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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Robert Fisk in Wonderland

There is a very good reason that the term "fisking" exists: Robert Fisk remains committed to his own special brand of lies.

Here are three from his speech at the Muslim Public Affairs Council convention last December (published today by WRMEA):
IN HIS DEC. 16 address to the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s (MPAC) sixth annual convention, held at the Long Beach Convention Center, journalist Robert Fisk cited two major changes since he first was assigned to the Middle East in 1972.

“Muslims are no longer afraid of the Israelis,” stated the Independent correspondent who is regarded as the foremost journalist writing on the Middle East. “In 1982, when the Israelis dropped flyers telling them to flee the invading Zionist army, they ran away. This summer, when the same message was dropped from the sky, they laughed and stayed.”

The second change, he said, is that while in the past different Mideast militias fought each other, now, he stressed, all the region’s armed forces are against the West.

Discussing the conference held earlier that week in Tehran, Fisk said it would have been far wiser for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad to acknowlege, rather than deny, the Holocaust, then say, “Yes, yes, six million Jews were foully murdered, and it’s true—but we didn’t do it.”

Over and over again, the Arabs are blamed for the Holocaust,” Fisk said, alluding to right-wing Israelis who bring up the Jerusalem Grand Mufti’s meeting with Nazis prior to World War II.

Here's how The Guardian reported on the Lebanese laughing at Israeli leaflets and staying:
A massive refugee flight from southern Lebanon was under way yesterday as tens of thousands of mainly Shia civilians took to the roads after almost a fortnight of relentless Israeli attacks...Refugees described gruelling journeys from the besieged city of Tyre and the towns and villages south of the Litani river, where some 300,000 people were ordered to evacuate by leaflets dropped late last week from Israeli aircraft.
Sounds like a comedy club!

Even more ludicrous is the idea of unity among Middle East Muslim militias in the face of the Sunni-Shiite and Hamas-Fatah fighting, not to mention the fear of Iran by most Arab states.

Finally, nobody blames the Arabs for the Holocaust - there was certainly some cooperation between many Arabs and the Nazis but the Holocaust is not a product of the Arabs. His assertion that Arabs are blamed "over and over again" is simply the product of a deranged and unhinged mind where truth and fantasy freely intermingle.