Robert Fisk on Israel: The Obama Years: A unique anthology of reporting and analysis of a crucial period of history

147 Pages·2014·0.9 MB·English

by  Fisk

Robert Fisk on Israel:
The Obama Years
Robert Fisk
Published by Independent Print Limited Copyright © Independent Print Limited 2014
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Robert Fisk
on
Israel:
The Obama Years No journalist has chronicled the
tragedies of the Israelis and the Palestinians so
exhaustively, so authoritatively - or so controversially -
as Robert Fisk, the Independent’s correspondent in the
region for 25 years. No US president has entered the
White House carrying so much hope of peace and
progress in the region as Barack Obama. Yet how much
has the Nobel prize-winning icon of reconciliation
actually delivered, halfway through his second term of
office? And how much objectivity has the world’s media
brought to its coverage of his Middle-Eastern initiatives?
This unique anthology of six years of reporting and analysis allows you to re-
examine a crucial period of history by following it episode by episode, through
the ferociously clear-sighted eyes of one of the great foreign reporters of our
times.
Based on decades of first-hand experience of the Holy Land’s troubles and
intrigues, it is a saga of cruelty, betrayal, complacency, selfishness, missed
chances, broken promises – and inextinguishable hope.
Passionate but unprejudiced, outspoken but free from spin, this collection should
be considered essential reading for anyone hoping to understand what has really
happened in Israel (and the occupied territories) since 2008.
2008
7th of June 2008
THE WEST’S WEAPON OF SELF DELUSION
SO they are it again, the great and the good of American democracy, grovelling
and fawning to the Israeli lobbyists of American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(Aipac), repeatedly allying themselves to the cause of another country and one
that is continuing to steal Arab land.
Will this ever end? Even Barack Obama - or "Mr Baracka" as an Irish friend of
mine innocently and wonderfully described him - found time to tell his Jewish
audience that Jerusalem is the one undivided capital of Israel, which is not the
view of the rest of the world which continues to regard the annexation of Arab
East Jerusalem as illegal. The security of Israel. Say it again a thousand times:
the security of Israel - and threaten Iran, for good measure.
Yes, Israelis deserve security. But so do Palestinians. So do Iraqis and Lebanese
and the people of the wider Muslim world. Now even Condoleezza Rice admits -
and she was also talking to Aipac, of course - that there won't be a Palestinian
state by the end of the year. That promise of George Bush - which no-one
believed anyway - has gone. In Rice's pathetic words, "The goal itself will
endure beyond the current US leadership."
Of course it will. And the siege of Gaza will endure beyond the current US
leadership. And the Israeli wall. And the illegal Israeli settlement building. And
deaths in Iraq will endure beyond "the current US leadership" - though
"leadership" is pushing the definition of the word a bit when the gutless Bush is
involved - and deaths in Afghanistan and, I fear, deaths in Lebanon too.
It's amazing how far self-delusion travels. The Bush boys and girls still think
they're supporting the "American-backed government" of Fouad Siniora in
Lebanon. But Siniora can't even form a caretaker government to implement a
new set of rules which allows Hizbollah and other opposition groups to hold
veto powers over cabinet decisions.
Thus there will be no disarming of Hizbollah and thus - again, I fear this - there
will be another Hizbollah-Israeli proxy war to take up the slack of America's
long-standing hatred of Iran. No wonder President Bashar Assad of Syria is now
threatening a triumphal trip to Lebanon. He's won. And wasn't there supposed to
be a UN tribunal to try those responsible for the murder of ex-prime minister
Rafiq Hariri in 2005? This must be the longest police enquiry in the history of
the world. And I suspect it's never going to achieve its goal (or at least not under
the "current US leadership").
There are gun battles in Beirut at night; there are dark-uniformed Lebanese
interior ministry troops in equally dark armoured vehicles patrolling the night-
time Corniche outside my home.
At least Lebanon has a new president, former army commander Michel Sleiman,
an intelligent man who initially appeared on posters, eyes turned to his left,
staring at Lebanon with a creditor's concern. Now he has wisely ordered all these
posters to be torn down in an attempt to get the sectarian groups to take down
their own pictures of martyrs and warlords. And America thinks things are going
fine in Lebanon.
And Bush and his cohorts go on saying that they will never speak to "terrorists".
And what has happened meanwhile? Why, their Israeli friends - Mr Baracka's
Israeli friends - are doing just that. They are talking to Hamas via Egypt and are
negotiating with Syria via Turkey and have just finished negotiating with
Hizbollah via Germany and have just handed back one of Hizbollah's top spies
in Israel in return for body parts of Israelis killed in the 2006 war. And Bush isn't
going to talk to "terrorists", eh? I bet he didn't bring that up with the equally
hapless Ehud Olmert in Washington this week.
And so our dementia continues. In front of us this week was Blair with his
increasingly maniacal eyes, poncing on about faith and God and religion, and I
couldn't help reflecting on an excellent article by a colleague a few weeks ago
who pointed out that God never seemed to give Blair advice. Like before April
of 2003, couldn't He have just said, er, Tony, this Iraq invasion might not be a
good idea.
Indeed, Blair's relationship with God is itself very odd. And I rather suspect I
know what happens. I think Blair tells God what he absolutely and completely
knows to be right - and God approves his words. Because Blair, like a lot of
devious politicians, plays God himself. For there are two Gods out there. The
Blair God and the infinite being which blesses his every word, so obliging that
He doesn't even tell Him to go to Gaza.
I despair. The Tate has just sent me its magnificent book of orientalist paintings
to coincide with its latest exhibition (The Lure of the East: British Orientalist
Painting) and I am struck by the awesome beauty of this work. In the 19th
century, our great painters wondered at the glories of the Orient.
No more painters today. Instead, we send our photographers and they return with
pictures of car bombs and body parts and blood and destroyed homes and
Palestinians pleading for food and fuel and hooded gunmen on the streets of
Beirut, yes, and dead Israelis too. The orientalists looked at the majesty of this
place and today we look at the wasteland which we have helped to create.
But fear not. Israel's security comes first and Mr Baracka wants Israel to keep all
of Jerusalem - so much for the Palestinian state - and Condee says the "goal will
endure beyond the current American leadership". And I have a bird that sits in
the palm tree outside my home in Beirut and blasts away, going "cheep-cheep-
cheep-cheep-cheep" for about an hour every morning - which is why my
landlord used to throw stones at it.
But I have a dear friend who believes that once there was an orchestra of birds
outside my home and that one day, almost all of them - the ones which sounded
like violins and trumpets - got tired of the war and flew away (to Cyprus, if they
were wise, but perhaps on to Ireland), leaving only the sparrows with their
discordant flutes to remind me of the stagnant world of the Middle East and our
cowardly, mendacious politicians. "Cheep-cheep-cheep," they were saying again
yesterday morning. "Cheap-cheap-cheap." And I rather think they are right.
2nd of August 2008
NEW ACTOR ON THE SAME OLD STAGE
IF OBAMA IS ELECTED HE WILL BE ENMESHED IN THE MIDDLE
EAST TRAGEDY AND FORCED TO TAKE SIDES
I was in the studios of al-Jazeera - the Qatar satellite channel so democratic in
the eyes of Colin Powell that Bush later wanted to bomb it - while Barack
Obama was performing his theatricals in the Middle East. "Theatre" is what I
called it on air while the anchor desperately tried to suck some Arab hope out of
the whole ridiculous fandango. No such luck, I told him. It isn't going to make
the slightest difference to the Arabs whether Obama or McCain wins.
Westerners believe that Obama appeals to the Arabs because of his middle name
or because he's black. Untrue. They like him - or liked him - because he grew up
poor. Like them, he understood - or rather, they thought he understood - what
oppression was about. But they quickly found out where they stood in the food
chain. Forty-five minutes in Ramallah vs 24 hours in Israel was the Obama
equation. Yes, I know the old saw. Every US presidential candidate has to make
the pilgrimage to the Wailing Wall, to Yad Vashem, to some Israeli town or
village that has taken casualties (albeit minuscule in comparison to those visited
upon the Palestinians), to talk about Israel's security, etc. That doesn't mean, we
are always told, that Israel is going to have it easy once the US president is
elected. Wrong. Israel is going to have it easy. Because no sooner is he elected
than he will be enmeshed in the Middle East tragedy and be forced to take sides -
Israel's, of course - and then it will be time for the next election, so the
president's hands will be tied again and he'll be talking about Israel's security
(rather than Palestinian security) and we'll be back on the same old itinerary.
It's like the Lebanese, who keep believing that a Labour government is better
than a Kadima or a Likud government in Israel; a clever idea, but - whoever runs
Israel - the bombs keep falling on Lebanon. It's not that US presidents shouldn't
understand the immensity of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust - it's a pity
the Arabs still won't acknowledge it - but the Second World War is over and,
right now, Israel continues to build colonies for Jews and Jews only on Arab
land. Of course, Obama made the usual references to Jewish settlements not
being helpful to peace, just as Gordon Brown did a few days earlier. And the
Israelis showed what they thought of both men by announcing further colony-
building within 24 hours of Obama's departure.
But hasn't anyone realised that Obama has chosen for his advisers two of the
most lamentable failures of US Middle East policy-making? There, yet again, is
Dennis Ross, a former prominent staff member of Aipac, the most powerful
Israeli lobby in America - yup, the very same Aipac to which Obama grovelled
last month - and the man who failed to make the Oslo agreement work. And
there is Madeleine Albright who, as US ambassador to the UN, said that the
price of half a million dead children under sanctions in Iraq was "worth it", and
who later announced that Israel was "under siege". This must be the only time -
ever - that a US politician thought Palestinian tanks were on the streets of Tel
Aviv.
But this dreary old stage play doesn't end there. No one follows the narrative any
more because it is so repetitive. Take Nouri al-Maliki, the PMIGZ - Prime
Minister of the Iraqi Green Zone - who's suddenly gone from being the
Democrats' favourite target to being their election buddy-buddy, as Max Boot
sagely noted in The Washington Post. Maliki suggested to Obama that Iraq will
be ready to assume responsibility for its own security by 2010. Bingo. This
chimes in perfectly with Obama's promises.
But wait a minute. In May, 2006, Maliki announced that "our forces are capable
of taking over the security in all Iraqi provinces within a year and a half". Five
months later, the PMIGZ said that it would be "only a matter of months" before
Iraqi security forces "take over the security portfolio entirely and keep some (sic)
multinational forces only in a supporting role". Then in January, 2007, Maliki
boasted that "within three to six months our need for the American troops will
dramatically go down".
Four months later, he was at it again, claiming that Iraqi forces would control all
security "in every province" within eight months. Quite apart from the idea that
there is a security "portfolio" in Iraq, his own military chums don't agree with
any of this bumph. The PMIGZ's own defence minister claims his forces can't
assume responsibility until 2012, while the Iraqi commander in Basra wants US
troops to stay until 2020!
Even if we ignore all this drivel, what does Obama want to do with his soldiers
once he withdraws them from Iraq? He's going to send the poor devils back to
Afghanistan, that graveyard of foreign armies where the Taliban were so utterly