Robert Fisk's World: When did we stop caring about civilian deaths during wartime?
The mere monitoring of bloody conflict assumes precedence over human suffering
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Independent Minds
I wonder if we are "normalising" war. It's not just that Israel has yet again got away with the killing of hundreds of children in Gaza.
And after its own foreign minister said that Israel's army had been allowed to "go wild" there, it seems to bear out my own contention that the Israeli "Defence Force" is as much a rabble as all the other armies in the region. But we seem to have lost the sense of immorality that should accompany conflict and violence. The BBC's refusal to handle an advertisement for Palestinian aid was highly instructive. It was the BBC's "impartiality" that might be called into question. In other words, the protection of an institution was more important than the lives of children. War was a spectator sport whose careful monitoring – rather like a football match, even though the Middle East is a bloody tragedy – assumed precedence over human suffering.
I'm not sure where all this started. No one doubts that the Second World War was a bloodbath of titanic proportions, but after that conflict we put in place all kinds of laws to protect human beings. The International Red Cross protocols, the United Nations – along with the all-powerful Security Council and the much ridiculed General Assembly – and the European Union were created to end large-scale conflict. And yes, I know there was Korea (under a UN flag!) and then there was Vietnam, but after the US withdrawal from Saigon, there was a sense that "we" didn't do wars any more. Foreigners could commit atrocities en masse – Cambodia comes to mind – but we superior Westerners were exempt. We didn't behave like that. Low-intensity warfare in Northern Ireland, perhaps. And the Israeli-Arab conflict would grind away. But there was a feeling that My Lai had been put behind us. Civilians were once again sacred in the West.
I'm not sure when the change came. Was it Israel's disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the Sabra and Chatila massacre by Israel's allies of 1,700 Palestinian civilians? (Gaza just missed that record.) Israel claimed (as usual) to be fighting "our" "war against terror" but the Israeli army is not what it's cracked up to be and massacres (Qana comes to mind in 1996 and the children of Marwahine in 2006) seem to come attached to it. And of course, there's the little matter of the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988 which we enthusiastically supported with weapons to both sides, and the Syrian slaughter of thousands of civilians at Hama and...
No, I rather think it was the 1991 Gulf War. Our television lads and lasses played it for all it was worth – it was the first war that had "theme" music to go with the pictures – and when US troops simply smothered alive thousands of Iraqi troops in their trenches, we learned about it later and didn't care much, and even when the Americans ignored Red Cross rules to mark mass graves, they got away with it. There were women in some of these graves – I saw British soldiers burying them. And I remember driving up to Mutla ridge to show a Red Cross delegate where I had seen a mass grave dug by the Americans, and he looked at the plastic poppy an American had presumably left there and said: "Something has happened."
He meant that something had happened to international law, to the rules of war. They had been flouted. Then came Kosovo – where our dear Lord Blair first exercised his talents for warmaking – and another ream of slaughter. Of course, Milosevic was the bad guy (even though most of the Kosovars were still in their homes when the war began – their return home after their brutal expulsion by the Serbs then became the war aim). But here again, we broke some extra rules and got away with it. Remember the passenger train we bombed on the Surdulica bridge – and the famous speeding up of the film by Jamie Shea to show that the bomber had no time to hold his fire? (Actually, the pilot came back for another bombing run on the train when it was already burning, but that was excluded from the film.) Then the attack on the Belgrade radio station. And the civilian roads. Then the attack on a large country hospital. "Military target," said Jamie. And he was right. There were soldiers hiding in the hospital along with the patients. The soldiers all survived. The patients all died.
Then there was Afghanistan and all that "collateral damage" and whole villages wiped out and then there was Iraq in 2003 and the tens of thousands – or half a million or a million – Iraqi civilians killed. Once more, at the very start, we were back to our old tricks, bombing bridges and radio stations and at least one civilian estate in Baghdad where "we" believed Saddam was hiding. We knew it was packed with civilians (Christians, by chance) but the Americans called it a "high risk" operation – meaning that they risked not hitting Saddam – and 22 civilians were killed. I saw the last body, that of a baby, dug from the rubble.
And we don't seem to care. We fight in Iraq and now we're going back to fight in Afghanistan again and all the human rights and protections appear to have vanished once more. We will destroy villages and we will find that the Afghans hate us and we will form more criminal militias – as we did in Iraq – to fight for us. The Israelis organised a similar militia in their occupation zone in southern Lebanon, run by a crackpot Lebanese army major. But now their own troops "go wild". And the BBC is worried about its "impartiality"?
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Comments
No demonization of crazy Islamic extremists, huh?
No mention of all the wars against Israel with a goal of exterminating that country, huh?
And you don't blame the Lebanese Christians or Lebanese Muslims and their Palestinian allies for the tens of thousands of dead in the Lebanon civil war, but you keep mentioning it was "Israel's allies" who did the Sabra and Chatila massacre, instead of just being specific and mentioning that it was Lebanese Christians who did it, and that before Israel even got there they were killing tens of thousands of each other.
You're dishonest and biased, Fisk.
If you're looking for Fisk speaking out against Israel in particular, there are plenty of articles out there. This one, however is clearly criticising the modern day apathy to civilian loss of life. Some people - the "must defend Israel from any criticism at all costs" group in particular - seem to read whatever they want into these articles.
Any reason why you don't mention this, yet, over and over and over and over, you mention the lebanon incident, where lebanese christians killed palestinians - yet israel was nearby, so you keep blaming them,instead?
Mr Fisk is a single journalist, writing a single article.
He is not compiling Amnesty International's quarterly report.
Every three seconds a child dies of some treatable disease. 6000 women a year (conservative estimate) are doused in gasoline and burned to death by their husbands and/or inlaws in "stove accidents" over insufficient dowries in India and Pakistan. These are my "causes" and if you want to make Sudan or Jordan your cause, write an article about them yourself.
Do not expect Mr Fisk to manage to compile a list of every atrocity since '45 in a single article.
That's my final comment for now.
why Jew STILL TACKING ABOUT HOLOCAUST SENSE IT IS LONG TIME AGO ? SORRY aLL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL,BUT SOME PEOPLE ARE MORE EQUAL THE OTHERS....
.....GAZA POEPLE MEAMS NOTHING IN NU ? ANS USA/?
The IDF has a very good record when up against unarmed women and children, against a well armed, well trained and a well disciplined force the IDF is very third rate.
If Israel was truly a high level civilisation their people would be deeply ashamed of their own armed forces.
I wonder what does the international warfare law say about an invading army that controls a city and about the responsibility of maintaining order (Sabra & Shatila)
You say that Mr. Fisk is biased, tell me, why is denying the holocaust (and I'm not denying it, although according to freedom of speech I am allowed to deny it and be vocal about it) an offense you can be jailed for but drawing the prophet and poking fun at a figure billions highly respect is a mere "freedom of speech" and a sign of being civilized?
Hey exec_ceo, I wonder how many times were you in a country where drones and fighter jets are hovering, and once you hear a distant explosion you get relieved because they bombed somewhere and you hear it is distant, or you see it on (? Live and it is not you or the electricity generating plant next door to you? How many times did you wake up in the morning to a very loud blast sound, turned on your TV and saw a man burning. Tell me exec_ceo, do you know what being exposed to such things does to people, and children who survive? Have you the faintest idea what kind of psychological effect this would have and the trauma?
I am Lebanese, and I have witnessed every campaign Israel carried in Lebanon since 1978. And I wonder how many times did you witness all of these and then had to face the frustration of the "western" media distorting the truth and praising Israel for maintaining freedom and fighting on behalf of the free world. I suppose you didn't have to deal with seeing your own countrymen being shred into pieces - literally- and seeing babies lying there lifeless and bloodied while mothers cry and weep, and what makes it so hard is that you can understand what in that very moment they are saying and how they feel the injustice. Time and time again. And then, all you hear is an "oops, shelling that UN shelter house was a mistake". I will tell you why Mr. Fisk is biased in your opinion, because in the time the Marwaheen massacre happened, he was there, because he saw the car that had a family burning, with a baby sitting there wondering why her mum and sisters are laying down, because he was there in Qana and he saw the horror, he smelled flesh and blood burning, have you?
You want to know what biased and untrue reporting is. I invite you to come to the other side of the fence and see for yourself. I invite you to see, that just like me, many Lebanese who have suffered from Israeli aggression that resulted in them being directly affected either losing a parent, relative, friend or a limb, and many who are muslims say, we don't have a problem with the Jews, we have a problem with Israelis and zionism, do you know that there is a Synagogue in Beirut? That there are Jewish Lebanese? That many of us have Jewish friends? Yet when you come here to spew your hatred you say "crazy Islamic extremists"...
A democracy my friend is a country that has Muslims, Christians and Jews living, as opposed to a single religion state that is formed on the basis of religion.
Yes, let us talk about blind hatred, terrorism and biased media.
Only if there were more Fisks (there will still be one Fisk and on Fisk hall is not enough, we should have a city called Fisk with statues) simply because Mr. Fisk was and still is among the very few that could mirror a true image of what is happening.
From a Lebanese who has seen it all, and on behalf of all Lebanese, Thank you Mr. Fisk, we can never thank you enough.
I do, most days, here in Ashdod over the last six years, thousands of times. And not an IDF officer anywhere around, just ordinary men, women and children like me.
This new weapon Mr Fisk is you and the mawkish appetite of the masses for car crash news.
Simply fight in a way that draws the fire of your superior enemy onto or near civilians ("best" of all children and women) and sit back and watch your Fisk weapon harm your enemy and recruit your foot soldiers for you.
They mutilate the babys, so Robert will shake them in righteous indignation. And hysterical righteous indignation is of course the mental state they require to "win" their argument which calm, unbrutalised people en masse reject. Sweet. Seems to be working well
Do you ever worry about your "impartiality" Robert? (see them vote in free Iraq today for example (oops, bit of a "failure" there today eh? Sorry, you dont "do" Iraq anymore do you? Lucky Gazans have your attention now.)
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/articl
"We are freeing the Arab people from the terror of Hamas, Hizbullah, and the likes" .... By slaughtering them,
Every now and then it surfaces like the London demonstrations against the BBC, and Israeli action in Gaza.
Good to see Robert Fisk is back on top form.
As a result it is very easy to manipulate most people and get them to live in a certain way and follow a certain lifestyle. Most people are programmed from the day they are born to the day they die and do not care. Look at how many people are addicted to some kind of substance, or to an activity of some kind.
The numbers of civilians killed over the last 100 years has been far more than that of soldiers. Somewhere near 20 million Russians were murdered by the communists in the few years following the revolution in 1917. It hardly gets a mention in history books or in the media.
Sitting in front of TV watching "The News" everyday just makes you immune to the suffering in the long run. You get used to it. It dehumanizes you. This is one reason why I have no TV.
However, it is not all bad news. The recent murders by the Zionists in Gaza have woken a few more people up and persuaded others to take an interest in the history of this dreadful place. Those of us who do want to know just have to keep plugging away and realise that it is not our job to tell people what to think. Each person must make his or her own mind up.
When we read in the Boston Globe just this week that a UN official confessed there were no deaths in the bombing near the UNRA school in Gaza.
When "Correria dela Sera" quotes a Palestinian doctor saying only 600 were killed in the recent war, almost all of which are Hamas fighters.
When lies like the so-called 2002 Jenin massacre compels cartoonists to draw Israeli soldiers in Nazi uniforms only to find out later the Palestinians completely fabricated the death toll again (from 25 to 1200. 23 Israeli troops were killed.)
When nothing is written about another cease-fire breach by the Palestinians just this morning.
When more and more "reporters" like you began blindly supporting the weak in each conflict, even when the weak are terrorists; Even when Hezbollah fire on Israel after unilaterally leaving the whole of Lebanon' security zone, and bomb a synagogue in Argentina killing dozens only to get your argument about why they are not to be labeled a "Terrorist group", but freedom fighters.
When "reporters" like you make a living giving life to the "victim myth machine" of the Arab world: The west is evil, Arabs are good, Israel is Nazi.
When not a word is written on hundreds dead in Sri Lanka the same time you rant about Sabra and Shatila for the millionth time,
When we lose complete trust in "reporters" like you.
It's not good to kep it bottled up, let it out.
Were you there?
Do you feel guilty, or do dead Arabs just bore you?
In 2007, the former sephardic chief rabbi Eliyahu, wrote to Ehud Olmert stating that all civilians in Gaza are collectively guilty for Kassam attacks against Sderot (incidentally, formerly the Palestinian town of Najd, ethnically cleansed by the Jews in 1948).
Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rockets...and it came to pass.
During the recent genocide in Gaza, the IDF rabbi Rontzki distributed pamphlets to IDF soldiers containing the following..."When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers. This is terribly immoral. These are not games at an amusement park where sportsmanship teaches one to make concessions. This is a war on murderers." And an unnofficial pamphlet given to soldiers by the Chabad rabbis who have scores of schools across israel stated..."As for the population, it is not innocent...we call on you to ignore any strange doctines and orders that confuse the logical way of fighting the enemy."
The BBC offices in Gaza were demonstrated against by local intelectuals and journalists, condeming the biased coverage, and asking for the immediate expulsion of the three BBC journalists who are there now. Also, Jeremy Bowen, who reported for the BBC, from inside Israel, during the whole of the war, presented a warped account of the situation...to say the least. Chanel 4 did report on the use of depleted uranium and white phosphorus, towards the very end of the war, but SILENCE from the BBC.
If the British people were shown images of the HUNDREDS of children with lost limbs and now orphaned, witnessing their parents and grandparents and siblings murder from direct fire, or from not being able to stop death from severe bleeding over long periods, when trapped inside homes, or under rubble of homes that once were...if this had been shown to Britain...there would be outcry from people who, shown the reality, would respond.
Media bears a lot of the responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinians.
Your article today, Mr Fisk, should have been on the front page of the Independent....we can't expect goverments to move or care anymore, they have shown their positions....behind America, time and time again...however, people outnumber gooverments...that's why it is crucial they ARE informed of the reality...then they make up their own minds.
Robert Fisk, you and your fellow journalists must do more, as a body to expose and present the reality. I did read that the NUJ voted collectively to stand WITH the BBC decision not to show the DEC appeal. You journalists need to realy think about your journalistic duties to present the truth. Robert Fisk is, almost, screaming in the wilderness on the truth. How shameful for the rest of you. I never thought I would have been marcxhing to the BBC offices, surounded by thousands of furrious protestors, young and old, from Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other backgrounds, chanting SHAME ON YOU BBC.
We can't expect Britain to wake up, unless the media start to inform more, and entertain and distract less. Wake up all those who are paid to report to the British public about the suffering of fellow human beings, and the connections by their own govermenrts to weapons used on those suffering people.
Silence IS complicity, and the UK media coverage, with a few exeptions, IS to blame.
Thank you Robert Fisk, and the thousands like you, who will not refuse to scream about the injustices before their eyes.
D Babouris
Cambridge
And what about the British officials in charge of administering the UN mandate in Palestine after WWII? They too were the victims of terrorist attacks. The bombing of the King David Hotel by Jewish terrorists resulted in the deaths of 91 people. Presumably, supporters of the recent Israeli action in Gaza would maintain that the British Government would have been completely justified in sending in the RAF to bomb Jewish settlements where the terrorists were hiding if it resulted in the deaths of only nine thousand Jewish settlers.
It may be possible to quell terrorist activity by using military force against civilians but you cannot claim the moral high ground at the same time.
Hamas, a radical terrorist oragnization, are the elected government of the Palestinians, and they are obsessed with exterminating the jewish state of israel no matter how long it takes.
The word for the act of deliberate and foreseeable killing of a helpless ordinary person, on a claim of justification (whether judicial or military) is "execution". Those who do the killing are "executioners".
Try this word out. EXECUTIONERS. It is neutral, it describes only the act of killing a helpless person under a claim of military or legal right. It is the act of execution which the US and Israel (among others) have perfected with smartly-aimed but dumbly exploding missiles, rockets and tank shells. The executioner is beyond the reach of those he condemns to death. Sometimes, if he pushes the button in Kansas, he may even play golf the same afternoon.
It is unfortunate that apparently you would be more than happy to have France lobbing bombs at the UK with no regard to targets, then to put an end to the terror once and for all.
With the exception of Israel, can you name any other industrialized or post-industrial country in the world that would tolerate constant bombardment at it's civilians? My guess is you are not up to the task because indeed, the fact is, NO OTHER country would put up with it!
Why must you and so many others insist on siding with terrorists?
You mention 22 civilians being unintentionally killed in Iraq, but neglected to mention the millions of people dead and intentionally maimed by Saddam.
We got the weapon of mass destruction. A man who murdered more people than both atomic bombs dropped in WWII. Perhaps you would prefer to be speaking Japanese or German right now?
Bottom line: Death of any innocent civilian is tragic, but there is a point where one must stop turning the other cheek or perish.
So are you suggesting, one hundred eye's for an eye, is the correct response.
This is a sick justification for killing civilians.
What hppened to all the nice people in Isreal, are they not allowed to post here?
Sometimes I wonder if some of the israeli people posting on these boards want us to hate them.
I have been accused on these boards of hating Israel, even though not one quote could be provided to support the allegation(due to the fact I ever said anything of the kind).
It has been assumed I hate Israel because I don't support everything it does.
What kind of maddness is that?
How do you justify that?
Do you feel a need to justify anything?
You only have to read his book "the great war for civillision" and get a feeling what this man has been thru
he is by far the best jouralist in the world he doesnt take his cue from propaganda spued by goverments
he tells it as he see's it.
if an irishman can pay a compliment to an englishman after all that happened over here, it speaks volumes for the respect he comands.
How many rockets should Ireland allow France to throw at it before it should retaliate?
I think it is wonderful that you respect Mr Fisk. I respect his right to his opinion. What I wish is that he would explain his opinion that it is wonderful for terrorists to intentionally attack civilians but not acceptable for anyone to retaliate against them.
Trust me, with our liberal press here in the USA we see all the nasty images of war we could possibly find.