Robert Fisk

Hizbollah rules west Beirut in Iran's proxy war with US

Another American humiliation. The Shia gunmen who drove past my apartment in west Beirut yesterday afternoon were hooting their horns, making V-signs, leaning out of the windows of SUVs with their rifles in the air, proving to the Muslims of the capital that the elected government of Lebanon has lost.

Recently by Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk: The mystery of the man who shot Nelson

Saturday, 10 May 2008

I've always been possessed of the idea of finding the man who fired the shot that killed another man. During the Lebanese civil war, I spent days trying to find the Phalangist gunner who sent a shell into the Hamra area of west Beirut, slaughtering a group of civilians. But I never learned who he was. I did, in 1996, track down the makers of a missile which an Israeli helicopter fired into an ambulance full of women and children refugees in southern Lebanon. I actually met them at their Boeing offices in Duluth in the US state of Georgia, and laid fragments of their exploded Hellfire AGM missile on the boardroom table (along with pictures of the dead and wounded children). The explosion that followed was slightly louder than the one in Lebanon. Outrageously, the Boeing advertiser's slogan for its Hellfire at arms fairs was "All for one and one for all".

Robert Fisk: Gun battles as Hizbollah claims Lebanon is at war

Friday, 9 May 2008

If you want to fight us, you'll have to fight us. This was Sayed Hassan Nasrallah's message to the Lebanese government yesterday and his words were followed within seconds by two massive gun battles in the streets of Beirut.

Robert Fisk: Lebanon descends into chaos as rival leaders order general strike

Thursday, 8 May 2008

Burning tyres on the airport road, flights suspended, demands from the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt that Hizbollah moves secret cameras from runway 1-7 and end the militia's equally secret underground communications equipment. Across Corniche Mazraa, crowds of shrieking Sunni and Shia Muslims hurl abuse and stones at each other. A soldier comes up to my car at the crossroads. "Turn round," he shouts. "They're shooting."

Robert Fisk: It's easy to be snotty with an airline so haughty that it regards its own customers as an inconvenience

Saturday, 26 April 2008

Oh, those wretched "disruptive" passengers! Poor British Airways. They can't even ship off a crying man to Nigeria with the boys in blue to keep him quiet without passengers objecting and disrupting and disturbing their lovely aeroplanes. No wonder all the economy-class passengers were chucked off flight BA075 to Lagos on 27 March rather than have them object to the deportation of a crying man. Quite right, too.

John Hoyland: Blood on the canvas, by a modern master

Friday, 25 April 2008

"I borrow anything from anything," says the artist John Hoyland. "I'll borrow from other people's work, nature, flowers – anything." In his latest exhibition, Greetings of Love, Hoyland borrows from a more unlikely source, perhaps: a photograph of blood-spatter on the floor of a hospital in Lebanon, accompanied by a piece, about the 33-day conflict in Lebanon and northern Israel in 2006, by The Independent's Robert Fisk.

'You become accustomed to the smell of blood during war'

Friday, 25 April 2008

I was in the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron once, in 2001, and the Palestinians had lynched three supposed collaborators. And they were hanging so terribly, almost naked, on the electricity pylons out of town, that I could not write in my notebook. Instead, I drew pictures of their bodies hanging from the pylons. Young boys – Palestinian boys – were stubbing out cigarettes on their near-naked bodies and they reminded me of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, all arrows and pain and forgiveness, and so all I could do was draw. I still have the pictures. They are ridiculous, stupid, the work of a reporter who suddenly couldn't bring himself to write the details on the page.

Robert Fisk: Painters love martyrs and prophets

Saturday, 19 April 2008

Nothing annoys me more than a magnificent Renaissance painting which carries the deadly label "school of". Why any of the great masters would let some junior copy or finish off his martyrdoms and crucifixions perplexes me, although – in an age when paintings were commissioned by popes and dukes – speed and commercial success were probably more important than artistic pride.

Robert Fisk: Semantics can't mask Bush's chicanery

Saturday, 12 April 2008

After his latest shenanigans, I've come to the conclusion that George Bush is the first US president to march backwards. First we had weapons of mass destruction. Then, when they proved to be a myth, Bush told us we had stopped Saddam's "programmes" for weapons of mass destruction (which happened to be another lie).

Hizbollah turns to Iran for new weapons to wage war on Israel

Tuesday, 8 April 2008

The Shia "martyrs" of this hill village are normally killed in the dangerous, stony landscape of southern Lebanon, in Israeli air raids or invasions or attacks from the sea. The Hizbollah duly honours them. But the body of the latest Shia fighter to be buried here – from the local Hashem family – was flown back to Lebanon last month from Iran.

Robert Fisk: The fearful lives in a land of the free

Saturday, 5 April 2008

I was given the chance to talk to 600 Muslim Canadians a few days ago. The dinner was in an Ottawa banqueting room and the guests also included the imam of the Ottawa mosque, the Ottawa chief of police and sundry uniformed Canadian army officers.

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