Robert Fisk on Gaza

— Text published 30 December 2008 —

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Robert Fisk's latest articles concern Gaza:

• Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored (29.12)

• Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony (30.12)

• The self delusion that plagues both sides in this bloody conflict (31.12)

• The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act (1.1)

• What's in a name? Quite a lot, where the military is concerned (3.1)

• Keeping out the cameras and reporters simply doesn't work (5.1)

• Bring in the peacekeepers? It's not as easy as it sounds (6.1)

• Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask (7.1)

• Wherever I go, I hear the same tired Middle East comparisons (10.1)

• When it comes to Gaza, leave the Second World War out of it (17.1)

• So, I asked the UN secretary general, isn't it time for a war crimes tribunal? (19.1)

• Posturing and laughter as victims rot (20.1)

The current war in Gaza [2008] is justified by Israel as a nation's right to defend itself. Fisk does not deny this right to Israel, but object, as usual, to the way Israel reacts. He makes a small comparison to the conflict in Northern Ireland and makes a good point:

But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.

Another small comparison concerning the bombing of the UN schools:

Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas.

Another point Fisk is making, and has been making for several years, is ‘the simple fact is that Palestinian deaths matter far less than Israeli deaths.’

Fisk's analysis and views are well known to anyone who has read any of his articles or books. He is not afraid to say what he really means and is a refreshing voice in troubled sea of Mid East news. In the first two articles he is simply saying that the bombing of Gaza will not solve anything and that after this current crisis ‘we will be facing the next crisis since the last crisis.’