Remembering Christopher Hitchens

He passed away 12 years ago, December 15, at MD Anderson in Houston

Hitchens after chemotherapy in Houston, October 2011. He passed away two months later. Photo by NEW YORK TIMES.

The late writer and militant activist gave many valuable, still applicable lessons regarding freedom of expression and the struggle against antisemitism, as well as making endless, acute observations about the Middle East, during his abbreviated life.

Hitchens succumbed to esophageal cancer at 62, after an 18 month-long fight, having been diagnosed at the opening of a 2010 book tour for his best-selling memoir, Hitch 22 — a play on the title of his good friend Joseph Heller’s famous novel. He passed away Dec. 15 after contracting pneumonia.

I was reasoned into atheism by Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion at the late age of 20, which turned out to be only 6 months before Hitchens’ passing, so I didn’t have a lot of time to learn about his work while he was still with us. Although I just missed him, I’ve since studied his work for thousands of hours and offer my thoughts here (…