Robert Fisk

Palestinian, intellectual, and fighter, Edward Said rails against Arafat and Sharon to his dying breath

Robert Fisk 25 September 2003

The last time I saw Edward Said, I asked him to go on living. I knew about his leukaemia. He had often pointed out that he was receiving “state-of-the-art” treatment from a Jewish doctor and - despite all the trash that his enemies threw at him - he always acknowledged the kindness and honour of his Jewish friends, of whom Daniel Barenboim was among the finest. Robert Fisk remembers Edward Said. 

The human cost - 'Does Tony have any idea what the flies are like that feed off the dead?'

Robert Fisk 26 January 2003

On the road to Basra, ITV was filming wild dogs as they tore at the corpses of the Iraqi dead. Every few seconds a ravenous beast would rip off a decaying arm and make off with it over the desert in front of us, dead fingers trailing through the sand, the remains of the burned military sleeve flapping in the wind. “Just for the record,” the cameraman said to me. Of course. Because ITV would never show such footage. The things we see — the filth and obscenity of corpses — cannot be shown. First because it is not “appropriate” to depict such reality on breakfast-time TV. Second because, if what we saw was shown on television, no one would ever again agree to support a war. Robert Fisk writes in The Independent. 

How to shut up your critics with a single word

Robert Fisk 21 October 2002

Thank God, I often say, for the Israeli press. For where else will you find the sort of courageous condemnation of Israel’s cruel and brutal treatment of the Palestinians? Where else can we read that Moshe Ya’alon, Ariel Sharon’s new chief of staff, described the “Palestinian threat” as “like a cancer – there are all sorts of solutions to cancerous manifestations. For the time being, I am applying chemotherapy.” The Independent’s Robert Fisk continues on to note that meanwhile, mere criticism of Israel outside the country gets you labeled an “anti-Semite”.