Will
Robert Fisk Tell Us
The Whole Story?
By Jonathan Cook
05 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org
More
than a little uncomfortably, I find myself with a bone to pick with
one of our finest champions of humanitarian values and opponents of
war. During Israel’s attack on Lebanon this summer, the distinguished
British journalist Robert Fisk did sterling work -- as might have been
expected -- debunking some of the main myths that littered the battlefield
almost as dangerously as the tens of thousands of US-made cluster bombs
that Israel dropped in the last days of the fighting.
He documented the violations
of international law by Israel in Lebanon, offering a personal record
of the nature and scale of war crimes as more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians
died in Israel’s aerial bombardment of the country, hundreds of
thousands more were made refugees, and most of the country’s infrastructure
-- its roads, bridges, power stations, oil refineries and factories
-- went up in flames. For this he deserves our thanks and praise.
But possibly in an attempt
at even-handedness, Fisk has also muddied the picture in relation to
the actions of Hizbullah and thereby contributed towards the very mythical
narratives he seeks to undermine.
This was done -- in a predictable
hiatus in each of his stories that over time developed into a writer’s
tic -- by repeatedly accusing the Shiite militia of both provoking the
war with Israel and intending Lebanon’s destruction. Uncharacteristically,
Fisk failed to offer us the evidence on which these conclusions were
based.
I take this failing -- maybe
small compared to the far grosser distortions presented by other mainstream
commentators -- seriously because of Fisk’s past achievements
in countering the distortions in almost all Western reporting on the
Middle East and the “war on terror”.
Hizbullah and its leader,
Hassan Nasrallah, deserve the fairest hearing we can give them, especially
as their voices are systematically excluded from a Western press that
identifies with Israel.
I am in no position to challenge
Fisk’s expertise and familiarity with Lebanese society and politics.
If the Independent’s reporter tells us Hizbullah is no simple
puppet of Tehran while noting that its weapons are supplied by Iran
(and observing that Israel’s are supplied by the US) I assume
he is right. I also accept his reports that on occasion he saw Hizbullah
fighters taking shelter behind buildings in south Lebanon’s towns
and villages, and his parallel observations that Israeli soldiers did
the same as they struggled to invade the border areas.
The problem is in his constantly
aired statement that “Hizbollah provoked this war by capturing
two Israeli soldiers and killing three others on 12 July” (16
Aug 2006). Left as a simple statement of fact, it could be allowed to
pass without comment. But Fisk repeatedly adds a series of further insinuations:
that Hizbullah wanted Israel to attack, that it planned the war (not
just that it planned for the war), that it knew precisely the scale
of destruction Israel would unleash, that it was following Syria’s
orders, and that by implication Syria -- and possibly Hizbullah -- wanted
Lebanon’s destruction.
Here is a small selection
of these regular interjections in his stories:
“No, let us not forget
that the Hizbollah broke international law, crossed the Israeli border,
killed three Israeli soldiers, captured two others and dragged them
back through the border fence. It was an act of calculated ruthlessness
that should never allow Hizbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to grin
so broadly at his press conference. It has brought unparalleled tragedy
to countless innocents in Lebanon … So Syria -- which Israel rightly
believes to be behind Wednesday's Hizbollah attack -- is not going to
be bombed. It is Lebanon which must be punished” (July 15, 2006).
“It now appears clear
that the Hizbollah leadership -- Nasrallah used to be the organisation's
military commander in southern Lebanon -- thought carefully through
the effects of their border crossing, relying on the cruelty of Israel's
response to quell any criticism of their action within Lebanon. They
were right in their planning. The Israeli retaliation was even crueller
than some Hizbollah leaders imagined, and the Lebanese quickly silenced
all criticism of the guerrilla movement … Then came [Hizbullah’s]
Haifa missiles and the attack on the [Israeli] gunboat. It is now clear
that this successful military operation -- so contemptuous of their
enemy were the Israelis that although their warship was equipped with
cannon and a Vulcan machine gun, they didn't even provide the vessel
with an anti-missile capability -- was also planned months ago”
(July 16, 2006).
“Now to the Department
of Home Truths. Mr Siniora [Lebanon’s prime minister] did not
mention the Hizbollah. He did not say he had been powerless to stop
its reckless attack on Israel last week. He didn't want to criticise
this powerful guerrilla army in his midst which had proved that Syria
still controls events in this beautiful, damaged country” (July
21, 2006).
“Of course, the Hizbollah
have brought catastrophe to their coreligionists” (July 26, 2006).
“The Hizbollah has
been waiting and training and dreaming of this new war for years, however
ruthless we may regard the actions” (July 27, 2006).
“So fierce has been
Hizbollah's resistance -- and so determined its attacks on Israeli ground
troops in Lebanon -- that many people here no longer recall that it
was Hizbollah which provoked this latest war by crossing the border
on 12 July, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others
… And do the Israelis realise that they are legitimising Hizbollah,
that a rag-tag army of guerrillas is winning its spurs against an Israeli
army” (Aug 5, 2006).
“The Hizbollah have,
for years, prayed and longed and waited for the moment when they could
attack the Israeli army on the ground (Aug 14, 2006).
“It was Nasrallah's
men who crossed the Israeli border on 12 July, captured two Israeli
soldiers, killed three others and thus unleashed the entirely predictable
savagery of the Israeli air force and army against the largely civilian
population of Lebanon” (Sept 2, 2006).
The implications of these
comments are serious, and deserve to be set out clearly and transparently
by a reporter who consistently makes them. And yet Fisk has not produced
any evidence, let alone reasoned argument, to suggest that Syria, through
Hizbullah, planned a war that would offer Israel the chance to destroy
Lebanon. I am not saying Fisk is wrong, but I would like to know the
basis for his grave claims.
What makes his comments all
the more strange is that Fisk seems to be at least aware that, quite
unrelated to the capture of the two Israeli soldiers, Israel had planned
its assault on Lebanon for some time:
“Israel itself, according
to reports from Washington and New York, had long planned its current
campaign against Lebanon -- provoked by Hizbollah's crossing of the
Israeli frontier, its killing of three soldiers and seizure of two others
on 12 July” (Aug 14, 2006).
“According to Seymour
Hersh in The New Yorker, Israel's attack had also been carefully planned
-- and given the ‘green light’ by the Bush administration
as part of its campaign to humble Iran. I think Hersh is right”
( Sept 2, 2006).
So who then is really to
blame for “starting” this war?
After hearing an address
by Nasrallah on Lebanese TV, Fisk is particularly incensed by Nasrallah’s
“hypocritical” comments that he would never have launched
his operation to capture the Israeli soldiers had he predicted Israel’s
brutal reponse. Fisk’s outrage seems overstated -- and stands
in opposition to his observation (cited above) that Israel’s attack
“was even crueller than some Hizbollah leaders imagined”.
The reason for Nasrallah’s
comments are not difficult to divine. After the destruction inflicted
by Israel, doubtless he feels under pressure to distance himself from
the catastrophe that has befallen his nation. Isn’t that what
politicians -- everywhere and at all times -- do?
But Fisk is equally enraged
by Nasrallah’s other, more serious (and partially inconsistent)
claim about the war: that Hizbullah knew Israel and the US were looking
for an excuse to attack Lebanon and believed it was better to catch
them off guard so that Hizbullah could fight at a time of its own choosing.
Even though, as we saw above,
Fisk appears to agree with this interpretation of events, he again lambasts
the Hizbullah leader for hypocrisy: “I think both sides planned
this, and a hint came in another part of Nasrallah's breathtakingly
hypocritical address. ‘In any case,’ he said, ‘Israel
was going to launch a war at the start of this autumn and the degree
of destruction then would have been even greater.’ Well, thanks
for telling me, Hassan” (Sept 2, 2006).
Surely, after the apparent
inconsistencies in Fisk’s own commentaries over more than a month
of reporting, his readers deserve a profounder summation of his views
than this. How and why did two hostile sides -- Syria, and Israel and
the US -- both plan a war, much at the same time, whose outcome was
the certain destruction of Lebanon?
We can speculate about Israel’s
interests in doing this. It may have hoped to provoke a civil war in
Lebanon, much as it is trying to do in Gaza, to weaken its neighbor.
It may have believed that by terrifying the general Lebanese population
from the south, it could permanently reoccupy the area. It may also
have hoped that, if it were winning such a war, it could drag in Syria
and Iran.
But why would Syria want
Lebanon destroyed? A fit of pique at being expelled from Lebanon last
year according to US designs for a Cedar Revolution? Is that Fisk’s
conclusion?
And how does Hizbullah fit
into this picture? Is Fisk telling us that Hizbullah is the simple puppet
of Syria -- much as pro-war commentators say Hizbullah is controlled
by Iran? Did Hizbullah will the destruction of Lebanon too?
Most noticeable is that,
in constantly castigating Hizbullah for “starting” the war,
Fisk entirely ignores the background to the confrontation: that Israeli
war planes and spy drones were almost daily violating Lebanese air space
and sovereignty, as well, of course, as the issues of Lebanese prisoners
in Israeli jails, Israel’s refusal to hand over the maps of the
minefields it laid during its two-decade occupation, and its continuing
refusal to negotiate over the land corridor known as the Shebaa Farms.
These central issues -- taken
together with the persuasive accounts that Israel and the Pentagon had
been planning an attack on Lebanon for at least a year -- make Fisk’s
implied claims that Syria and Hizbullah started the war to provoke Israel
into destroying Lebanon look misleading at best.
A separate factor may help
to explain how Fisk’s judgment may have been clouded. He often
mentions in passing his close relations with the family of the late
Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, who was killed by a car bomb more
than a year ago that was widely blamed on Syria. Hariri, a millionaire
Sunni businessman, was responsible for much of the private investment
in Lebanon that led to its reconstruction and which Israel has now destroyed.
Fisk, rightly, lays the main
blame for the damage to Lebanon’s national infrastructure -- and
the deaths of more than 1,000 civilians -- at Israel’s door. But
he owes it to his readers to be much clearer about how and why he thinks
Syria and Hizbullah conspired to offer Israel the chance to wreak such
destruction. It’s time for Fisk to tell us the whole story.
Jonathan Cook
is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood
and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is published
by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net