I went to hear Robert Fisk talk tonight. He was incredible, so articulate, so intelligent, and he talked about the hard bits about the life that he had choosen (and told us not to be sorry for him). I couldn’t possibly summarise the talk as the whole. But there are two bits I want to quote, because I really liked them. I’ve but them in blockquotes, but of course I’m doing it from memory.
Someone asked how he dealt with anger he answered:
I write a column every week and my editor prints it without leaving anything else. I believe in reporting victims not generals. I don’t give equal space for those whose arms are blown off and those who are blowing arms off people.
The next question was if anything had changed for the better in the Middle East in the last 30 years:
Things have changed, but they may not be the things you want. The difference is that Arabs aren’t afraid anymore. It used to be that when Israel attacked Lebanon everyone fled to Beirut. Now when Israel attacks Lebanon carloads of young men from Beirut get into their cars and head to the border. Now I abhor violence, loathe it, but we have to realise we are living in a violent world. People are fighting back, rather than being afraid.
I have friends who support resistance to imperialism no matter who is doing it and how. I don’t share that view, before I could actually support a resistence movement I would have to know how they treated their own people, and what they were trying to do. But I actually don’t think that my support matters that much, because the right to self-defence is so fundamental that they’ll do it whether or not someone in Wellington agrees with what they’re doing or not.
Also posted at my blog.
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Out of curiousity, when is the last time Israel has attacked Lebanon?
I know that they’ve been trading rocket fire across the border with Hezbollah for some time now, so I guess that could be it, but I don’t think Hezbollah represents the Lebanese government or the people of Lebanon. And in any event, Hezbollah is the aggressor at the moment no matter how you cut it, so perhaps (irregardless of what you think about the severable Palestine issue) in this case it is Israel resisting imperialism?
It just seemed rather odd to talk about Israel “attacking” Lebanon like the two countries were at war “now.”
He was talking about the changes going back over the last thirty years. I suspect he was talking about rocket attacks when he was talking about what happens now.
When asked about what has changed in the MidEast over the past 30 years he failed to mention the Egyptian-Israeli and the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaties? Look, I understand that he’s more focused on the small stuff, on attitudes, etc, but frankly, wtf?
There are now some actual inter-governmental relationships in the region. Some of my Israeli relatives have actually been to Jordan in the recent years. Many of them have been to Egypt. Are people still damn suspicious of each other? Of course. Is the situation still fucked up? Of course. I know this isn’t the fulfillment of all our dreams, but it’s something. Building relationships between people is as important as between governments–they go hand-in-hand.