PHILADELPHIA – A former New York Times Middle East bureau chief was recently uninvited as a guest speaker at the University of Philadelphia after students complained about a recent column he penned comparing Israel to ISIS terrorists.

In a December 15 column for Truthdig.org, Chris Hedges wrote that “ISIS, ironically, is perhaps the only example of successful nation-building in the contemporary Middle East, despite the billions of dollars we have squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan,” IsraelNationalNews.com reports.

Hedges went on to write that “Its quest for an ethnically pure Sunni state mirrors the quest for a Jewish state eventually carved out of Palestine in 1948.”

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“Its tactics are much like those of the Jewish guerrillas who used violence, terrorism, foreign fighters, clandestine arms shipments and foreign money, along with horrific ethnic cleansing and the massacre of hundreds of Arab civilians, to create Israel,” he wrote.

Hedges’ musings apparently didn’t sit well with Zachary Michael Belnavis, student leader of the university’s International Affairs Association, who contacted Hedges’ lecture agency after reading the column to complain that he’s not a “suitable fit” for the school’s April 3 peace conference, according to the news site.

“We’re saying this in light of the recent article he’s written in which he compares the organization of ISIS to Israel,” Belnavis wrote, Israel National News reports. “In light of this comparison, we don’t believe he would be suitable to a co-existence speaker based on this stance he’s taken.”

Hedges, however, fired back in another column December 21 called “Banning Dissent in the Name of Civility.”

“Being banned from speaking about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, especially at universities, is familiar to anyone who attempts to challenge the narrative of the Israel lobby,” Hedges wrote, according to Israel National News. “This is not the first time one of my speaking offers has been revoked and it will not be the last.”

The cancelation of Hedges’ speaking engagement is only the latest of his troubles.

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This past June, the New Republic reported that the Pulitzer Prize winning writer plagiarized passages of the stories he’d written for Harper’s, Truthdig, and a 2002 book he wrote titled “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.

According to the Beacon:

The article claims Hedges lifted copy from a range of sources over the years, including Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Matt Katz, Canadian leftist Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, and Ernest Hemingway.

The New Republic published several excerpts from Hedges’ articles that appear to be identical or similar to work published previously by other authors.

Hedges, now a progressive commentator, left the Times nearly a decade ago after spending 15 years there as a foreign correspondent.