Robert Fisk: Slaughter in Qana

[IndianaGreen]

This is really an entire week's worth of Robert Fisk wartime reporting. I strongly urge you to go to the link provided and read Fisk's account for the entire week.

Robert Fisk: Slaughter in Qana

In his weekly dispatch from the front line, our veteran war reporter witnesses the aftermath of a massacre

Published: 06 August 2006

I turn on the television, and there is Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's boss, threatening Israel with deeper missile penetrations if Israel bombs Beirut. I listen to Israel's Prime Minister, saying much the same thing in reverse.

I call these people the "roarers", but I leaf through my tatty copy of King Lear to see what they remind me of. Bingo. "I shall do such things I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth." Shakespeare should be reporting this war.

Saturday, 5 August

Lots of stories about a massive Israeli ground offensive, which turn out to be untrue. The UN in southern Lebanon suspects that Israel is manufacturing non-existent raids to pacify public opinion as Hizbollah missiles continue to fly across the frontier. But a friend calls to tell me that Hizbollah might be running out of rockets. Possibly true, I reflect, and think of all the bridges which haven't yet been blown to pieces.

More gruesome photographs of the dead in the Lebanese papers. We in the pure "West" spare our readers these terrible pictures - we "respect" the dead too much to print them, though we didn't respect them very much when they were alive - and we forget the ferocious anger which Arabs feel when these images are placed in front of them. What are we storing up for ourselves? I wrote about another 9/11 in the paper this morning. And I fear I'm right.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1215967.ece

[TomInTib]

1. Robert Fisk - one for the ages

I cannot even begin to be competent enough to describe my respect - hell, adulation - of this man.

If our foolish leaders had taken ten minutes to seriously listen to this man and take his advice to heart and action, this would be a far, far better place.

[nealmhughes]

4. My God! He's been "Our man in Beirut" since forever!

Why didn't Downing Street give him a ring a few years ago?

His updates to Amy Goodman every morning or so on Democracy Now are absolutely thrilling. I wish they were boring, you know, about the Lebanese government installing a new sewage plant in Baalbek...

[EFerrari]

2. From the "things you never want to know" dept and so needed.

K&R

[neweurope]

3. k & r

I admire Robert Fisk. A war reporter who gets to the truth by writing about people, individual fates. He's the best.

------------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[Briar]

5. Further into the article:

"Electricity back, and I torture myself by watching CNN, which is reporting this slaughterhouse as if it is a football match. Score so far: a few dozen Israelis, hundreds of Lebanese, thousands of missiles, and even more thousands of Israeli bombs. The missiles come from Iran - as CNN reminds us. The Israeli bombs come from the United States - as CNN does not remind us."

[sasha031]

6. Fisk is the best there is

I am so grateful he has survived, he is always the true source reporting from a war zone.

The 1st time I reade him he was in the middle of the shock and awe mascara.