Robert Fisk was the best known English-language Middle East correspondent of a generation, and his death over the weekend at the age of 74 has prompted an outpouring of praise — along with some criticism.
The obituaries are citing his decades of work, mainly for the British Independent, and his two gigantic books: Pity the Nation (1990) and The Great War for Civilisation (2005), which are based on first-hand reporting from nearly every flashpoint in the Mideast since the mid-1970s. Fisk was there during the civil war in Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and much more. He did unforgettable on-the-spot dispatches after the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Beirut in 1982, when the Israeli army stood by as Lebanese Christian militiamen slaughtered somewhere between 460 and 3500 Palestinian refugees.
Robert Fisk’s decades of reporting on Israel/Palestine were especially valuable, contrasted with most mainstream U.S. media. Much of this coverage can be found in The Great War for Civilisation. He raised doubts about the 1993 Oslo “peace agreement” right from the start, asking ordinary skeptical Palestinians for their opinion instead of relying exclusively on high-level diplomats. He went to Israeli Jewish “settlements” in the West Bank, and did not cover up the hard, anti-Palestinian views he found there.
Fisk also interviewed the kind of Israelis who do appear in the U.S. mainstream, but he warned they aren’t representative:
. . . Dedi Zucker, a liberal member of the Knesset and leader of the Civil Rights Movement is very much in a minority; he is the sort of man — broad-minded, bespectacled, academic in appearance — whom visitors to Israel seek out to hear what they want to hear.
Robert Fisk also dissected the chronic bias, in language and interpretation, that has become so much a part of the mainstream reporting from Israel/Palestine that we often no longer even notice it:
When Palestinians murder Israelis, we regard them as evil men. When Israelis slaughter Palestinians, America and other Western nations find it expedient to regard these crimes as tragedies, misunderstandings or the work of individual madmen. Palestinians — in the generic, all-embracing sense of the word — are held to account for these deeds. Israel is not.
Fisk’s reporting in other parts of the Mideast has raised some doubts about his accuracy. Hugh Pope, also a distinguished Mideast journalist who is now with the International Crisis Group, a decade ago briefly listed some of Fisk’s distortions. Pope, in his own fascinating memoir Dining With Al Qaeda, says that other reporters had a word for it: “Fiskery.” Pope explained:
. . . the essential thrust of the story, and the political message behind it, might well be true, or, from the author’s point of view, illustrate a higher truth. But the details, quotes, witnesses, and even whole battles could be embellished to make the story fly, preferably onto the front page.
Pope suggests there may be extenuating circumstances that explain Fisk’s exaggerations. Western reporting that follows narrow mainstream conventions is dry, clinical — and in the end, arguably inaccurate in its own way. Pope continued:
Fisk’s writing, more than almost anyone else’s, manages to step around the cautious conventions of Middle Eastern reporting and drive home at an emotional level the injustices of the dictators and the cruel side of U.S. policies.
Huge Pope’s complicated view continues after Fisk’s death. The Twitter timeline is reproducing Pope’s skeptical view of Fisk’s accuracy. To which Pope responds:
What you say about a fact deficit is true. But Fisk excelled at communicating the injustice of Western policies, the horror of war and the pain felt by its victims.
Thank you for this article! No one knew the Middle East on the ground better than Robert Fisk!!
Here’s an example of his writing:
“Since facts are sometimes elusive in the Middle East, let’s remind ourselves of what happened after Oslo. The Oslo II (Taba) agreement, concluded by Yitzhak Rabin in September 1995 – the month before he was assassinated – promised three Israeli withdrawals [in the West Bank]: from Zone A (under Palestinian control), Zone B (under Israeli military occupation in co-operation with the Palestinians) and Zone C (exclusive Israeli occupation). These were to be completed by October 1997.
“Final-status agreement covering Jerusalem, refugees, water and settlements were to have been completed by October 1999, by which time the occupation was supposed to have ended. In January 1997, however, a handful of Jewish settlers were granted 20 percent of Hebron, despite Israel’s obligation under Oslo to leave all West Bank towns. By October 1998, a year late, Israel had not carried out the Taba accords.” (“Catastrophe looms in reaction to Arafat’s death,” by Robert Fisk, The Independent, 17 November, 2004)
Sorry to hear Robert Fisk has passed away..
He was an exceptional man!
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/11/3/remembering-robert-fisk-a-mentor
“Remembering Robert Fisk: A mentor” Al Jazeera, Nov. 3/20 by
Katya Bohdan
“The veteran reporter taught me an important lesson: ‘Tell the story, whatever the consequences.'”
EXCERPT:
“The only book Robert Fisk ever recommended I read was the satirical journalism novel – Scoop – by Evelyn Waugh – a story about hapless nature writer William Boot who, due to an unexpected turn of events, is sent to the fictional African country of Ishmaelia to report on the conflict there as a foreign correspondent.
“When I received the news that he had passed away, scenes of my interactions with him replayed in my mind. Somehow the day he recommended Scoop was one of the brightest memories among them – it has since become one of my favorite books.
“The novel is a pure satire that takes aim at the newspaper industry and the journalistic profession. It is a rather interesting read to recommend to an aspiring young journalist. But that in itself is emblematic of how he was as a person, or at least of how I knew him: Kind-hearted with a great, and oftentimes sarcastic, sense of humor; an empathetic, radiant and intelligent man.
”I first met Fisk in Beirut in April 2017 when I was in my second year of college and had just completed a journalism internship in Tehran, Iran. I had switched majors to journalism after reading his book, The Great War for Civilization, and know that I am not the only one to have been inspired to enter the profession by his extensive, award-winning reporting.”
Oh no. We can’t spare Robert Fisk.
I remember – I think I remember – a story he told. He asked a Palestinian refugee where his house was, went there, and found a Jewish Holocaust survivor. He asked him where his house in Poland was. When he went there, the woman living there gasped and said, “Are they coming back?”
Is this in one of his books?
It is sad when one is so busy wearing spectacles coloured from a bad day at the Kind David Hotel and then their emotional state is manipulated by political entities. Funny how Israel has common detractors made up of the Imperialists, the slaves and of course the Nazis, too.