Former NY Times Editor Hedges Thinks Jews Making Too Much of Holocaust

Reporter Randal Archibold gets a full story out of Kevin Tillman, brother of former NFL player Pat Tillman, who died by friendly fire after quitting pro football to go into service in Afghanistan. Kevin Tillman lashes out at the Bush administration in an article published on the Truthdig website on October 19. (Truthdig is run by Robert Scheer, the left-wing former columnist for the L.A. Times.)

The headline over Archibold's Tuesday story: "Brother of N.F.L. Star Posts Antiwar Essay -- Former Army Ranger Criticizes Iraq War and U.S. Leadership."

Another prominent name has written for Truthdig, one that Archibold didn't mention -- Christopher Hedges, the New York Times's former Middle East bureau chief and long-time reporter, who published an inflammatory article about what he considers Jewish exploitation of the Holocaust. It appeared on Monday, the day before Archibold's Times article. (Hedges' latest book, due in early 2007, is titled "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.")

In his recent Truthdig piece, Hedges pens thoughts that would probably be labeled anti-Semitic if coming from a paleo-conservative like Pat Buchanan:

"They make it easier to misread the real lesson of the Holocaust, which, as Christopher Browning illustrated in his book 'Ordinary Men,' is that the line between the victim and the victimizer is razor-thin. Most of us, as Browning correctly argues, can be seduced and manipulated into killing our neighbors. Few are immune. 

"The communists, not the Jews, were the Nazis’ first victims, and the handicapped were the first to be gassed in the German death factories. This is not to minimize the suffering of the Jews, but these victims too deserve attention. And what about Gypsies, homosexuals, prisoners of war and German political dissidents?  What, on a wider scale, about the Cambodians, the Rwandans, and the millions more who have been slaughtered by utopian idealists who believe the eradication of other human beings will cleanse the world?

"When I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington I looked in vain for these other victims.  I did not see explained in detail the awful reality that Jewish officials in the ghettos -- Judenrat -- worked closely with the Nazis to herd their own off to the death camps. And was the happy resolution of the Holocaust, as we saw in images at the end of the exhibits, the disembarking of European Jews on the shores of Palestine? What about the Palestinians who lived in Palestine and were soon to be pushed off their land?"

You can read about an infamous 2003 incident involving Hedges, in which angry students pulled the plug on the then-Times reporter's left-wing anti-war commencement speech, here.

For more New York Times bias, visit TimesWatch.