Conversations with History: Robert Fisk

[Music] you welcome to a conversation with history I'm Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies our guest today is Robert Fisk who is the Middle East correspondent for the independent newspaper of Great Britain he has lived in the Middle East for almost three decades and holds more British and international journalism Awards than any other foreign correspondent he's the author of pity the nation a history of the Lebanon War and most recently the great war for civilization the conquest of the Middle East Robert Fisk is visiting Berkeley to speak at a meeting of Mecca Mecca is the Middle East Children's Alliance and is committed to protecting and advocating for the rights of all people especially children mr. Fisk's welcome to Berkeley thank you very much where we born and raised at a town called Maidstone in Kent southeast England about 30 miles from London my father was a local city accountant borough treasurer my mother was the daughter of local cafe owners my dad came from the north of England much older than my mother he was a soldier in the First World War my mum joined the RAF in the Second World War my father was too old to fight I was born in 46 just after the war was over and in looking back how do you think your parents shaped your thinking about the world well a lot when I was 10 my father mother took me on my first trip abroad which is to France and my father wanted to go back to the psalm and find the places where he'd fought and of course almost died and to find the house which he spent his first night of peace in on November the 11th 1918 he did find the house and he didn't walk in he was too shy I went back later with a film crew many many years later and knocked on the front door and the grandmother the granddaughter of the old lady who looked after him was still living there so he introduced me to the history of the 20th century the terrible 20th century and I grew up as a little boy at home listening to the radio news which my father would listen to every morning which was usually about news of British colonial withdrawal wars in Cyprus Kenya Stein the the constant trips went back to France my father went back again again to the Western Front and he went to eat when he went to veld now the colossal terrible French German battle and by the time I went to school I knew that the Archduke Ferdinand's assassination had begun the First World War I knew that the Second World War began in 39 that Germany invaded France in 1948 I'd listened to the speeches of Churchill so my father's almost obsession with war not another healthy way but certainly in quite sometimes a disturbing way a huge picture of Churchill sitting in Downing Street photograph hung gloomily over our fireplace year after year only after he died my mother asked if I thought it was cruel to take it down I said that no take it down put up a put up a watercolour of a river in Kent you know and and so I mean I became they're interested in history my father was fascinated by books and history so but why didn't you become a historian it's still what do you think this year is yeah I'm doing my best look as a journey yet at a certain point you decide to become a foreign correspondent no I tell you what it was yeah I think that if you're a foreign correspondent you are a kind of historian yeah what made me become a journalist at the age of 12 we have black and white television at home and once a week it showed a movie the rest of time was boring plays and concerts you wouldn't want to listen to and one afternoon on Sunday they showed Hitchcock's creaky old slightly humorous paranoid movie foreign correspondent in which Joel McCrea is an American reporter Humphrey Haverstock who was sent off from New York just before the beginning of the Second World War and he uncovers the top Nazi agent in London is chased by the Gestapo through Holland witnesses a political assassination is shot down by a German pocket battleship over the Atlantic and lives to not only file a scoop to New York but wins the most gorgeous woman in the movie and I thought aged 12 this sounds like yeah this sounds like I wouldn't mind having this life of course it didn't actually turn out to be quite like that but the fact of the matter is that this was the film that made me believe that to be a foreign correspondent would be a very adventurous and exciting life I didn't realize it could be such a depressing or dangerous life in movies of course the hero always lives I think one of the tragic things about journalism is a lot of my colleagues have died because they arrived in wars with no experience except Hollywood and thought the hero would live and of course that's not always the case but that was a film that struck me and after that my father wanted me to be a doctor he wanted me to be a lawyer one of the professions and in despair one afternoon he invited one of those fake uncle's we always have a family friend was good Uncle Tom Uncle Tom arrived I said well there are a lot of fake uncle's around he said Robert if you were a law court and you saw the lawyer making his case before the judge and you saw the reporter in his green eyeshade which would you want to be and I said the reporters no doubt I was about 14 and he turned to my father and said well your son is going to be journalists so what sort of education did you pursue before you hit the ground running unfortunately it's not that simple I went to English public school which in England means private school of course which was a brilliant at teaching Latin extremely brutal I got beaten for reading a book on Czech history at a football match Czech history being much more interesting than English football I went to my first University I did my BA in Latin and linguistics at the University of Lancaster in the north of England I'd already started working because I didn't think I was going to get a university place on a local paper in Newcastle upon time which was a tough drunken seaport coal mining area in the northeast of England I in started working on after my degree on the Sunday Express in London running the diary column where I was chasing Lord Mayor's would run off with starlets it wasn't bad as with training for covering the Middle East and asking nasty questions of politicians American and British and actually I then joined The Times went to Northern Ireland the London times before Murdoch took it over and destroyed its integrity and I went to northern for for five years as a correspondent my first conflict a real one but nothing compared to the colossal bloodbath I've covered and witnessed in Bosnia Algeria Middle East there was a stoppage on the x for your trade union management stoppage during which time I actually started doing and completed a PhD at Trinity College University of Dublin and that PhD was modern it was actually politics but it was political science but the subject was Irish neutrality in the Second World War which enabled me to go through a lot of German British World War two papers which once again renewed my interest in that and at the same time gave me a very critical historical background for the Middle East because of course so much of Middle Eastern history that I'm watching results as a direct result of my father's First World War Treaty of Versailles and the Second World War the Jewish Holocaust the creation of the State of Israel so in a way these university education plus my father's memories and upbringing gave me a quite horrifying view of the 20th century in which of course I was I was born in the first half the 22nd I'd have to add that my father was born in 1899 so I can say that my father was born in the century before last and there's not many six-year-olds can say that by the way but anyway I think there was this sort of combination came together so that back in the Middle East I'd already been in the Middle East before I did my PhD I I suddenly found that I had this kind of literary historical interest that was locked into me my PhD became a best-selling book in Ireland on Irish history and it's still ready in schools so in fact I still lecture in Ireland on modern Irish history as dr. Fisk the academic not Robin Vista foreign correspondent and for that reason I I think I began to see more in my work than I've ever seen before I don't mean in what I was writing but what I was witnessing and seeing and as the years went by and I switched to the independent from the times the independent just begun it's a bright new left-of-centre paper and a paper which very fortunately for me as an editor and always had litters who believe that they should print what the journal is right not what they own or once the owner wants the Juris to write what he was - which is a wonderful sort of magical situation that let us hope it always remains that way but that's basically what happened that was my upbringing an entry into journalism and that unlike most correspondence I had the good fortune or immense misfortune depending on your point of view to stay in the same area doing the same job in British newspapers we don't have this American tradition of sending a reporter there for three years and then just when he's begun to get the contacts understand the language in the history they move him someone else it has to start all over again I'm against this system I think it it allows you to know everything about nothing and nothing about everything and to smear journalists with the old line oh he's gone native his rubbish you don't go native in a war zone is far too dangerous so I've ended up and I'm still and I'm all just over 30 years actually in based in Beirut I think it would be interesting for our audience which is both the public and students to kind of get the same thing on well yes you're making this very snobby academic thing about how the students a little bit different to quote ordinary members of the public no I actually was trying to say that the interview is actually used for courses but that in fact both the undergraduates and the public need things explained in ways that academics often don't Lou do we call them we call them burritos yeah yeah well but but readers academics use jargon then unfortunately to do and so the purpose here is to meet these these dual needs anthropologists use the sick language to exclude people from the discourse yes again I've written about the message from Beirut I should say to our audience and I like to show the book Chalmers Johnson once criticizing me for not showing the book enough I want to show your book again your book is is a beautifully written it read you could have you could be a novelist but you're actually on the ground so I think it's important to for our audience to explore you know what's involved in doing what it's full of footnotes and references right bibliography I mean it's fully academic reference yes yes but so I'm not being critical but I'm so I guess I want to ask you what are the skills required do you think to do what you do if somebody wants to imitate them first of all don't try to do what I do because it's a dangerous lonely life unless you and it can be a very depressing life believe me and there was a former Sunday Times Middle East correspondent who tragically died in the 1973 war he was killed on frontline on Golan and he once wrote with bitter irony and great humor that all you need to be as a foreign correspondent is have a few facts a possible knowledge of English and wet like cunning and unfortunately it's one of the reasons I laugh always at this has a good deal of truth I think what you have to do and it's something that my editors have let me do and if they didn't that wouldn't work for them is you've got to feel passion you've got to read read war and peace it's an extraordinary book about the reality of war I remember in Sarajevo being with a Russian soldier within the UN force under fire with him shells are falling rounds and we were discussing Tolstoy's description of the Battle of Borodino and how it was exactly the same as what we're in now you've got to read Anna Karenina about lost love and betrayal you've got to read novels about the First World War you've got to read well one poetry be fascinated always carry history books in your back pocket I mean I read and read all day sometimes 18 hours a day I work sometimes 25 hour days hard work being a foreign correspondent but I think you've got to be able to write with passion and you've got to have the freedom to write angrily and to point out the bad guys if I see a massacre I don't hesitate to say who's done it and why I think they did it am i editor who assignment calendar who's my little out the independent he describes our newspaper as a views paper and he wants his correspondence out there on the front line saying what it's like and saying who the bad guys are and usually it turns out they're all bad maybe the reporter is too but certainly most of them most of the you know I remember once ed Cody of the Washington Post who was then on the AP still looking in Peking for the post now he was taking me around Lebanon for my first battle in the Civil War in 1976 and he said Bob a lot of tell people tell you this rate is a right of the Syrians right or Palestinians a ride or the Christians are right of them Muslims arrive in Lebanese said believe me they're all bastards and of course you can take lots of this ease with that but what he was trying to say was there's no good guys in war mmm and he's right the wrong yeah you know all this stuff movies give you the idea that war is about victory defeat heroism and Canada's it's not war it's primarily about the total failure of the human spirit it's about death and the inflation of death hmm and if you don't realize that you'll die you know what you only will forget Hollywood yeah one of the things that really stands out in your work is that you go to places where a few people dare to go and you listen and you see and then you write that's the excitement of journalism and writing that's the excitement of watching history as it happens if you're going to spend your time at presidential press conferences off-the-record briefings with embassies ambassadors defense attache 'he's right worthy analysis calling up hopelessly boring people in what I call dink thanks in Washington or New York or London right dear journalists you can live in County Mayo or Denver and do that how you don't know with a mobile phone and internet which I don't use actually birth a different matter now you don't need to do going with it it seems to me that our only role at the moment is to be out there on the street in the battlefield with soldiers with civilians in hospitals particularly and record the suffering of ordinary people and talk to them I find a colleague of mine Australian came back from southern Lebanon the other day very moved she said people had just lost their daughter who died in a cluster bomb left over from the Israeli invade and she City but people who spoke with such nobility you know and I see a lot of nobility and ordinary people I'm not really interested I mean I'm interested in why people go to war why Bush went to war before the Iraq war I because I travel say it's a lot to give lectures I chose I was at Harvard on September 12 when Bush gave his General Assembly lecture on the worthlessness in a nation and I didn't believe there was going to be an invasion of Iraq I couldn't believe and my editor didn't believe it but my final is a day and I went down to the United Nations I'm accredited to you and so when I've sat very close to Bush I'd never seen him in the flesh before TV gives us flat land in brush and I saw bush and there was a kind of I remember what the Iranians always referred to the and I never believed understood it they wise always talked about the arrogance of power the people of the United States of America always looked some sizes of two cubes of course and I realized he's going to get a war he's going to do it and I walked out the General Assembly and call up and a bell telephone through the land I said Leonard I'm sorry I was wrong there's going to be a war then by pure chance I was back in the States lecturing on the East Coast when Colin Powell made his famous February 5th statement in the Security Council so I went out a UN again in New York back this time into the Security Council and again astonishing there was tenant sitting like Ernest Borgnine you know old black-and-white after behind Collier or no no no no yeah yeah okay yeah gangster was a cigar and he just look a bit like bullying actually turn and from the corner he didn't see us on television in came little Jack Straw our foreign secretary in a massive power suit and he looked around caught sight of Colin Powell and ran with his little feet man got his big American hug you know it told you a lot about power and help and why Blair does what Bush wants you know and then Cohen power started producing this again you had to be there on the scene watching on television was not good enough and the first thing that they showed up was this big artist's impression Colin Powell told us that the Iraqis we're now using mobile chemical weapons laboratories bit difficult with the test tube on the train right it was a picture of a creme of the cross-section and a scientists in a long white coat humming it sets to moving cause of course right and this was supposed to be the mobile weapons lab you see I look to this I thought hang on a minute whoever drew this in the State Department Pentagon has never been on Iraqi state railways they come off the track all the time with sanctions the railway line is no good you couldn't possibly ever even the basic sigh system was wrong and then they had some quotes from a Republican Guard allegedly talking to another on a phone intercept in which once and whatever you do don't let them see this and the reply was consider it done sir now nobody actually gave us the opportunity which I would love to read but I just watched this I said this is forgive me the stuff that comes on reread of Apple this is rubbish yes rubbish and I wrote the next day that the New York Times will take this in its usual sober way and sure enough it did with Judith Miller decided on weapons of mass destruction American journalism but you had to be there to have a confidence to say it's not right mm-hmm and analyze it with you being that you know a few meters from power rather than just sitting in London and watching it on a silo of sitting in Beirut and watching on satellite TV so it's being there is what's important I can't be there I don't wanna be a general this as you describe your work and you're doing it so well it strikes me that it's time to ask you about the the American awful way of saying it is mission statement but let's say as a journalist and I think mission stuff okay well but but but what is your goal in what you do because I think it's about critiquing power on the one hand which you've just done but it's also about I think from what you just said empathy with the with the people who are really suffering right consequence I go into a hospital or a ruined building in Lebanon and I see children with their hands chopped off and I see things that would make you puke every morning and then I sit in Beirut I turn on my television I see our own dear Lord Blair of course of Amara as I call him well we can only absolutely have a ceasefire when we're sure that that ceasefire will hold and I know he's lying what he means is that Bush doesn't want to ceasefire yet because he wants the Israelis to have more time to beat the Hezbollah therefore more children are going to be shrieking in hospitals but they don't care about that their experience of war is television there isn't a single Western cabinet minister anywhere in the Western Hemisphere the Western world that's ever experienced war now amazing when I grew up we had on the prime minister to bring that Eden Churchill at leader being first and second world was when I first worked in Northern Ireland the first Secretary of State was William white law had been in the crossing of the Rhine invasion of Germany 4445 Ali does not just take it all off Hollywood bring him on wasn't it Bush said but yeah the split was his farm which movie you know today it's our leaders who are that way but it's also our soldiers because they're playing computer game before they go to war yeah but once they're in the war I can tell you that they play the computer games with a different frame yeah mine I talk to American troops in Iraq I mean I talk to French troops in southern level I took two soldiers as well but again yes it's seeing this suffering on this scale and sometimes you know the family are standing by the bed of a dying child and they round on me you know probably Who I am you don't care you know I got beaten up by a gang of Afghans in a village just after 2001 9/11 on the border their families are all being killed in b-52 strikes and they attack me with stones and banging rocks into my face was very bad I was very close to being killed and I wrote in the paper you know if my family being killed by b-52 and I was an Afghan I probably do the same Robert fist doesn't forgive them or excuse them but I understand it you know and you see this terrible suffering this monumental crimes against humanity let's speak frankly that's what we are talking about we've all committed them not just al-qaeda we all committed crimes against humanity and that I think that if you don't report it people won't know I mean I always say in a rather arrogant way as I think I've come to realize that we can tell you what's happening don't ever say no one told you don't say you didn't know add to that and this is in the book and I know you've interviewed Amira Hass very fine Israeli journalist view on what our job is or should be should be it isn't necessary a foreign correspondence that our job is to monitor the centres of power to challenge authority all the time all the time all the time especially when they go to war and they're going to kill people and lie about it and the sad thing is that we largely don't do that you only have to watch the press conferences mr. president mr. Brett mr. president yes but yes Julie yes John you know this osmotic parasitic relationship between journalism and power particularly the United States but it implies in Europe and especially in Britain in Europe is very painful to watch because the questions are like can you give us some more information general about how many of your men were involved rather can you explain why three children have been brought in dead and we've seen the videotape and your men were there you know the totally but that the hugging close to power you watch American television the State Department correspondent the White House correspondent the Pentagon crew the basic basically spokesman or spokespersons as your lights colors bugs women there no more journalists than the official spokesman for the State Department or the President or the White House this glomming a cross of journalism into power I saw it very clearly actually in 1990 when American troops were gathering in Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War the first Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from Saddam and the funny thing was lots and lots of journalists were turning up especially for America Midwest guys who'd never been abroad before in military costume one guy turned up from actually Denver wearing shoes with camouflaged leaves on kind of flat Valley no seriously I mean if you've seen a desert even in a picture you'll know that there aren't an awful lot of trees you know but the funny thing was to that you know I go out in the desert and you know I wasn't embedded it I just drive up to American troops of British troops and they talked to me because he loved me and they would tire they were wet and they had food poisoning all the time I always bring piles of newspapers to give them and packets of cigarettes and you know and they'd talk and they were all writing they were trying to write poetry one guy in an Abrams tank had worked at a huge board game about flying between planets and knowing when they could refuel a spaceship it was of course about being a tank crew man in a desert not knowing begin to resupply of fuel as I quickly realized and these were quite literary people a British guy was trying to write poetry wasn't very good but he was trying and it suddenly dawned on me that all the soldiers wanted to be journalists and all the journalists wanted to be soldiers there's something there which was very dangerous getting loose looking at your career as it has evolved over the 30 years and covering all these wars to talk a little about how it did the work has changed you do you yeah you're writing become better was there one certificate and it was it because it was at the commitment to what you were doing that and you had so much to tell no more it was it was because what I was seeing was so terrible that it gave me an absolute determination to write more freely mm-hmm to tell it how it is in the best tradition of American journalism as opposed to the worst traditions which we see now you know I was thinking the other day actually as I was flying here from Beirut couple of days ago I was thinking of something Seymour Hersh told me I like her she's a mate of mine we don't see much because we talked on the phone occasion I've met him of course and he said you know there's no kudos in American newspapers these days breaking a big story that's going to be controversial they want safe journalism and he said yeah I was a street reporter in Chicago he said and I started off as a street reporter and he coastal online I understand exactly what he meant and I think that's a problem an awful lot of journalism in the east coast of America now you know it's graduate school journalism maybe degrees in journalism which don't count I mean degree in English history or multix yes but not journalism and you know I I was very struck by this the fact that reporters are supposed to be obedient now look at the reporting of the West Bank you know where you journalist American journalist keep referring to occupied territories disputed territory where the wall is called a fence where a colony is called a settlement or neighborhood you know or an outpost we're constantly the de cemento sizing of war to make it safe journalism so you won't be called controversial heavens pay of someone falsely accuses you of being anti-semitic and this kind of journalism breeds its own sort of internal laziness you know it's also very lethal because if a public is presented with a picture of the Middle East in which their offenses and disputes offense like the bottom of your garden the dispute which you can sew over a glass of what a cup of tea in a court case then the use of violence becomes generically valent it becomes mindless and the simplest in Ian's for example may throw stones or whatever become people of generically violent generically violent people when in fact if there are walls and if the people occupying your own land keeping it I'm against violence for all reasons or whatever but at least you can understand what it means so we DISA mantas eyes and make war more lethal in the same way as television for example will not show you the worst scenes that we see I remember once a crew coming back from Basra in the Iraqi American War not embedded I mean they were in the Iraqi side of the line and they came back to Baghdad with terrible pictures kid it's hand blown off a woman's shrieking with shrapnel sticking out of her stomach and they sent these pictures across to London to the Reuters Bureau another and I remember this haughty voice coming back we can't show these pictures don't even bother to send anymore you know will you have people puking at breakfast time we wait this is pornography you see and then the worst quote of all he said I remember his words I read about it from Baghdad you know he said you know we've got to show respect for the dead and I thought bloody well don't show any respect for them when they're alive but when they're in bits we've got to respect their bodies haven't spare me you know I always say to people I on the road near Basra in 91 I saw women as well as soldiers and civilians old men being torn apart by British bombs actually as well as Americans and dogs were tearing them to pieces to eat it was lunchtime doesn't I tell you if you saw what I saw you'd never support a war again but you won't show it on television and by not showing that on television we present the world with a bloodless sandpit we pretend war is not that bad it's surgical always surgical strikes surgery is a place where you're cured in hospital not where your motors are killed on apartment and thus we make it easier for our leaders our generals our Prime Minister's our presidents to sell us war and for us to buy into war and then go along with it and that makes us lethally culpable and potentially war criminals in a very moral sense of the word so in a moral sense I should say so this this lack of vision about war what war is really about is conducive to the changes in military strategy which says what we can do it all by computer we can go into a place like a rack you know and bomb the place and then leave immediately so there is a there's a a fit between what's happening in the culture and the kind of war American leaders at least one yeah I mean the culture of journalism in war hasn't changed an awful lot I mean reporters during World War two I mean with Western armies were pretty much on site and why not we we all knew we wasn't allowed there were knew that Hitler's was an evil wicked terrible regime but they were able to sell to tell quite a lot about the blood and the splintered bones and the civilians that it got out just as across the concentration camps the his termination camps when they liberated rightly got out but pictures you see film cameras were not the same then Vietnam was undoubtedly a turning point you did see a lot of blood and gore in Vietnam not as much as it was but you saw it became a political problem for that exactly yeah and rightly so now the problem now is that at the end of the day television will not push any limits we've got to have access we gotta have pictures we got have pictures and that the other day every time every time television journalists cruise companies have been confronted by the military saying you may not you will not they said we got to we'll get a high court Ric will go to the chordal of freedom and they cave in and they do what the military want and the middle she know they're gonna do what they want at the moment it's almost impossible to travel anywhere in Iraq and the American military is very happy with that we can't investigate the bombing of villages we can't go to Helmand province in Afghanistan because we'd be killed my colleague Patrick Coburn of the independent wrote a very finely finely written piece in the paper my paper go there the independent you said you know that the worst thing about listening to Tony Blair say that things are getting better in Iraq is that if we went there where we could prove him wrong we would have our throats cut because it's getting worse is it but he can say cuz we don't go that it's getting better see yeah you know and and but no I mean I I think that the culture of not covering war correctly has gone right along but you'll always find a way around it if you want to if you want to I don't have a camera well I carry a stills can I still use real film by the way I'm not digitalized yet then I don't use the email or the Internet but I can I could wangle my way and talk my way and I know enough people in that region to get what I want to get it is looking at your extraordinary career I want you to look back and extraordinary actually it's pretty depressing the well it's to be but it's extraordinary in in the comparison to what many many reporters cover these situations if they cover them at all but I'm curious was there where was there one event one war one incident one village destroyed where you did a second take in and it brought you to a new level of understanding yeah and what my cetera the massacre at supper Shatila okay in September 16th to 18th 1982 when Israel's phalanges Christian Lebanese allies were sent into the camp and massacred up to 1,700 Palestinians I got into the camp with an American and Norwegian colleagues a colleague and the murderers were still in the camp you still had the shooting and we found piles of bodies we had to climb over them on our hands and these corpses rotting in the Sun and we should explain to our audience if this was the Israelis allowing the Christian Lebanese cause they said the Christian that English isn't yeah they sent them in to destroy Palestinian terrorists yeah there weren't any men in the calculus and what was terrible about it as the Israelis later disclosed in their official account is that the Israelis watched this happen and did nothing mm-hmm and I was very struck by this because when I was in the camp I could see the Israelis watching and doing nothing mm-hmm they saw and they did nothing and I remember once I ran with my American colleague we heard the murderers coming down the street and we ran into the back of this houses backyard of this house and he closed the door gentian waited hoping they wouldn't find us because we thought that it's going to kill us to where witnesses and I looked down on the left hand side of my eye and I saw this young woman lying on her back with a head up towards the Sun the hands spread out with a halo of clothes pegs around her head she'd been putting out the washing and for behind her back was running this ants track of blood across the yard she'd just been murdered as we came through the backyard the murders were obviously leaving through the front door I remember watching this woman thinking she'll get up she'll get up and say I've got a pain my back she was dead of course and I remember that night I I went back to the AP Bureau in those days we had telex those old machines with tapes you had to fire a sterile oven it was a Saturday and we didn't have a Sunday paper on the times then I didn't have to file to the next day and i sat there absolute distraction this had happened I'd never seen killing on this scale this cruelly watched by a civilised army and I wrote that night with a freedom of anger and passion I'd never felt before because there were victims on massive scale very fine Israeli writer later compared it to the istari killings in Bosnia in the Second World War which the Germans watched that wasn't saying the Israelis were Germans which is rubbish they're not but that's what he compared it to and I remember watching the AP bureaus phone calls came in from New York what can you really call this a massacre I remember saying to the editor of AP and I was working from his bureaus it when as a mass chram war against you my crime against humanity and when doesn't trust you make a massacre are you really getting involved in this haven't you seen the pictures and the picture out of a people say I can't believe this you know this is war crime a war crime is producing my dirty pictures out of an envelope you know and I remember discussing afterwards particularly with American television reporters they were using first video tape then across footage it was very difficult there to take the videotape to Damascus have its satellite up too it wasn't just having a little machine there's this and we all agreed that we now have a freedom to speak about the Middle East Wars and to speak about Israel which we never had before later of course a new generation of journalists came and many of them went back to reporting things the old way where you had to talk about you know disputed instead of occupied and fences instead of walls whatever but that's what changed me after that I remembered distinctly people telling me my mother it was still alive than my father mother dead now that you really write quite differently now and quite a lot of my colleagues did to David Hurst of the Guardian I notice the way his writing changed and became harsher and became much more passionate and intense and I believe journalist should be this business where all we've got to give 50% of the story to one side and 50% to the other to be quote impartial absolute rubbish we should be partial we should say who the bad guys are we should denounce the Syrians when they commit murder in hammer and the Iraqis when they gassed people and the Israelis when they Massacre refugees on the roads of southern Lebanon you know if we were covering the slave trade would we give equal time to the slave ship captain no we talk to the slaves wouldn't we if we were present at the liberation of a Nazi extermination camp do we give equal time to the spokesman for the SS forget it we talk to the survivors and talk about the victims when I was in Jerusalem in August of 2001 that's when a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a pizzeria full of women and children I went and wrote about the children I saw dead in front of me Israeli children of course I didn't give half my story to the Islamic Jihad spokesmen you know a same established illa I didn't write about the IDF I wrote about the victims so we should we should have a sign it should be a moral side to us okay we may get it run occasionally but if we're not going to write like that what the hell's point of being there and taking the risk and sending a correspondent all over the world you know I mean I give you my perfect example of what's wrong with journalism at the moment the degree to be safe and quote someone else Patrick Coburn my colleague again was in Baghdad he was on the balcony of his broom and bullets flying around outside there are all the time that one's the hell disaster and he saw an American colleague crawling out on his balcony putting up his Sat phone and talking on it he thought my god that must be an exclusive story to take that kind of risk using I think I came back in the room and later that evening he said by the way that was very courageous of you to take that risk what the hell were you finally although he said I was reading the Brookings Institute I needed a quote about what was happening in Iraq yep that's what's wrong with American journalism that's what's wrong with American journals that's what's wrong with journalism . actually i should say you know we're talking about other generals the French are very good at getting to the scene and reporting the reality I know France doesn't have a very clean reputation in American politics amount but by goodness they've got good journalists you read translation of liberal figure low lumo and they've got that I work a lot with French I don't I normally work on my own but if I work with other reporters I tend to work with the Italians or the French because my goodness they get to the war front your book begins with your three interviews with Osama I can have to live with this guy of some have been loving for the rest of my life I know that yeah but but I guess you know there's a lot in them and so on but but I would just like for you to looking back to comment on those interviews because I as I read them in the book I I think they awakened you to what was coming even though you didn't know why I I don't think they awakened me as much as I think they do now or did he are you going you can look back in the reflection of what you know later happened for example in the interview the last interview I did with him prior to 9/11 just what these have all would have been in the 90s base effects crew one in the Sudan so you wanted to see me in Afghanistan after 9/11 I tried to get to him yeah but the Taliban people were taking me were frightened of the bombs in front of us America storming the Taliban who's supposed to go to heaven if they die as martyrs didn't want to die but I was saying we got sick I've I was the one who was saying well they were supposed to demonstrate anyway we didn't make it so yes it was 97 and he said to me we were on the top of a mountain in one of his training camps built originally of course by the CIA in fighting the Russians and he said mister Robert from this mountain upon which you're sitting we destroyed the Soviet Army in the Soviet Union we destroyed the Russians which was a hell of an exaggeration but had a certain truth to it it was the destruction of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan that led to the fall of Soviet Union you know free Russia ever more quotes around the word free at the moment and then he said and I pray to God that he permits us to turn America into a shadow of itself I remember the pictures of Twin Towers falling when Manhattan was a shadow of itself and in the margin when I got the notebooks to write this book I found out I had written the actual notebook I had opposite bin Laden I'd written rhetoric question like well yes hollow laughter certainly I've gone back and I went again recently through my notes I've kept everything I got three hundred and twenty eight thousand pictures files photographs tapes notebooks clippings photocopies and I find that several times before 9/11 I wrote in the independent in one occasion quite brought a stop to a television program in CBC in Toronto any in broadcasting by saying talking about the explosion to come I made a movie on real film for cinema but also for channel 4 and Discovery Channel in 1993 in which I actually walk into a burning mosque in Bosnia and my squads on the soundtrack were when I see things like this I remember the place where I work the Middle East when violence is committed there we call it mindless terrorism but when I see things like this I wonder what the Muslim world has in store for us maybe I should end each of my reports with the words watch out and for this book I went back through all the clips that we still have the celluloid film clips and we went into that mask on September the 11th 1993 mm-hmm eight years too early but we got it right the New York Times condemned this series by the way it's being sensationalist so yes we I mean you didn't have to meet bin Laden if he lives in the Middle East and you spent your time with ordinary people not with embassy officials means you knew something was coming you knew something was coming it's going to happen again it's gonna happen again I have a trick question for you and that is since these are the trick questions on you don't yeah I don't know but but I guess the question is this because of you is I just go through your book I mean two figures stand out Sharon and Osama bin Laden and they stand out and my father stands up well yeah my father's all the way through the beat I didn't realize it yeah no I'm sorry I I but I want to put his own quiet about it these are two men who've really shaped this history in the time that you're writing and I'm curious what how would you compare them because both have done really awful things I would say that our fact is in there very strongly outcomes over very very badly in my book yeah so what is now alle fact comes over is extremely corrupt person almost painted worse than Saddam was saying other Saddam comes another yeah yeah I find all these people very sinister that's what I were okay yeah alright sinister yeah and of course there's there's no point in avoiding the fact that when you meet a sinister person you want to get out your screwdriver and unplug the computer and find out what happens inside it you know and I think it comes down to a question of can you use words like evil and wicked mmm-hmm I've met people in the Lebanese civil war ordinary government who get drugged up who enjoy torture who've raped and enjoyed it and they're bad people I don't know if they're a formable equally after the war I've seen them again met their little children who've played with my pussycat on my balcony you have to admit their humanity even though they have none mm-hmm I find that the greatest sin of people over and above their individual crimes is their absolute self conviction Chiron had it has it well if he's still with us you couldn't possibly I mean when I talked with bin Laden I tried constantly to debate with him you can debate with the Hezbollah leadership you can debate with nasrallah off a lot of these people actually you could debate the Saddam oddly enough not with our fact if I had complete sawfish bin Laden you couldn't have a serious discussion with he knew what was right and he knew he was right and I have to say sometimes reading through all my notes of my meetings there were some parallels with george w bush mmm-hmm right and wrong them are us they hate us because of our values our democracy in a sort of mirror faint parallel horrific way it does reflect the kind of language of a summer bin Laden who is equally absolutely adamant but in bin Laden's case he doesn't have a people who can dis elect him and there isn't a stop off point after the second run in your book you know you talk about the sense of history which got from your father you just to quote you here you say after the Allied victory of 1918 at the end of my father's war the victory divided up the lands of their former enemies in the space of just 17 months they created the borders of Northern Ireland Yugoslavia most of the Middle East and I have spent my entire career in Belfast and Sarajevo in Beirut and Baghdad watching the people within those borders earn and so my question is where do you find these people you've just described the Ben Laden's you know make muck essentially in this world so where is or do you find that outrageous we created it right but then do where do you find the good is it in the little people who you listen to who you watch sufferance in those people who lost their daughter who showed so much nobility it's in the family under fire in their home under Israeli artillery fire who run into the road and grab me and pull me into their sitting room so I can lie on the floor with them and avoid being killed didn't have to do that mmm-hmm and they're not my religion well I don't know if I have a religion but I'm certainly not theirs yeah you know I'm living among a people who have maintained their faith when we Westerners have not in fact as we've lost it mmm-hmm that's the the famous Arnold poem they'll cease long withdrawing roar the Victorian poem about the loss of faith we don't appreciate these things we don't read history they do they remember it very clearly I think that I think the good is only in those little people you know I'm always aroused to anger by hearing journalists talking about the effect of war on them you know can they cope how do they come to terms that do any counseling as is nonsense the only people who matter were the people who can't leave the country we can get a plane out club class and have a glass of champagne these people have prior passports they have to live and die there with their families yeah these are good people they don't deserve what happening to them I mean I must admit when I finished writing this I was overwhelmed by the conviction of how I was amazed at the restraint that Muslims have shown towards us over the last 90 years amazed that we haven't had more 9/11 but we will have more again I mean we're I'm sure he'll happen in London again you know the days when we could go abroad and have foreign adventures Korean War Vietnamese war and no Vietcong never came to Washington block the State Department no North Korea never turned up on the London tubes they'd gone forever the new strategy of war is that we are not going to be safe in San Diego or Colorado glass to share northern France Berkeley we're not safe anymore and we have to accept that if we're going to have these foreign adventures if this is going to be our ideological future you know melih Bush at one point said that we may have the war on terror may last forever internal what is this nightmares to frighten schoolchildren we have to stand up against it I mean I keep saying to people you know we keep being told 9/11 changed the world forever and that allows us to have torture chambers and breaking the rules we set down for human rights after the Second World War well Bush allows that time I will not let 19 Arab murderers change my world nor nor should you nor should Bush have allowed them to I sense when you look at the sweep of this history that that we we the West the US are often foisted by our own petard that our actions leash a yeah we said in motion I mean we had Juan Cole on the program and I noticed he made the point that you make in your book that we helped create the Iranian nuclear program under the Shah yeah you know that the Israel the the Israelis at one time I think supported Hamas when they thought they were and also so-called opponent to the peel and so is this is this just our fate as mankind look you know Jay I think you know I'll join those who say it's too simplistic always to blame the West mm-hmm I live among Muslims my drivers are Muslim my landlords are Muslim my crushes Muslim you know I live in the Muslim world I have to say I don't consciously think about it and nor do they with me these are my fellow human beings these are people I risk my life with they risk their lives with me or whatever I didn't think about really if their relatives do I go and of course they have a Muslim funeral I'm then but I don't think about going to asked me doesn't mean anything to me personally in the sense it doesn't mean I'm moving across any we're moving towards you know I think that the problem for us is that we are the most powerful people these are the people who've kept their faith the Muslims these are the people who still permit and allow and wish religion to trickle and run like water through their blood mains and their lives as we used to until perhaps the Renaissance in Europe and afterwards we can be puritanical in religion we can be you know we can find God at cetera et cetera but as a civilization in the West we have lost our faith and the irony is that we have lost our faith have the power to impose ourselves upon people who have not lost it while people who have kept the faith do not have the physical military or political power to defend themselves that is the true nature when people talk about the war of civilizations which is a total cliche er not true I don't have I'm not involved in a war of civilizations I don't see the war of civilizations though again there are people who would like one so I think it's it's really a question of understanding that you know sometimes I think the Western world and the Eastern world are very jealous of each other we profess to think that the Muslim world goes wants to return to the Middle Ages but I find lots of people from the Orientalists onwards are fascinated by men you have four wives sometimes I think that a lot of Westerners would like to have four wives and they're very jealous they can't you see at the same time and this will sound quite cruel at the same time I meet a lot of Arabs were very interested in the way we have our freedoms whether they be social freedom sexual freedoms in the West sometimes I think they're quite jealous of us for having a freedom socially which they don't have sometimes I think rather like the journalists who want to be soldiers and the soldiers want to be journalists the Muslims would like to be the West vice versa you know we do regret I think in some ways that we don't have a faith I remember my father once asking me if I was frightened of dying and I said you bet he said that's because you have lost your faith and I said dad I never had any mm-hmm never had me yeah now you know one of many ways we can critique we us possible what is just about a particular thing which I often read in your former colleague and Lebanon Tom Friedman scums where where are Tom Friedman yes we're the frontier of committed criticism of the present regime here yeah yep where are the moderates in in the Islamic world you know this is this is one of them I mean virtually ISM no right I understand it so I've talked a little about that in other words but first of all I should tell you Tom Freeman is an old friend of mine so I have dinner with him at Dupont Circle in Washington from time to time but he really is becoming messianic he probably wants to be the secretary of state and at the moment and I read him because I know it's outrageous I will laugh for the love where are the moderates look we're all moderates if we want to be you know we divide people up into doves and hawks more cliches and moderates and they're moderates or whatever radicals and fanatics fundamentalists you name it and take lease to French say you know we're all human beings and we have to decide what we want to be driven into a corner like animals the most soft gentlest liberal human being will turn into a tiger you make me angry enough and I'll start screaming and fury at you oh you're not a moderate anymore Bob if you thing you pound and pound and pound ahold people because of their religion because of their ethnic origin because they seem to oppose you and they will turn on you yes and then you'll say they hate us because they don't like our values in our democracy huh where are the moderates in America well half the people who didn't vote for Georgia everybody I'm not even sure that's true you know there's a matter in everybody but it depends how we frame our lives I don't think we can chop people up into moderates and in moderates and as we don't use that you notice we don't talk about the Christians we talk about Muslims and the West because around many Chris just left now or maybe not a moderates of people who tend to be without power mm-hmm good answer so so has all of this work all of this the the heavy load of history in this particular place made you well what what what view of human nature has it left you with has it is a major a pessimist about the future hmm yeah why I mean well not why but well I suppose I see I've had a very distorted view of the world I remember during the civil war once in Lebanon I took a Lebanese aircraft or flew so justly in dangerously out of Beirut 7:07 I took a weekend of Switzerland against your girlfriend of mine always would be 25 years ago now and I arrived in Switzerland which is a country where you can be arrested for throwing a cigarette packet into a roadway and I after two weeks of this perfect world beautiful fine white wines a perfect food a lady on your arm to go down the street with I remember going back to Beirut and hearing the sort of matchstick crackle of rifle fire and the smell of burning garbage in the street outside thinking this was the real world you begin to feel the war as the natural condition of mankind that's very dangerous when I was there's lots of editions of this in different languages and I did the French and Dutch Edition almost simultaneously more than a year ago as beautiful autumn in Europe and I was on the boulevards of Paris and streets of Holland and I saw lots of families you know children who'd lived in comparative safety and security I'm sure they have their own problems and I went back to Beirut which was going through another of it's appalling political crisis and has had some bombardment sand south from the Israelis and I remember sitting on my balcony looking over the Mediterranean I got a very nice home in Beirut and thinking that I really want to spend these thirty wonderful years of my life the way I did you know couldn't I have been happier couldn't I have enjoyed all the people had my editor the editor of my book in London took me out to lunch when the book came out I said congratulations I said why was it that good she said no you survived and I look back and I felt very depressed I really began to wonder whether I'd spent my life wrongly and then of course I went back to remember foreign correspondent and Jill McCree being sent to Europe he was the crime correspondent in New York and his editor has this immortal line what we need in Europe is a crime correspondent and I began to wonder whether perhaps I hadn't been a crime correspondent for the past thirty years and I also went back and remembered Robert Fisk on a beach in Portugal in 1976 I was briefly the Lisbon correspondent after the Revolution giving a phone call I shall letter from my furniture saying I'm offering you the Middle East mm-hmm because our president correspond that had just got married and his widow his bride rather didn't want to live it shouldn't want to be a widow didn't want to live in a war and I realized if I was offered I do the side has the same life again when I had the chance to run again one last question if if students were watching this program how would you advise them to prepare for their future in which they might be a war correspondent don't don't be a war Passport I tell you honey I mean I'd be very frank with you if you want to be a reporter you must establish a relationship with an editor in which he will let you write he must trust you and you must make sure you make no mistakes but with humor you must make sure that what you write is printed as you write it otherwise you will never recover from that it's a bit like being frightened of something if you lose your fear you will never have to worry about it again but more important than that and I get a lot of letters like this from students some of them say to me well I can't make up my mind I would like to be a journalist of course it'll like to be Middle East correspondent or maybe I'd like to be a lawyer and I always say look if it's a choice between being a doctor or a journalist or a lawyer and a journalist you've got to be a doctor a lawyer the only person who can be a journalist has a bug and journalism is the only thing in the whole world that they can do if that's you you will be a journalist on that note Robert fist thank you very much for being here let me show your book again everybody want it'll take them a while to read it but it's definitely worth reading the Great War for civilization the conquest of the Middle East thank you for this work your work and thank you for being here today with us thanks for watching dude and thank you very much for joining us for this conversation with history [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 126,657

Rating: 4.8361268 out of 5

Keywords: Middle, East, The, Independent, wars, public, affairs

Id: jjoGLA4mVxU

Length: 58min 18sec (3498 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 08 2008

Reddit Comments

[u/fuf]

Awesome talk, awful interviewer