, roads, homes universities, schools, and libraries and archaeological and heritage sites in Gaza.
• The ways in which the collective retribution against innocents is a familiar tactic employed by colonial rulers.
• A heartbreaking final chapter called "Letter to the Children of Gaza."
Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize–winning former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, is an Arabic speaker who spent seven years covering the conflict. He wrote the first section of the book when he was in Ramallah in July 2024. A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, he is also the author of two bestselling books, War is a Force that Gives us Meaning and The Greatest Evil is War. In Requiem for Gaza he writes with an emotional depth that can only be achieved from spending many years on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank. Requiem for Gaza is a call to action, urging us to bear witness and engage with the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Chris Hedges is the former Pulitzer Prize–winning Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times. An Arabic speaker, he spent seven years covering the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, much of that time in Gaza. Author of 14 books, his most recent are The Greatest Evil Is War and Requiem for Gaza. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Toronto. He has also taught for over a decade in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University in the New Jersey prison system. He holds a B.A. from Colgate University in English Literature and a Master of Divinity from Harvard University. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
