Strange New Respect List, Take 1

Juan Cole
Robert Fisk
Barack H. Obama

Candidate Member

Frank Rich

Fisk on Nazi Analogies

My admiration for Robert Fisk is growing. Here's his piece on WWII analogies and their misuse in the context of Israeli-Arab confrontation. Excerpt:

I have long raged against any comparisons with the Second World War – whether of the Arafat-is-Hitler variety once deployed by Menachem Begin or of the anti-war-demonstrators-are-1930s-appeasers, most recently used by George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara. And pro-Palestinian marchers should think twice before they start waffling about genocide when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem once shook Hitler's hand and said – in Berlin on 2 November 1943, to be precise – "The Germans know how to get rid of the Jews... They have definitely solved the Jewish problem." The Grand Mufti, it need hardly be added, was a Palestinian. He lies today in a shabby grave about two miles from my Beirut home.

No, the real reason why "Gaza-Genocide" is a dangerous parallel is because it is not true. Gaza's one and a half million refugees are treated outrageously enough, but they are not being herded into gas chambers or forced on death marches. That the Israeli army is a rabble is not in question – though I was amused to read one of Newsweek's regular correspondents calling it "splendid" last week – but that does not mean they are all war criminals. The issue, surely, is that war crimes do appear to have been committed in Gaza. Firing at UN schools is a criminal act. It breaks every International Red Cross protocol. There is no excuse for the killing of so many women and children.

Yet More Strange New Respect

Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.

Who said this? Robert Fisk, of all people.

I've adopted the net neologism "to Fisk," as here.

I've begun to read the man, a British reporter who lives in Lebanon and knows that country well. He's compassionate, passionate, and if he has a bias, it's against atrocity. He has few illusions about any of the players.

But then, even at my advanced age, this Gaza misadventure has opened my eyes, and is rapidly destroying whatever residual respect and affection I had for Israel.

Read, as the saying goes, the whole thing.