Video Source: The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel
In this powerful speech, Dr. Gabor Maté denounces the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, framing it as the defining moral issue of our time. He draws historical parallels, critiques Western media silence, and urges a deep, human response rooted in compassion, justice, and unwavering moral responsibility. The full transcript is below.
Introduction and Welcome
So, here to speak now in support of the Middle East Children's Alliance, and we hope you'll join us in supporting this wonderful organization on top of what you've already given.
Please join me in welcoming Gabor Maté.
Gabor Maté’s Opening Remarks and Emotional State
Well, good evening. I hope you can hear me.
I said in that clip that I'm not angry anymore. The hell I'm not angry. I'm totally enraged.
I make my living really speaking the truth as I see it—about human development, about trauma, about childhood, about illness, about health, what it means to be a human being. And I'm usually very confident and comfortable that I can convey in my words my understanding and perceptions of the world.
In this case, I feel completely inadequate to actually put into words what I feel—what I see—and also what I perceive many human beings are going through right now.
Simply, the words escape us.
Historical Echoes and Emotional Parallels
When, in my adolescence, I first found out about the Nazi genocide on my own people, literally almost every day when I would think about it, my head would spin. Literally, my head would spin. I’d think, how is this even possible?
And I feel like I'm back with that adolescent, almost naive, incomprehension about how this—what we're witnessing—can possibly be going on.
Standing with Chris Hedges
It's a real privilege to be on the stage with Chris, whose work I’ve followed for many years, who’s been, as Aaron pointed out, such a beacon for truth in such a dark, dark world.
Historical Moral Touchpoints
Every era seems to have its moral touchpoint. And the theme tonight is Gaza as the moral issue of our time.
In the 19th century, there was the question of freedom in Poland actually. In the 20th century—amongst other major events—you might say that the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s was a moral touchstone. Where you stood on that issue told you where you stood about the world.
In the 1960s and 70s, it was the Vietnam War. But all those situations, as much as they concentrated the issue of human morality and human ethics, there was something somewhat different about them in that, at least in the Spanish Civil War and certainly in the Vietnam War, there was a fighting chance.
Gaza: Slaughter, Lies, and Silence
And now we're seeing the slaughter of civilians and children and kids being amputated without anesthetics and being starved.
And the press has always lied, but the lies have never been more egregious. And the silence has never been more deafening than it is today.
The Question of Justice vs. Power
Since I can't quite find the words, let me quote a Muslim, an Arabic writer, Omar Al-Akkad, who in his wonderful, wonderful book One Day Everyone Will Be Against Us, says the following:
“The moral component of history—the most necessary component—is simply a single question, asked over and over again when it mattered: who sided with justice, and who sided with power? What makes moments such as this one so dangerous, so clarifying, is that one way or another, everyone is forced to answer.”
And Palestine is the issue of our time. Where you stand on that issue tells you whether you've got a heart that's even open and functioning.
The Danger of Intellect Without Heart
Because, you see, in the Western world, we value knowing with the mind—with the intellect. And with the intellect, you can make all kinds of arguments about who started what and who's responsible for what.
But to be even asking as to where the truth lies means that you're completely cut off from your heart and from your guts.
So there's ways of knowing that combine the gut and the heart and the mind. And, as somebody said, without the gut and the heart informing the mind, we're nothing but genius-level reptiles.
And those genius-level reptiles are running our world right now.
Palestine as a Mirror of the World
A wonderful Palestinian writer, Mohammed El-Kurd—who Chris has interviewed on his program—puts it this way:
“A universality that recognizes the Palestinian condition is the human condition. Palestine is a microcosm of the world—wretched, raging, fraught and fragmented, on fire, stubborn, ineligible, dignified. The lens we lend the Palestinian reveals how we see each other and how we see everything else.”
And that is why Palestine is the moral issue of the world.
The World We’re Living In
And sometimes you wonder, What the hell world am I living in?
Last year, when there were pictures of skeletal children—infants—in Gaza, you know what the New York Times had an article about in their Sunday front section?
It was about a fu*king farm in Israel where they grew caviar for export. And how dedicated these workers were to still go to work despite the war—to grow the caviar, to export to Europe. And meanwhile Palestinian kids were starving, which the Times never mentioned.
What world, I said to myself, are we possibly living in?
A War of Generals Against Children
Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper that not infrequently tells the truth—or some of the truth at least—calls the current situation “a war of the generals against the children.”
And in Haaretz, there was an incredible article by Gideon Levy. You know, the Jewish organizations—the Holocaust memorial industry—they recognize what they call Righteous Gentiles. These are non-Jews who helped Jews during the horror of the Second World War.
Well, one day, if there’s ever recognition of Righteous Jews, Gideon Levy will surely have pride of place.
Admiring the Abusers: Manufactured Humanity in Gaza
And in a recent article— I don’t even know how to tell you this—he describes a visit by an Israeli TV presenter, an influencer, a fashion influencer who, protected by the Israeli army (that she’s completely in love with), visits this Palestinian village in the West Bank.
Then she reports:
“I had such admiration for these soldiers who had to put up with screaming grandmothers and screaming babies whose homes they had to enter at night. And they could still hold on to their humanity.”
Who makes up this stuff?
I mean, you think you’re living in La La Land, but it’s serious. And this is what our press and our politicians and our culture show to us all the time.
Omar El Akkad on Civilization’s Crimes
Now, here’s what Omar El Akkad writes about our civilization. And I’m quoting these people extensively because really, I don’t have the words. But thank God, they do.
Omar writes:
“To preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary…
To set fire to a library.
To blow up a mosque.
To incinerate olive trees.
To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled, and then take pictures.
To level universities.
To loot jewelry, art, banks, food.
To arrest children for picking vegetables.
To shoot children for throwing stones.
To parade the captured in their underwear.
To break a man's teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth.
To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die.
Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.”
And that’s the world we’re living in.
The Selective Grief of the Passover Table
And this Passover recently—the Jewish holiday—the New York Times writes about what? The missing person at the Seder table – the Passover table.
And who’s that? It’s the Israeli hostage in captivity in Gaza.
Not missing from anybody’s table are the thousands of Palestinians—including multiple hundreds of children—who have been for decades kept in Israeli jails and tortured. Children tortured.
The Forgotten and the Broken
Israel recently released a man who was 13 when he was arrested with no weapons. No weapons. And he was charged with attempted murder. He got 10 years.
Now, 10 years later, they released him. Mentally ill. A broken person.
Those people are never mentioned.
Two and a half years ago, I was in the West Bank working with Palestinian women who had been tortured in Israeli jails. And let me tell you, you got to hand it to the Israelis—they really know how to torture people. They’ve developed certain skills. That’s one of them.
Crimes of Silence
And this has, of course, been documented by Israeli Physicians for Human Rights, all kinds of Israeli witnesses, international organizations—but never talked about in the Western press.
The fact that the head of orthopedic surgery at Al-Shifa Hospital, a perfectly healthy, vigorous 50-year-old man, was captured—and six weeks later he died without his underclothes on, with blood streaming from his rectum, with his ribs broken.
It was never reported in the North American press. It’s just beneath our attention.
Palestine as the Moral Issue of Our Time
Well, what does that tell us about Palestine as the moral issue of our time?
The Dutch-American writer Jacob Riis, who wrote a book about the tenements of New York City [titled How the Other Half Lives] —it was a bestseller back in the 1890s—he said:
“The world forgets easily, too easily, what it does not like to remember.”
And that forgetting is instantaneous.
And you know, I don’t know how this is going to end. All I know is that all the speaking that Chris has done, all the wonderful people that he’s interviewed, all the interviews that I’ve been invited to speak on, the millions of people who have seen us and other people speak online—has not saved a single finger of a single Palestinian child.
A Moral Stand Beyond the Moment
It does mean that we have to hold on to a sense of morality and possibility that goes beyond the present moment.
I like to think—well, let me tell you one more thing.
I recently wrote the foreword to a book by a Palestinian psychiatrist. Her name is Dr. Salma Jabar. She was head of mental health for Palestine. But she was too honest and too sharp in her criticism of the traitorous Palestinian Authority. So she no longer has that position.
But in her book—you know what she writes? She writes:
“How do I deal with the suicidal depression of an 82-year-old man who came to me for help, when the house that he built with his own hands—now, 20 years later—he’s being forced to dismantle with his own hands.
Do I give him Prozac for his depression?”
A Call to Participate in Healing
I have no idea what answer history will finally declare on current events.
What I do know is that—well, there was this Jewish sage 100 years before Jesus. His name was Hillel. And he said that:
“The task is not yours to finish—the task of healing the world—but neither are you free not to take part in it.”
And I think that’s a choice we can all make in the present moment.
We don’t know how it’s going to end. And none of us—I hope it’s otherwise—but none of us in our lifetimes may see justice the way we would like to see it.
But by God, we can make a contribution, however big, however little that is.
And we can make sure that Palestine is never, ever, ever forgotten.
Thank you.
