Fisking Fisk

Islam Online have an article on Robert Fisk, in which he basically demonstrates why he has a verb named after him.

“I won’t let 19 murders [9/11 plane hijackers] change my world and you shouldn’t let them change yours, despite what Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair might say.”

Based in Beirut, veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk has been reporting the Middle East for the last 30 years covering nearly every war, assassination, or crisis in the area. His list of interviewees includes Osama bin Laden, whom Fisk interviewed three times for The Independent where he has been working since 1989. He is one of the very few Western journalists who had been allowed to interview Bin Laden.

And why is that?

Reading Between the Lines

Fisk says that when the events of 9/11 took place, he realized then that these events would divide the innocent from the innocent, and not the Muslims from the non-Muslims, demystifying the common misconception of innocent vs. guilty in the 9/11 attacks. This especially takes place if someone in the aftermath declares that “this is what would change the world forever.”

“This would mean that you can rip up all the agreements of the United Nations that protect human rights and change all the legislations that protect us as human beings. Of course we know what happened later on.”

With his phone ringing every few minutes, Fisk was sought out by newspapers and news agencies from around the world for commentary after the events. “They all wanted to ask how it happened and who did it. But no one wanted to know why it happened. They were uneasy. ‘These were 19 Arabs? That means they come from the Middle East? Does that mean that there’s a problem?’ We weren’t allowed to ask ‘why?’” he inquires.

A Harvard professor even went as far as labeling him “anti-American” and “anti-Semitic” just for asking that question. “I consider that libel,” said Fisk.

The war on Iraq is nothing more than an ideological one. “If you embark on an ideological war, you listen only to what you want to hear. The weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) were lies. You will never find a link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. Did we invade Iraq for oil? Of course we did. If their national product was potatoes or asparagus, we wouldn’t be there.”

The Great War for Civilization?

His latest book The Great War for Civilization is a whooping 1334-page read, a book that Fisk says any one who tries a sales pitch for it would be incredulous. While saying that it is not a chronological account of Middle Eastern history, he added that it is a book that has occupied most of his life.

So I’m guessing he could understand terrorism against his book – it being an occupier and all.

The title, “The Great War for Civilization,” is the inscription Fisk found on the back of a medallion he inherited from his father who served for the British army during World War I. “This is why I decided to name my book ‘The Great War for Civilization.’ I would, of course, use it ironically, but my father believed, as most soldiers are told they are, that he was in fact fighting the Great War for Civilization,” said Fisk.

Fisk recounted an incident that took place while his father was serving in the army. His father was 19 when sent to France in 1918 for the last three months of the war; he was asked to execute an Australian soldier who was accused of killing a British soldier in France, but he refused to obey the order. “My father at least had the knowledge that he has obeyed his conscious … and I think part of our challenge as journalists is to refuse to obey orders and to refuse to be told what we should believe and not to be spokesmen of the governments.”

But the influence of that war was not to end there, the relationship between the war his father fought for and the war Fisk covered runs deeper. “During the 17 months that followed, the British and French governments drew the borders of northern Ireland and Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. I have spent most of my professional career … as a foreign correspondent watching the people within those borders burn.”

Writing the book, Fisk says, was a distressing experience. As a journalist, one travels, covers wars, spends some time on the frontline, and goes back to his or her family. When writing the book and removing all the intermediate bits, one realizes that people in the Middle East have lived a most appalling, tormenting suffering, Fisk explains. “After writing about the betrayals, dictators, secret police, and foreign invasions, I’m amazed at how restrained the Muslims have been towards us,” he said.

Yes, he did say that.

“Helicoptered” Reporters

In 1976, Fisk received a letter from the editors of the British Times assigning him to the Middle East. “‘It’ll be a great adventure with lots of sunshine,’ the letter had said. I felt like King Faisal being offered Iraq.”

From then on, Fisk has been covering every hot spot in the Middle East. When going in to cover a war zone, journalists need more than a notebook and a camera, he says; they need a history book as well. “Otherwise it becomes just clippings. Without reading history, we treat wars as a football match and we try to give equal time to each side, and it becomes boring and bland. When I was writing my book, I went through history.” He realized that when Western powers invaded Baghdad in the past they also said they came as “liberators” and not conquerors: “‘We never come except as liberators … to free you.’ Sounds familiar?” he asks.

The journalists’ job, he explains, is to be the first witnesses to history. They are the witnesses of war and massacres. In the US, Fisk added, correspondents have reached the very bottom of their ability to report what’s happening in the Middle East. “The US school of journalism teaches you that you have to give equal time … you mustn’t be controversial. They’ve, for example, taken the meaning out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They don’t call the Israeli wall ‘a wall,’ but instead a security barrier or a fence. A fence … like the one you have in your balcony or your garden.”

Citing examples from the American press, Fisk charged that American journalists are “too close to power” and that this has caused them to avoid going to the field, and instead quote their own officials regarding the battlefields of the Middle East. “Washington is the dateline on this article,” he said; “That’s a very good place to be writing about Baghdad!” And he cites even more examples, most of which have phrases like: “US officials say; those officials said; US officials confirmed; and American officials complained.”

Today’s new phenomenon of war zone journalism is reflected in a term that Fisk coined “hotel journalism.” “Reporters now arrive in Iraq … they are ‘helicoptered’ to their hotels where they stay and don’t leave. The New York Times’s office in Iraq is a fortress guarded by Iraqis wearing New York Times T-shirts and holding Kalashnikovs. The Associated Press has two blast-proof walls in their hotels.”

The preoccupations of these reporters are not without basis, but their journalistic product lacks credibility. “One of the stupidest things that the insurgents do there is attack journalists, so we can’t check [the incidents] out. The only problem is that they [journalists] don’t tell their readers that [what happened] … so they [journalists] give the impression that they can go around checking their various stories.”

Fisk admits that, while he would never go back to the war zones if he was forced to practice “hotel journalism,” he has another way to get things done: “mouse journalism.”

“I go to a scene of a suicide bombing in a bus station in Baghdad. I get 20 seconds of an interview with an eyewitness and a picture of a dead baby, then I get out after the Iraqi soldiers start banging at the door of my car. Is it worth it? Yes, I won’t go back if it’s hotel journalism.”

I think “mouse journalism” is a good term for Fisk’s work, but for the following reasons:

• He’s like a mouse in that he deposits his sh*t and then scampers back into his hole.
• He and Farfur are cut from the same cloth.
• His version of events is like mouse cheese – full of holes.

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