Talk by Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent for The Independent (UK) and author of "The Age of the Warrior: Selected Essays by Robert Fisk" given September 26, 2008 at Seattle Public Library.
Golda Meir, the former Israeli premier, claimed the Palestinians did not exist Some people will do anything to avoid blame
Robert Fisk
15 January 2011
The Independent
I am no happy reader of Canada's National Post, but am driven to report to you that a recent graph in the paper suggests that "the term 'Palestinian' became popularised as a marker of identity after the Six Day War of 1967".
Since Jordan had long ago annexed the Arab West Bank and since Israeli prime minister Golda Meir once claimed that Palestinians did not exist, I guess that makes sense. But it does seem a bit much that we get to recognise a Middle Eastern people only when the victims have been occupied by someone else's army. After all, we recognised the French for centuries before the 1870 Franco-Prussian war. And while it might be said that the Goths, Ostrogoths and Visigoths didn't get much of a look-in until the Romans invaded Germania, no one in Italy doubted that Gauls existed before Vercingetorix.
But wait. The National Post, another journalistic flagship for the Israeli state in a foreign land, doesn't quite say what it appears to say. The term Palestinian, you will notice, wasn't "recognised" after 1967. It was "popularised". And it was "popularised" not as a "national identity" but as a "marker of identity". This may be due to the ignorance of what is to be found on Google (whence the paper appears to have sucked this tosh) or to its own gutlessness. But you get the point. After 1967, the Palestinians came to be "popularised" as Palestinians in the same way, I suppose, as Walt Disney "popularised" Mickey Mouse. Of course, being "popularised" didn't make him real. It's a new way of using language – not to manipulate in order to lie, but to hide behind it in order to avoid personal responsibility or say things which may provoke others to call you racist, anti-Semitic, uncultured or, an old favourite of mine, "pre-judgemental".
Indeed, as your Middle East correspondent swoops around the world, trying to write reports in decent English, I bring you other bad news from the snowy wastes of urban Canada. I have, for example, just opened my copy of the Toronto Star to discover how a city police officer – a certain Detective Paul Lentsch, whose name must surely now become indispensable to all semanticists – wanted to express his feelings about a probable arson attack. A resident of the burnt-out building, the paper suggested, may have been involved in contract killings in the US. But here comes Detective Lentsch's arrival in linguistic history. "We've put a lot of time into this house this month," he announced. "It's concerning." It's what? Let's have that again. IT'S CONCERNING. Well, blow me down. I always thought to "concern" was a transitive verb that took a plain old-fashioned object. But what is the object here? "It" – ie the burnt-out house – or the reader who perhaps should be "concerned"? But certainly not Detective Lentsch. If he had any feelings on the matter, he would surely have said "I am concerned", although even that might be regarded as a somewhat mild reaction to an arson attack. But nope, our favourite detective simply didn't want to express a personal opinion about crime.
Same goes, incredibly, for the Toronto Star's music critic when it comes to, well, music. Murray Perahia's performance of Brahms's piano music on CD is greeted by critic John Terauds with these words: "Veteran American pianist Murray Perahia compels with crisp, purposeful playing." Yes, but what is he "compelling", for God's sake? Again, to "compel" is a transitive verb. It needs an object. Is it us who are "compelled"? Or Mr Terauds? More likely, Mr Terauds doesn't want to commit himself. No personal views please.
And since corrupted English travels west to east across the Atlantic, let's take a look at the Quebec government's "family minister" Yolande James, who has just banned religious instruction in child daycare centres. Christmas trees are OK, even nativity scenes – providing the kids aren't told the identity of the baby in the manger. Bing Crosby is OK. "Silent Night" is not. Canadian Jews and Muslims are equally offended.
But hark to Ms James's message. "All questions touching the transmission (sic) of faith – that is, teaching religion itself – do not belong (sic) within the publicly funded daycare system." Ho hum. Religion, it seems, is something that can be passed on, caught, a disease that might infect others. The transmission of Aids, for example, certainly doesn't belong to daycare centres. But religion? And note the "belong". This "transmission" cannot "belong" because it might become a part of school. Culture's great. God's out. But I loved the fact that Ms James was so conscious of her own gobbledegook that she had to explain that "transmission of faith" actually meant "teaching religion". Call Detective Lentsch at once.
But there's no stopping this stuff. Prince Edward Island, hitherto a quiet Canadian Atlantic province, was described in a 1999 government report as suffering from "a strong cultural norm of 'sameness'". Down, readers, down, I know how you feel. Those Canadians in PEI were all bloody whities, weren't they? Wretched descendants of Anglo-Scots-Irish ancestry. But relax, all is OK. Because now, according to Kathy Hambly, director of a local chamber of commerce, "every street you walk down offers a different ethnic experience". The key words, of course, are "street" and "experience". Immigrants tend to settle in areas together – streets rather than homes – while their presence gives us an "experience", something culturally good, no doubt.
I am a strong supporter of Canada's multi-ethnic society. What gets me is the happy-clappy way in which these government apparatchiks force their multiculturalism on the world at the cost of destroying the English language. I shall end with the worst of all recent linguistic crimes. My old letter-writing chum Max Pieper brings to my attention the outrageous attempt by a liberal Jewish writer, Ilan Gur-Ze'ev to diminish the importance of the Jewish Holocaust in order to explain Palestinian suffering. I give you this key paragraph – do not ask me to explain this, for I have no idea what it means – as an example:
"The Holocaust is not merely a historical episode. It is first and foremost an expression of the fundamental histories of experience taking place in the dialectic between Eros and Thanatos, which we duplicate in an ecstasy that has been domesticated to a state of smug 'normality'."
O reader, this does not compel. But call Detective Lentsch. It's concerning.
The brutal truth about Tunisia Bloodshed, tears, but no democracy. Bloody turmoil won’t necessarily presage the dawn of democracy
Robert Fisk
Monday, 17 January 2011
The Independent
The end of the age of dictators in the Arab world? Certainly they are shaking in their boots across the Middle East, the well-heeled sheiks and emirs, and the kings, including one very old one in Saudi Arabia and a young one in Jordan, and presidents – another very old one in Egypt and a young one in Syria – because Tunisia wasn't meant to happen. Food price riots in Algeria, too, and demonstrations against price increases in Amman. Not to mention scores more dead in Tunisia, whose own despot sought refuge in Riyadh – exactly the same city to which a man called Idi Amin once fled.
If it can happen in the holiday destination Tunisia, it can happen anywhere, can't it? It was feted by the West for its "stability" when Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was in charge. The French and the Germans and the Brits, dare we mention this, always praised the dictator for being a "friend" of civilised Europe, keeping a firm hand on all those Islamists.
Tunisians won't forget this little history, even if we would like them to. The Arabs used to say that two-thirds of the entire Tunisian population – seven million out of 10 million, virtually the whole adult population – worked in one way or another for Mr Ben Ali's secret police. They must have been on the streets too, then, protesting at the man we loved until last week. But don't get too excited. Yes, Tunisian youths have used the internet to rally each other – in Algeria, too – and the demographic explosion of youth (born in the Eighties and Nineties with no jobs to go to after university) is on the streets. But the "unity" government is to be formed by Mohamed Ghannouchi, a satrap of Mr Ben Ali's for almost 20 years, a safe pair of hands who will have our interests – rather than his people's interests – at heart.
For I fear this is going to be the same old story. Yes, we would like a democracy in Tunisia – but not too much democracy. Remember how we wanted Algeria to have a democracy back in the early Nineties? Then when it looked like the Islamists might win the second round of voting, we supported its military-backed government in suspending elections and crushing the Islamists and initiating a civil war in which 150,000 died. No, in the Arab world, we want law and order and stability. Even in Hosni Mubarak's corrupt and corrupted Egypt, that's what we want. And we will get it.
The truth, of course, is that the Arab world is so dysfunctional, sclerotic, corrupt, humiliated and ruthless – and remember that Mr Ben Ali was calling Tunisian protesters "terrorists" only last week – and so totally incapable of any social or political progress, that the chances of a series of working democracies emerging from the chaos of the Middle East stand at around zero per cent. The job of the Arab potentates will be what it has always been – to "manage" their people, to control them, to keep the lid on, to love the West and to hate Iran.
Indeed, what was Hillary Clinton doing last week as Tunisia burned? She was telling the corrupted princes of the Gulf that their job was to support sanctions against Iran, to confront the Islamic republic, to prepare for another strike against a Muslim state after the two catastrophes the United States and the UK have already inflicted in the region.
The Muslim world – at least, that bit of it between India and the Mediterranean – is a more than sorry mess. Iraq has a sort-of-government that is now a satrap of Iran, Hamid Karzai is no more than the mayor of Kabul, Pakistan stands on the edge of endless disaster, Egypt has just emerged from another fake election. And Lebanon... Well, poor old Lebanon hasn't even got a government. Southern Sudan – if the elections are fair – might be a tiny candle, but don't bet on it.
It's the same old problem for us in the West. We mouth the word "democracy" and we are all for fair elections – providing the Arabs vote for whom we want them to vote for. In Algeria 20 years ago, they didn't. In "Palestine" they didn't. And in Lebanon, because of the so-called Doha accord, they didn't. So we sanction them, threaten them and warn them about Iran and expect them to keep their mouths shut when Israel steals more Palestinian land for its colonies on the West Bank.
There was a fearful irony that the police theft of an ex-student's fruit produce – and his suicide in Tunis – should have started all this off, not least because Mr Ben Ali made a failed attempt to gather public support by visiting the dying youth in hospital.
For years, this wretched man had been talking about a "slow liberalising" of his country. But all dictators know they are in greatest danger when they start freeing their entrapped countrymen from their chains. And the Arabs behaved accordingly. No sooner had Ben Ali flown off into exile than Arab newspapers which have been stroking his fur and polishing his shoes and receiving his money for so many years were vilifying the man. "Misrule", "corruption", "authoritarian reign", "a total lack of human rights", their journalists are saying now. Rarely have the words of the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran sounded so painfully accurate: "Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again." Mohamed Ghannouchi, perhaps?
Of course, everyone is lowering their prices now – or promising to. Cooking oil and bread are the staple of the masses. So prices will come down in Tunisia and Algeria and Egypt. But why should they be so high in the first place?
Algeria should be as rich as Saudi Arabia – it has the oil and gas – but it has one of the worst unemployment rates in the Middle East, no social security, no pensions, nothing for its people because its generals have salted their country's wealth away in Switzerland. And police brutality. The torture chambers will keep going. We will maintain our good relations with the dictators. We will continue to arm their armies and tell them to seek peace with Israel. And they will do what we want. Ben Ali has fled. The search is now on for a more pliable dictator in Tunisia – a "benevolent strongman" as the news agencies like to call these ghastly men.
And the shooting will go on – as it did yesterday in Tunisia – until "stability" has been restored. No, on balance, I don't think the age of the Arab dictators is over. We will see to that.
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A pretty depressing read, but sadly probably very true.
The suffering of Sderot - how its true inhabitants were wiped from Israel's maps and memories The people of Huj - now almost forgotten - had helped the Jewish Haganah army escape the British. The thanks they got was to be sent into Gaza as refugees
Robert Fisk
24th November 2012
source and comments
I think I found the village of Huj this weekend – but the road sign said “Sederot”. The world knows it as Sderot, the Israeli city where the Hamas rockets fall. Even Barack Obama has been there. But Huj has a lot to do with this little story. By my map calculations, it lies, long destroyed, across the fields from a scruffy recreation centre near the entrance to Sderot, a series of shabby villas on a little ring road where Israeli children were playing on the Shabat afternoon.
The inhabitants of Huj were all Palestinian Arab Muslims and, irony of ironies, they got on well with the Jews of Palestine. We have to thank the Israeli historian Benny Morris for uncovering their story, which is as grim as it is filled with sorrow.
Huj’s day of destiny came on 31 May 1948, when the Israeli Negev Brigade’s 7th Battalion, facing an advancing Egyptian army, arrived in the village. In Morris’s words, “the brigade expelled the villagers of Huj … to the Gaza Strip”.
Some thanks
Morris elaborates: “Huj had traditionally been friendly; in 1946, its inhabitants had hidden Haganah men from a British dragnet. In mid-December 1947, while on a visit to Gaza, the mukhtar (mayor) and his brother were shot dead by a mob that accused them of ‘collaboration’. But at the end of May, given the proximity of the advancing Egyptian column, the Negev Brigade decided to expel the inhabitants – and then looted and blew up their houses.”
So the people of Huj had helped the Jewish Haganah army escape the British – and the thanks they got was to be sent into Gaza as refugees. According to Morris, three months later the three headmen from the nearest Jewish kibbutzim even complained about the treatment of their former neighbours to David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister. He wrote back: “I hope that the HQ will pay attention to what you say, and will avoid such unjust and unjustified actions in the future, and will set right these things in so far as possible with respect to the past.” But Ben Gurion did not instruct the new Israeli army to allow the villagers of Huj to return.
The following month, they pleaded to go back. The Israeli Department of Minority Affairs noted that they deserved special treatment since they had been “loyal”, but the Israeli army decided they should not go back. So the Palestinians of Huj festered on in the Gaza strip where their descendants still live as refugees.
But the present day Sderot, writes the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, was built on farmland belonging to another Palestinian Arab village called Najd, its 422 Muslim inhabitants living in 82 homes, growing citrus, bananas and cereals. They shared the same fate as the people of Huj. On 12 and 13 May 1948, the Negev Brigade of the Israeli army – again, according to Morris – drove them out. They, too, were sent into exile in Gaza. Thus did the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, as another Israeli historian, Illan Pappé, calls it bluntly, wipe from history the people who farmed the land on which Sderot would be built.
Irony
You can see Huj and Najd on Munther Khaled Abu Khader’s reproduced map of Mandate Palestine. Sderot was founded in 1951 but Asraf Simi, who arrived there in 1962 and later worked in the local library, knows nothing of this. She shrugged her shoulders when I asked about them. “We didn’t hear anything about Arabs around here. My uncle came near the beginning, around 1955, and was living in a tent here – and we all thought this would be one of the most modern cities in Israel! I’m not frightened – but I’m not happy about the ceasefire. I think we should have gone in there to finish it all forever.”
Another irony. Asraf Simi was born in Morocco and learned Moroccan-accented Arabic before she left for Israel at the age of 17. And she does not know that today, in the squalor of Gaza, live well over 6,000 descendants of the people of Huj. Thus does the tragedy of the Palestinian Nakba – the “catastrophe” – connect directly with the Israelis of Sderot.
That is why they cannot “finish it all forever”. Because the thousands of rockets that have fallen around them over the past 12 years come from the very place where now live the families that lived on this land. Thus does Sderot have an intimate connection with a date that President Obama may have forgotten about when he came visiting: 1948, the year that will never go away.
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