Journos Draw Their Daggers on Robert Fisk
March 25, 2012 15:27 by Pesach Benson
Robert Fisk
Looks like Robert Fisk burned his bridges with foreign correspondents with his too pious commentary about war reporting today and the deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik in Homs.
Here are the two particular snippets drawing his colleagues’ ire:
- “But on the streets, a different impression emerges: that the lives of Western reporters are somehow more precious, more deserving, more inherently valuable than those of the “foreign” civilians who suffer around them.”
- “Funny, though, that the newsrooms of London and Washington didn’t have quite the same enthusiasm to get their folk into Gaza as they did to get them into Homs. Just a thought. A very unhappy one.”
According to Private Eye (via Harry’s Place) Fisk is getting bashed in The Vulture Club. That’s a closed Facebook forum for foreign journos and aid workers who work in war zones:
As a matter of fact, western reporters did get round the Israeli army’s restrictions on journalists during its war with Hamas. Led by Bruno Stevens, a brave Belgian photographer, 30 found a way in over the Egyptian border. Fisk’s innuendo that foreign hacks were glory-hunters for exposing the deaths of Syrians, and hypocrites for ignoring the deaths of Palestinians, has put the war correspondents on the war path.
On the Vulture Club’s web page, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, foreign correspondent for America’s National Public Radio, describes Fisk’s article as “unconscionable”. Catherine Philp, US correspondent for the Times, says Fisk “makes it up”. Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor tells of Fisk writing a piece attacking the Baghdad press corps for being “hotel journalists” who dared not go onto the streets, while rarely leaving the safety of the hotel pool himself.
Dov Grauman
9:17 pm
Mar 25, 2012
Jews have been saying for years that Robert Fisk is a fraud, liar and an ant-semite of note. 99% of his so called journalism comes from the bottom of a bottle. The other 1% from his sick twisted mind.His problem……. he can not abide Jews. Tough Shit robert
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Dov Grauman
5:27 pm
Mar 26, 2012
Did you see the picture of robert pishk. Es rint de chazer shmaltz fun zein mius ponim.
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Sabba Hillel
3:52 pm
Mar 26, 2012
It seems that they carefully avoided telling the truth about Fisk until he told the truth about them. They did not worry about his antisemitic lies until then.
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LUIS FROM MEXICO
4:16 pm
Mar 26, 2012
Why are we surprised about another Jew-hater journalist?…..there are 10 of those for 1 pro Jews, but in this case, the real surprise is the reaction of a few of his colegues against him , even if this means they are NOT in favor of Jews and Israel.
Antisemites and antizionists are furious because the world can see who the real arab governments are and what they do to their own people and because this Arab Spring movement has taken away all the attention from “the poor Palestinians”!!!!
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cityca
6:14 pm
Mar 26, 2012
Wasn’t Fisk one of the loudest voices following Jenin? Did he not write about the stink of death? The man seems to becoming exposed as a fraud. Perhaps the Independent have not just one fraud in Hari, but possibly two, with Fisk.
It would be poetic justice if this odious man was 100% exposed as being a dishonest reporter, as many of us have claimed for years. A fitting way to end his career.
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pat treslove
8:02 pm
Mar 26, 2012
We have to take away the voice of these people, some people do believe the lies they tell. It’s time to stand and be counted. Long live Israel, and our precious Jews.
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Velville in Atlanta
8:35 pm
Mar 26, 2012
What is the Press Complaints Commission and who are the dolts who populate it? Maybe the revisiting of Fisk’s vivid imagination could be a basis for calling them out as the enabling clowns they seemed to be when not castigating Fisk and the Independent.
And this raises questions: Has anyone ever asked Fisk why he has antipathy toward Israel? Was it some religious experience at the hands of a pederast cleric? Was it because of some childhood experience? Was it because a Jewish woman laughed when he asked her to tea? Or is he merely a jackass?
Were it apparent only after he was beaten up and excused the beating because he had decided to be a martyr (“I deserved it as to all Western Europeans…”) we could ascribe brain damage. But his self-righteous garbage is long-standing so perhaps it is soul damage.
The fact that the Independent keeps him on the payroll diminishes any respect they might otherwise earn.
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LUIS FROM MEXICO
10:28 pm
Mar 26, 2012
VELVILLE……you forgot to mention one simple motive for his hate for israel…..MONEYYYYY!!…..the Israel enemies pay, and a lot, to reporters to write against zionism, and Jews.
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Spongwoggler
9:21 pm
Mar 28, 2012
The Idependedant deserves the same respect as Robert Fisk. None at all. That so called newspaper has been printing the venom and lies that he spouts for years, in full knowledge that all his pontificating and charges against Israel were the pure rantings of his sick, rotten, twisted anti-semetic and hate filled soul. But I suppose it sold papers. What does it matter if your paper is full of lies and hatred. I hope Fisk never gets to spend the blood money his arab friends payed him. May he rot in Gehinom
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Bale
8:39 pm
Mar 26, 2012
Some of us remember when Rober Fisk was stoned by Afghani children, that came after complaining that stones are not dangerous when thrown on Israeli soldiers.
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Frank Adam
10:26 pm
Mar 26, 2012
Nice to see tha tgiving Fisk so much rope these decades has at last hung himself.
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Schmuel
10:27 pm
Mar 26, 2012
Whenever I see an atribution from “the independent” I take it with a whole mine of salt. If it is from Fisk, then I know it’s a lie. He is not only ‘one eyed’, he is blind.
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Duvid Crockett, King of DeLancey Street,/ Home of gefilte fish and kosher meat
8:52 am
Mar 27, 2012
Duvidl reaffirms Dov Graumann’s analysis. It’s all in the punim of Robert pishk, or, as Duvid would put it, whisky-Fisky face.
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Middle East Media Sampler for March 26, 2012
6:47 pm
Mar 27, 2012
[...] In the blogging age the term to "fisk" has come to be defined as "pointing out the factual mistakes in a reporter's work." The term derives from Robert Fisk, an anti-Israel, anti-Western writer who "reports" for The Independent. Now it appears that Fisk has received the ultimate fisking. [...]
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Penny Fields
12:42 am
Mar 28, 2012
About time. This should make all journalists report the ‘truth’ before they are called out . . . and there are people searching for reporters’ lies.
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opensoc
3:41 am
Mar 28, 2012
Fisk vehemently denied the truth of his being in cahoots with bin Laden that John Malkovitch and I accused him of . In Bin Laden´s own words, comes the confirmation. Ellen Popper
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Nathan Zafran
12:15 pm
Mar 31, 2012
In the UK, the award for the best political cartoon was awarded to one showing Ariel Sharon swallowing Palestinian babies, based on a drawing by Goya, of the Greek Titan Cronus, who was alledged to have swallowed his own babies. So if the Brits provide awards for pure antisemitic cartoons, (another in the Guardian, depicted Sharon placing bloodied hands on the Western Wall), why shouldn’t an antisemitic and pathological liar like Fisk be multiple winner of awards for the best international reporter? I recall many “clankers” he dropped in his reports, for which he never apologized. One particular event I do recall with nausea. Several years ago, El Qaeda blew up an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, and tried to down an Israeli plane in the same location. As a result, one Israeli and his two children were killed, along with nine Kenyans who worked in the hotel. A local Imam (there are many Muslims in Mombasa) claimed that he could praise the “brave deed” if only Israelis had been killed, but since most of the victims were Kenyans he was unable to do so. Now enters our subject, Robert Fisk, the award winning reporter. Does he express horror at the carnage? Does he condemn the cowardly barbarians who send others to commit suicide? Not Fisk! He dismisses Israeli threats of revenge claiming that the Israeli army is “not much more than an undisciplined rabble” and that their intelligence services are third grade at the most, and that these are no match for the highly motivated fighters of Qaeda (not terrorists). This rubbish and wishful thinking are considered award winning reporting. He’d have a difficult time persuading the Arabs that his estimates of Israeli abilities, (i.e., IDF and Intelligence), are as described, but what can be done when honest reporting is replaced with blind hatred and spite? Robert Fisk is pathetic – is he married to an Arab?
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GoonerEll
7:33 pm
Apr 03, 2012
@Robert’s Dad. You WHAT? Provide evidence for that vicious lie or retract it as such immediately.
And I notice in your impassioned defence of Fisk, (without any facts, merely rhetoric) you fail to address the central point of this article and discussion i.e. the many proven lies that Fisk has told over the years. You call Fisk “honest”. I could call Assad a “peace-lover” but that doesn’t make him so when the evidence is so massively stacked up against him.
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Wobbletwig
9:01 pm
Apr 03, 2012
Fisk is the highest quality…. and the indi is the blah blah yada yadah….. Let me tell you I’ve just come out of the bathroom where I enjoyed an enormous fisk. When I was done I used several pages of the Indi to wipe up. Jelous. Wish you had one?
People like you are so full of fisk. I recommend the 2 ply Indi.
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Sabba Hillel
3:47 pm
Apr 06, 2012
I do recall seeing pictures like that. I also recall seeing the pictures exposed as “incorrectly” captioned (using “British understatement” here). I did find the references below using google
BTW note that this incident happened 6 years ago. Isn’t it interesting that the haters ignore what has been and is being done constantly by the people that Fisk idolizes in order to dredge up something that happened six years ago (because it had not happened before and has not been repeated).
Here is an actual explanation of what happened
http://www.sandmonkey.org/2006/07/18/the-fucked-up-pictures-explained/
http://adloyada.typepad.com/adloyada/2006/07/how_to_demonize.html
But Israeli blogger Lisa got the story behind the picture from the photographer who took the shot and confirmed it with another journalist who was present.
This is an extract from the online conversation with Lisa about what she found, which the Sandmonkey posted
kids were in
bomb shelters for days. city is a ghost town.
only poor people stayed
a new army unit arrived, kids were bored, went out with
parents to look
there were TWELVE photographers there
and they egged the kids on
the kids are low class, not educated, have never met a
Lebanese, just want to live their lives, don’t understand why Lebanon
attacked their home, etc.
the photographers told them “hey, your cousins in america
will see you!”
mostly foreign photographers
so the kids, who were bored and restless and had been cooped
up in bomb shelters for 5 days, took the felt markers and drew messages to
nasrallah
there were no cries of hatred toward lebanese
and a big problem is that the israeli tv does not show dead
lebanese. it shows destroyed buildings, but not dead bodies. so no one has a face of the dead in their minds. too aware of our own suffering, etc.
make sense?
Fantastic that she got the story. And terrific that Sandmonkey has posted this explanation and provided a link to it from the original angry post.
And by the way, I certainly don’t feel that it’s necessary to see pictures of dead bodies, or the faces of the dead to be able to appreciate the suffering of the Lebanese. In fact I share the view of Shutterfool that posting horror pictures of the dead, whether Lebanese or Israeli is disgusting,
But of course this picture and its companions will have gone round the world, with hundreds rushing to echo the Sandmonkey’s disgust and comments that it demonstrated that the Israelis were no better than Hamas.
How many will now come to see that this particular piece of demonization of Israelis was originated not by Hezbollah and Hamas. It seems that the photographer was with AP. They’ve got form. But though it originated with AP it was others who then manipulated it:
Links to anti-Israel websites with that photo placed prominently next to the image of a dead Lebanese child have been sent to me several times. Someone has been rushing around the Israeli blogosphere, leaving the link to one particularly abhorrent site in the comments boxes
UPDATE: Lisa’s comment below appears to modify the story substantially from her account in her earlier online conversation which I extracted verbatim, as published on Sandmonkey’s log. It seems the parents, and not the photographers, were encouraging the children to draw flags and doodles on the shells, not messages, which were written by the parents . But, as she says, the presence of twelve photographers all eager to take shots, no doubt contributed significantly to the fact that it happened.
It’s puzzling though, that the girls are adding to messages actually written by their parents in English. The comments are apparently addressed to Nasrallah, the Lebanese leader of Hezbollah, and regular threatener of death to Israel, rather than to the Lebanese people. I find it difficult to imagine the conversations between the parents and the children about writing messages to Nasrallah in English.
And how did the twelve photographers get to be there in the first place? Was it parents or photographers who made the encouraging remarks about “your cousins in America will see you?”
http://adloyada.typepad.com/adloyada/2006/07/how_to_demonize.html#comment-19917931
Sorry, I have to step in with a correction: it was the parents who were egging the children. But again, the parents were not encouraging their kids to hate Lebanese people. They wrote the message to Nasrallah themselves, then laughingly encouraged the kids to doodle the Israeli flag and so on. Okay, not sophisticated people. But also not “haters.”
The kids had been hearing for 5 days that they were forced to stay day and night in bomb shelters because of Nasrallah, so I guess they didn’t need much encouragement. Again, they were kids.
The photographers did not actively encourage the kids – their parents did. But again, there were 12 photographers al the kids were thrilled with all the attention. As were the parents, I imagine. It’s not often that foreign journalists visit a tiny peripheral town in Israel.
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Bale
8:25 pm
Apr 16, 2012
There is nothing wrong to write and draw on these bombs, that will hopefully kill some human skunks, it is their own fault for shooting missiles from residential areas, from backyards and apartment buildings. Nazi scum like you, never cry for innocent Jews killed, you love the smell of burned Jews, don’t you!
Well, you are not the first Jew hater and not the last, you will go down like all other haters. AM YISRAEL CHAI forever!
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Wobbletwig
8:37 pm
Apr 16, 2012
You would think that these dumb goyim would learn from the mistakes of their grand fathers and fathers but they never do. Thats probably because they don’t know who they were or are. Bnei zonot. Mamzeirim each and every one of them. And yes AM YISROEL CHAI.
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Wobbletwig
8:30 pm
Apr 16, 2012
I gather from your reply that you are not a fan of the Torah. Thats O.K. the Torah was here thousands of years before your miserable existance. It will be here long after you and your sick body, mind (what mind?) and your very damaged and putrid soul are gone. May it be very soon. The reason that the other sicko, Fisk can keep on writting the poiseness trash that he does is because of you and all the other simple, ignorant, dumb creeps out there thrive on the Jew hatred that he spreads. Like the Torah Jews were here long before you swine and we will be here after you have all gone. I get enormous pleasure when you and you kind wail and nash their teeth in pure hatred and frustration. The Torah is the will and wisdom of God and we, the Jews, are his chosen people..Oh! to end off with, if you tried to take a big Yid, for any reason, he would beat the fisk out of you. Drop dead. I hope your blood preassure goes through the ceiling. Now go and wail and nash.
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Robert Fisk and the Palestinian billionaire’s grandson | The Warped Mirror
11:03 pm
Jun 13, 2012
[...] Two additional points are worthwhile noting. The first is that Fisk, who has of course long been known for his pronounced bias against Israel and has been repeatedly accused of unprofessional conduct by media critics, has recently also come under criticism from some of his colleagues who questioned the reliability of his reporting. [...]
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