Table Of ContentArab West Report, Paper 7, September 2008
Title: Why are the Arabs angry with the West? The Great War for Civilization
Author: Magnus Bredstrup and Mads Holm
Editors: Cornelis Hulsman, editor-in-chief Arab-West Report, Clare Turner, academic language
editor CIDT
Introduction
This article intends to examine the reasons why the Arabs are angry with the West. It attempts to depict
the major reasons for this anger as they are expressed in Robert Fisk's book, 'The Great War for
Civilisation'. The article does not pretend to give an objective history of specific events in the modern
Middle East, but tries instead to reflect the way Robert Fisk explains Arab anger.
Robert Fisk is perhaps one of the most experienced Western journalists living and working the
Middle East. His work covers the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Iran-Iraq war, the Lebanese civil
war, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Algerian civil war, the 1991 and 2003 Iraq wars, the civil war in
former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. His book 'The Great War for
Civilisation' is his attempt to write a memoir of his work in these numerous conflicts. The vast span of
time and the complexity of the conflicts he is describing makes the book a very long one, 1286 pages in
total. Just as his book 'Pity the Nation' describes his experiences in the Lebanese civil war, 'The Great
War for Civilisation' sets out to create a much broader picture not of only Robert Fisk's experiences in
the Middle East but also to a large extent reflects his personal views on the injustices inflicted upon the
peoples of the Middle East. These injustices suffered by people in the Middle East since its partition
after the First World War are indeed the main focus of the book and are described in vivid detail
throughout. Fisk attempts to understand the anger among the masses of the Middle Eastern peoples
when being wounded, tortured and killed – according to Robert Fisk – quite often as a result of western
policies in the region.
Robert Fisk's vocation as a journalist is perhaps best expressed in his interview with Amira
Hass, an Israeli journalist of the Haaretz newspaper, as she says: “Our job is to monitor the centers of
power.” Robert Fisk views the journalist's job as being to “challenge authority ... especially so when
governments and politicians take us to war”(RF, XXIII), a task which he undertakes by trying to
examine the facts of contemporary events and relay them to the public. As he says himself: “If we have
any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one
can say: 'We didn't know – no one told us.'” This conviction of his is very much carried forward by the
sympathy he has for the victims of the conflicts he describes in the book. He goes to excruciating
lengths to describe the horrors of torture, sanctions and war in various Middle Eastern countries,
descriptions which one must assume are given because Robert Fisk wants the reader to understand the
inhumanity which, in his view, is to a large extent the result of Western policies in the Middle East.
The sources of Arab anger
Robert Fisk suggests that the initial reasons for the problems of the modern Middle East may be
found in the aftermath of the First World War. The British occupation of Iraq after the war was –
according to RF – motivated by an imperialist intention to take advantage of the country's oil resources
(RF175-6). He quotes Gertrude Bell saying that “the stronger the hold we are able to keep here the
better the inhabitants will be pleased ... they can't conceive an independent Arab government – nor, I
confess, can I.” The occupation set a precedent for Western meddling in the Middle East which Robert
Fisk largely sees as motivated by economic interests and often implies heavy-handed measures against
the local populations. He emphasizes the parallel between how the British were confronted by an
uprising shortly after having assumed control of Iraq following the First World War just as the
Americans found themselves facing an insurgency after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Similarly the two
invasions were both based on flawed expectations that a new and friendly Iraq would flourish under
foreign control after the invasion.(RF175,180) Robert Fisk sees Western interference in the Middle East
as being characterized by a betrayal of promises – thus making Faisal the constitutional monarch of
Iraq despite the fact that he was not Iraqi represents “our first betrayal of the Shīcahs of Iraq.”(RF180)
Iraqi insurrections, Fisk claims, were also motivated by British support for a Jewish homeland in
Palestine, which was the result of conflicting promises made by the British during the First World War
as they had claimed to ensure Arab independence while they on the other hand supported Zionist
aspirations.(RF181) Thus responsibility for the situation in the Middle East lies largely with the West,
as Robert Fisk sees it. “If only the world had not gone to war in 1914; if only we had not been so
selfish in concluding the peace. We victors promised independence to the Arabs and support for a
Jewish homeland in Palestine. Promises are meant to be kept. And so those promises – the Jews
naturally thought that their homeland would be in all of Palestine – were betrayed, and the millions of
Arabs and Jews of the Middle East are now condemned to live with the results.”(RFXXII)
The Israel-Palestine conflict: Causes and peace-negotiations
The Arab-Israeli conflict has occupied a prominent place in Arab-West relations ever since the
foundation of the state of Israel and the exodus of Palestinian Arabs from Palestine. Robert Fisk
devotes a considerable amount of his book to this conflict and especially to the way the West has
interfered in it. As he writes: “The Arab-Jewish struggle, from the conflicting British promises of [the]
1914-1918 war – of independence for the Arab states, and of support for a Jewish national home in
Palestine – to the establishment of the state of Israel on Palestinian land following the Jewish holocaust
and the Second World War, is an epic tragedy whose effects have spread around the world and continue
to poison the lives not only of the participants but of our entire Western political and military strategies
towards the Middle East and the Muslim lands.”(RF448)
The conflict is initially the result of decisions made during the First World War. The British
found themselves in a precarious situation when they – according to Lloyd George, quoted by Robert
Fisk – were alone in confronting the Central Powers as the French army mutinied and the Americans
had not yet entered the war. This apparently 'forced' them to seek the assistance of the Jewish
community and thus the Balfour declaration was issued, supporting a 'Jewish national home' in
Palestine.(RF448-50)
There were however voices of concern at the time. According to Robert Fisk George Antonius
stated that “[t]he treatment meted out to Jews in Germany and other European countries is a disgrace to
its authors and to modern civilisation; but posterity will not exonerate any country that fails to bear its
proper share of the sacrifices needed to alleviate Jewish suffering and distress. To place the brunt of the
burden upon Arab Palestine is a miserable evasion of the duty that lies upon the whole civilised world.
It is also morally outrageous.”(RF451) Additionally Churchill pointed out that “[t]o maintain itself, the
Jewish state must be armed to the teeth, and must bring in every able-bodied man to strengthen its
army. But how long will this process be allowed to continue by the great Arab populations in Iraq and
Palestine?”(RF451)
The British were eventually forced to abandon Palestine as the conflict intensified and resulted
in the partition of Palestine by the UN in 1947. The subsequent Arab-Israeli war expanded the borders
of Israel beyond what had been decided by the UN. This was to have to a devastating effect on Arab-
West relations. According to Robert Fisk, the massacres committed by Israeli militants in 1948 set in
motion the Palestinian exodus: “All over that part of mandate Palestine which has become Israel, there
were little massacres – sometimes initiated by the Arabs, more frequently by Jewish fighters who were
transmogrifying into the Israeli army as the war progressed”(RF456). More specifically it was the Dayr
Yassīn incident which set in motion the exodus: “... up to 130 Palestinians were massacred by two
Jewish militias, the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang, as the Jews of Palestine fought for the
independence of the state called Israel. The slaughter so terrified tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs
that they fled their homes en masse – just a few of the 750,000 – to create the refugee population whose
value of sorrow lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian war.”(RF453)
While Robert Fisk does not go into detail in 'The Great War for Civilisation' of the history of the
Arab-Israeli conflict, he does however devote some pages to the role of Yāsir cArafāt and the
Americans in the Peace Process. Fisk insinuates that cArafāt's weakness after his mistake of supporting
Saddām Husayn in the 1991 Gulf war, made it desirable for Israel to engage in peace-negotiations with
him. As the representatives of Middle Eastern governments and the PLO leadership met in Madrid in
October 1991, US President Bush demonstrated the fundamentally problematic nature of the peace-
negotiations of the 1990s as he apparently refused to talk about – not to say enforce – the UN
resolutions, more specifically resolution 242 calling for the withdrawal from occupied territories, that
were relevant to the conflict. Fisk notes how the US had enforced the UN resolution demanding Iraqi
withdrawal from Kuwait the same year while Israel was not obliged to abide by UN decisions.(RF470)
While officially a conference sponsored by both the US and the Soviet Union, “there was no doubt who
was running the show”, Fisk notes. “The Americans had a bank of offices manned by hundreds of State
Department officials. The United Nations had two offices, a bunch of bureaucrats and a fax machine.
The Russians had one office, three officials and no fax machine.”(RF474) In addition to apparent US
double standards in dealing with Middle East issues, the Arab and Israeli participants in the conference
themselves seemed to take more interest in talking about war than peace. As Robert Fisk notes “it was
clear they really hated each other. Had automatic weapons been available to the delegates, there might
have been a rush for the doors.”(RF473)
From this problematic starting point the peace process was to continue under the auspices of the
Clinton and later the Bush administration, yielding very few results. As Robert Fisk notes: “The phrase
'peace process' was already a cliché, and in the years to come, peace – like a creaking railway carriage
constantly derailed on a branch line – was always being put 'back on track'.”(RF476) The initial peace
talks involving Middle Eastern governments were to be circumvented by the Oslo agreement of 1993
which was the result of negotiations between cArafāt and the Israelis without the participation of the
Arab states. “All that the Arabs had achieved – or worked to achieve in Washington – disappeared
overnight. But the problems that had confronted them [...] would now turn up in the fatally flawed Oslo
agreement of 1993. cArafāt and his ill-trained officials – with not one lawyer among them – would now
attempt to overcome arguments framed by Israel's best-educated and shrewdest negotiators, lured on by
the chimera of a Palestinian state and a capital in Jerusalem that they would never – ever – be
given.”(RF478) Interestingly, Robert Fisk, claims that the only thing that actually kept cArafāt relevant
as a partner in the negotiations with Israel was the Islamic militias and their struggle against the Israelis
in the occupied territories. “Without their existence – without those uncompromising pan-Islamic
demands that far outstripped cArafāt's aspirations – the Israelis would have had little interest in
recognizing the PLO or giving back a speck of land to cArafāt.”(RF479)
It seems to be Robert Fisk's conviction that the Oslo accords represented a betrayal of the
Palestinian cause and describes it as “holding out false promises of statehood and Jerusalem and an end
to Israeli occupation and Jewish settlement building”(RF483) and a “tragedy for the
Palestinians”(RF483). He especially emphasizes the American bias toward Israel as a fundamental flaw
in the basis of the negotiations. Of cArafāt's acceptance of the accords, Fisk says “[h]e was now to
accept, formally and on paper, the partition of Palestine which he had always refused”. Judging by
Robert Fisk's account, it seems that Palestinian popular sentiment was largely against the agreement.
Travelling in Palestine, he noticed graffiti rejecting the accords, saying “[n]o to the conspiracy to sell
Palestine”, “[w]o ever gives up Jerusalem will not represent our people” and “[t]hose who give our
rights to the Jews will not be spared”.(RF486) A Palestinian villager tells Fisk “[t]here is no solution
without Jerusalem and “[i]f cArafāt comes through here ... we will not welcome him. We cannot accept
that our children should die in the intifada for nothing more than Jericho and Gaza.”(RF486) Quoting
cArafāt, Robert Fisk notes how the goals and promises of the Palestinian leader had changed: “'... the
PLO offers not the peace of the weak, but the peace of Saladdin.' Not any more. 'The Palestinian
uprising will in no way end until the attainment of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,
including the right to return.' Not any more. 'There will be no peace other than through ... the right to
return, self-determination, and establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital at Jerusalem.' Not
any more.”(RF488)
Israel in the occupied territories
Israeli military operations and their consequences for the Palestinians occupy a prominent place
in 'The Great War for Civilisation'. Juxtaposing the peace negotiations between political leaders with
the violence in Gaza and the West Bank, Robert Fisk describes the violence as he witnessed it as a
reporter there. His reports of IDF incursions in Gaza in 1993 – the same year the Oslo agreement was
signed – shows the staggering difference between the diplomatic efforts and the situation on the streets
of the occupied territories. Searching for the killers of Ilan Feinberg – an Israeli who was killed by
PFLP militants – the IDF conducts searches in Gaza city resulting in confrontations with Palestinians
and bloodshed, creating new sources of hatred and intensifying the conflict.(RF479-80)
Robert Fisk tries to understand the reasons why young Palestinian men engage in 'martyrdom
operations' against Israel, how they “set off so easily for their deaths”. The causes of this, judging by
Robert Fisk's account of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, seem to lie in the broken promises, the
compromises and 'betrayals of Palestinian rights'. The failure of diplomatic efforts to bring an end to
the endemic violence in the occupied territories, Israeli settlements and strong-handed measures against
Palestinian militants with little regard for civilian lives lost in IDF operations, gives Palestinians the
sense that the nations who could actually do something do not care enough about their suffering. The
increase in illegal settlements in Gaza and the West bank in the 1990's accompanied by ineffective
pressure being put on Israel to stop these activities is pointed out as a prominent reason for the
Palestinian intifada. “US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright”, Robert Fisk writes, “was positively
mouselike when in September 1997 she urged Israel to 'refrain from unilateral acts, including what
Palestinians perceive as the provocative expansion of settlements.”(RF525) Thus there is little reason –
in the Palestinian view – to assume that the West or other powers will intervene on their behalf, leaving
them, according to this way of thinking, with no choice but to resolve the conflict by the means
available.
The brutality of the Israeli occupation is a primary reason for Palestinian and Arab anger with
Israel and the Western states, who, if they do not directly supports the Israeli onslaught, then only
present muted protests when Israel kills Palestinian civilians. Among the examples of this brutality that
Robert Fisk provides in his book that could be mentioned include the fact that Israeli soldiers under the
Premiership of Yishak Rabin were allowed to break the legs of Palestinian protesters, the policy of
targeted killings of Palestinian militants with little or no regard for loss of civilian lives, the destruction
of Palestinian property in relation to settlement building and revenge for suicide bombs, the shooting to
death of Palestinian youths throwing stones at IDF soldiers, the use of torture to extract confessions,
imprisonment without fair trials and so forth. Robert Fisk quotes an Amnesty International report on the
issues: “...killings of Palestinians by Israeli security services or settlers have led to suicide bombings
and the deaths of Israeli civilians. These have led to waves of arbitrary arrests, incommunicado
detention, torture and unfair trials. The Palestinian population have been the main victims of such
violations ... the Occupied Territories have become a land of barriers, mostly erected by Israeli security
services, between town and town and village and village.”(RF531)
The story of how the Palestinian militant Muhammad Nāsir came to blow himself up in Israeli
café sheds some light on the background of people who carry out suicide bombings. Robert Fisk goes
to his village, Qabatiya, close to Jenin to interview the remaining family members. As he writes,
“Muhammad Nāsir's life and death contain a lesson for both Palestinians and Israelis. A thin, long-
faced youth with a short beard, he was born into occupation and despair, shot through the thigh when
he was fifteen after throwing stones at Israeli soldiers in 1988.”(RF585) The village is described as one
where “[w]hen the men there found a collaborator among them, they burned his house and hanged him
from an electricity pole.”(RF585) As for Muhammad Nāsir, he got to know some people from Islamic
Jihād through his work as a prison guard. When one of them got his head blown off in an Israeli
assassination, Muhammad quit his job and got involved with Islamic Jihād. The reason behind his
decision to become a suicide bomber was paradoxically the very assassination the Israelis carried out to
stop the activities of Islamic Jihād. To revenge Muhammad Nāsir's bombing of Israeli civilians, the
Israelis raided Jenin and destroyed its police station, an action which would surely further enrage
Palestinians and encourage them to join radical movements. Studying the suicide missions of Lebanese
and Palestinian militants, Robert Fisk concludes that they occur when 'the balance of mind is disturbed',
arguing that when the balance of a whole society is disturbed, it may result in people being willing to
commit these acts: “When a society is dispossessed, when the injustices thrust upon it appears
insoluble, when the 'enemy' is all-powerful, when one's own people are bestialised as insects,
cockroaches, 'two-legged beasts', then the mind moves beyond reason.”(RF588) In Fisk's experience,
the suicide bombers of Lebanon were generally people who had been victims of torture or had relatives
who were killed by the Israelis.
In Palestine the joy expressed at the killing of Israeli suicide bombers appeared to be rooted in
the fact that “Palestinians had suffered so many casualties since the first intifada began that they found
joy in any suffering inflicted on their enemy.”(RF590) Rather than accepting the Israeli explanation of
the suicide attacks being 'mindless terror', Fisk argues that the suicide bomber is “the logical product of
a people who have been crushed, dispossessed, cheated, tortured and killed in terrible
numbers.”(RF590) He furthermore argues that there is a profound change in people's mindset taking
place in the Middle East. He claims that the Arabs during the 1960s were too afraid, too subdued by
their enemies too take them on. Today, however, the struggle against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon
has proved that the enemy can be defeated, the Palestinian intifadas show that “Israel can no longer
impose its will on an occupied land without paying a terrible price”(RF592), while the Iraqi insurgency
proved the same point to the Americans there.
Israel in the occupied territories: Jenin
According to Robert Fisk, the actions undertaken by the Israeli army in Jenin 2002 constitute
what he describes as “individual war crimes”. While there was apparently no reason to doubt that Jenin
had been the source of a number of suicide bombers, the Israeli incursion into Jenin resulted in a large
number of Palestinian civilian casualties. Journalists and aid workers were kept out of the area when
the incursion took place and a number of contradictory claims over the number of dead and their status,
as well as the nature of the engagement were made after it had taken place. Robert Fisk quotes the
investigation into the incidence made by journalists from The Independent. Apparently about half the
Palestinians who were killed were civilians and, according to the journalists' account, under highly
problematic circumstances. Thus one civilian was claimed to be “wearing a white nurse's uniform
clearly marked with a red crescent, the emblem of the Palestinian medical workers, when the soldiers
shot her.”(RF613) Another civilian “Jamāl Fayid died after being buried alive in the rubble. His uncle,
Saib Fayid, told us that the 37-year-old Jamāl was mentally and physically disabled, and could not walk
... When Mr Fayid saw an Israeli bulldozer approaching the house where his nephew was, he ran to
warn the driver. But the bulldozer ploughed into the wall of the house, which collapsed on Jamāl
...”(RF613) The civilian Mr Zughayr was apparently killed while sitting in his wheelchair. According to
the statement of Durar Hassan, Kamāl Zughayr “was shot dead as he tried to wheel himself up the road.
The Israeli tanks must have driven over the body, because when Mr Hassan found it, one leg and both
arms were missing, and the face, he said, had been ripped in two.”(RF613)
While Benjamin Netanyahu claimed there had been no massacre at all, Robert Fisk quotes the
Israeli journalist Arie Caspi expressing his view that Israeli policy is hypocritical: “Okay, so there
wasn't a massacre. Israel only shot some children, brought a house crashing down on an old man,
rained cement blocks on an invalid who couldn't get out in time, used locals as human shields against
bombs, and prevented aid from getting to the sick and wounded. That's not really a massacre, and
there's really no need for a commission or enquiry [...] The insanity gripping Israel seems to have
moved beyond our morals ... many Israelis believe that as long as we do not practice systematic mass
murder, our place in heaven is secure. Every time some Palestinian or Scandinavian fool yells
'Holocaust!,' we respond in an angry huff: This is a holocaust? So a few people got killed, 200, 300,
some very young, some very old. Does anyone see gas chambers or crematoria?”(RF614) Adding to the
apparent double standards on the issue of 'massacres', Robert Fisk quotes an Israeli army spokesman
after an incident where four Israeli settlers were killed by Palestinian gunmen: “For me, now I know
what is a massacre. This is a massacre.”(RF615)
The American response to the killings in Jenin was muted, according to Fisk's account. US
Secretary of State Colin Powell apparently took a long trip around the Middle East in order to not visit
Israel while the fighting was going on and arrived in Israel “demanding that cArafāt condemn the latest
suicide bombing in Jerusalem in which six Israelis had been killed and 65 wounded, while failing to
utter more than a word of 'concern' about Jenin.”(RF616) Robert Fisk goes on to conclude that this was
“the very final proof that the United States was no longer worthy of being a Middle East
peacemaker.”(RF616)
Robert Fisk looks at the American bias toward Israel in the conflict with the Bush
administration as well. He exemplifies this by writing that Colin Powell had ordered the American
embassies no longer to refer to the occupied territories as occupied but instead as 'disputed'.(RF591)
This was -according to Robert Fisk- an attempt to delegitimize the Palestinian struggle against the
occupation, for as Robert Fisk states- “violence used over a 'dispute' – a real estate problem, something
that might be settled in the courts – was obviously illegitimate, criminal, mindless; indeed, it could be
portrayed as the product of that well-worn libel, 'mindless violence'.”(RF591) According to a
Norwegian aid worker whom Robert Fisk interviewed in Palestine, the American role in the conflict
reflects badly upon the West in general. “They blame the Americans for what the Israelis do. And now
they blame Europe because we do nothing to help them.”(RF594)
Robert Fisk claims that Western reporting is not only generally biased in favour of Israel but
seeks to “dehumanise them [the Palestinians] ... to de-culture them, de-nation them, dis-identify
them.”(RF601) Thus articles are written in the West about Israel's policy of targeted killings without
explaining the background of the conflict. He quotes Stewart Steven saying that “there is no language
known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There is no specific Palestinian dress.
Palestinians are indistinguishable from other Arabs.”(RF602) Additionally, Fisk quotes Mark Steyn
writing about his visit to the West Bank in 2003 which he claims “creeped me out.” Gaza was described
as a “wholly diseased environment” with a “culture that glorifies depravity” and furthermore states that
“nothing good grows in toxic soil”.(RF602)
Weapon sales in the Middle East
One thing which Robert Fisk singles out as particularly infuriating for the Arabs is the weapons
sales to Middle Eastern countries. He describes how international companies sell their merchandise at
the arms sales in Abu Dhabi while focusing on the importance of weapons for the security of Gulf
countries.(RF920-36) The use of these weapons, especially by Israel, is however a source of much Arab
anger, according to Robert Fisk. “The use of American armaments against Arabs by Israel has been one
of the most provocative sources of anger in the Middle East, and the narrative of their use is almost as
important as the political conflict between Israel and its enemies. For it is one thing to know that
Washington claims to be a 'neutral partner' in the Middle East peace negotiations while supporting one
side – Israel – in all its demands; it is quite another when the armaments Israel employs to enforce its
will – weapons that kill and tear apart Arabs – carry the engraved evidence of their manufacture in the
United States. Even the CS gas cartridges fired by Israelis at Palestinians in Bethlehem are American-
made.”(RF938) He relates the story of how 18 year old Usāmah Khorabi got killed when an American
made Hellfire missile exploded in his living room.(RF937) “The Israelis used Apache helicopters to
fire their missiles into Beit Jalla on at least six occasions – including the one on which Mr Khorabi was
killed – and the Apaches are made by Lockheed at their massive arms plant in Orlando, Florida, home
of the Hellfire I and II missiles. US manufacturers routinely refuse to accept any blame for the bloody
consequences of their weapons' use. I found that the Pennsylvania gas cartridges used by the Israelis in
Bethlehem actually carried an official disclaimer. 'Federal Laboratories', it said on the cartridge, 'will
assume no responsibility for the misuse of this device.'”
After having tried to confront the people who actually carried out the killings – among other
places in Beirut during the civil war – Robert Fisk goes on to try to confront the representatives of the
weapons industry with his findings. He seeks out a German arms dealer who despite being sad about
the destruction of Beirut, apparently does not see the connection between his own business and the
conflict in Lebanon.(RF942) The problematic character of the trade becomes apparent as the German
merchant and his associates explain how they circumvent international law and export to countries
under weapons embargo,(RF943) while it seems that ideological commitments also matter little when it
comes to acquiring weapons. Thus the Islamic Republic of Iran bought a significant amount of
weapons from the Israelis and the Americans during the Iran-Iraq War.(RF943) The West employed
equally little morality to its arms sales in the period and a long list of countries supplied both the
Iranians and the Iraqis with vast amounts of weaponry.(RF945) Along with the conventional weapons
being sold, Western governments apparently did not have problems with supplying Saddām Husayn
with the ingredient for making poisonous gas, though it became clear early in the Iran-Iraq War that gas
was being used against the Iranians and later on also against Iraqi Kurdish civilians. “During Iraq's war
with Iran, Britain had exported more than $200,000 worth of thiodiglycol, one of the two components
for mustard gas, to Baghdad in 1988, another $50,000 worth the following year. Thionyl chloride, the
other component, was also sent to Iraq in 1988 and 1989 at a price of $26,000. Government officials
anxious to avoid the obvious truth – that Britain was partly responsible for providing Saddām Husayn
with weapons of mass destruction – hastily pointed out that the chemical had civilian uses. It could be
used, they said, in the making of ink for ballpoint pens and fabric dyes. This was the same government
department that would, eight years later, prohibit the sale of the diphtheria vaccine to Iraqi children on
the grounds that it could used for 'weapons of mass destruction'.”(RF948) Robert Fisk emphasizes the
hypocrisy of how the British government was apparently willing to sell chemicals to Iraq that were to
be used for killing Iranian soldiers and Kurdish civilians while a couple of years later when Saddām
Husayn was no longer an ally they were preventing the Iraqi import of basic necessities: “Note, too,
how the dual-use for weapons exports was, within a matter of months, turned on its head as a means to
deprive Iraqis of basic social needs. Just as in 1988 and 1989 a chemical used for mustard gas could be
exported to Iraq since it could also be used for ballpoint ink, so – once UN sanctions were imposed
after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait – school pencils could not be exported to Iraq because the graphite in
the pencils had dual military use. For the same reason, we would refuse to allow the Iraqis to import
vital equipment for the repairing of oil wells, sewage plants and water-treatment facilities.”(RF948)
A particular incident in which a Lebanese ambulance was hit by an Israeli missile provided Robert Fisk
with the opportunity to pursue his goal of confronting the arms-makers with the results of their
business. An ambulance carrying Lebanese civilians was hit by a missile fired from an Apache
helicopter outside the village of Mansouri in southern Lebanon. The car with 14 civilians cramped
inside was apparently trying to leave the village after Israeli radio had broadcast messages ordering
them to leave. According to Robert Fisk the surviving civilians were asking “[h]ow ... could it be
justifiable for the Israelis to slaughter the occupants of an ambulance just because they didn't like the
suspected owner of the vehicle? And what kind of missile, they also asked, could home in on an
ambulance, blasting it 20 metres through the air? If the Apache helicopter was American – as it most
certainly was – who made the rocket that killed Nowkal, Mona and the four children, Zaynab, Hanim,
Mariam and Huda?”(RF959) The UN troops uncovered the remains of the missile on which serial
numbers were still visible, which in turn allowed Robert Fisk to carry out an investigation into how the
missile found its way to Lebanon. It turned out that the missile was indeed American-made and Robert
Fisk got an interview with the manufacturers under the pretext that he wanted to write about the
missile's abilities and its use in the Middle East. He showed them a fragment of the missile that killed
the Lebanese civilians and explained the circumstances of its use which they - despite an apparent fear
of criticising Israel - acknowledged was unfortunate. It later turned out that the missile had been part of
an American gift to Israel for not retaliating against Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. (RF962-7)
The problematic issue for America in this case is that the Mansouri attack was by no means an
isolated incident as the Israeli armed forces use a vast array of American weaponry which in turn
results in Arab anger with America when used to kill and wound Arab civilians.
Western policy towards Iraq in the 1990s: Sanctions and interventions
After Saddām Husayn invaded Kuwait in 1990 sanctions were imposed on Iraq in an attempt to
force it to withdraw from the country. According to Robert Fisk it was assumed that when Saddām's
army had been forced out of Kuwait the sanctions would be lifted, but – as Fisk writes - “[a]s so often
in the Middle East, a decision that initially appeared benign was to be quickly transformed into a
weapon more deadly than missiles and or shells.”(RF864) There seemed to have been little faith in the
sanctions before the war, though, as they were quickly supplanted by the use of military force as the
means to expel the Iraqi troops from Kuwait. The British foreign secretary at the time stated that UN
sanctions had no 'decisive effect' on Saddām Husayn's capacity to wage war.(RF864) After the war the
sanctions remained in place though with the apparent aim of undermining the Iraqi government and
helping regime change on its way. The effects of the sanctions do, however, seem to have been much
greater for the population of Iraq than its government. “A Harvard team of lawyers and public health
specialists, after visiting 46 Iraqi hospitals and 28 water and sewage facilities, stated in 1991 that deaths
among children under five in Iraq had nearly quintupled, that almost a million were undernourished and
100,000 were starving to death. The research found that 46,700 children under five had died from the
combined effects of war and trade sanctions in the first seven months of 1991.”(RF865) As Robert Fisk
points out, these were only the initial results of the sanctions which continued to take the lives of Iraqis
throughout the 1990's. “By 1996, half a million Iraqi civilians were estimated to have died as a result of
sanctions.”(RF865) The cynicism which lay behind the policy was apparent in Madeleine Albright's
answer when pushed on the question of whether it was actually worth it: “I think this is a very hard
choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”(RF865) According to Robert Fisk's interview
with Margaret Hassan the effects of the sanctions were quite contrary to their purpose: “'They want us
to rebel against Saddām,' she said. 'They think we will be so broken, so shattered by this suffering that
we will do anything – even give our lives – to get rid of Saddām. The uprising against the Ba'ath party
failed in 1991 so now they are using cruder methods. But they are wrong. These people have been
reduced to penury. They live in shit. And when you have no money and no food, you don't worry about
democracy or who your leaders are.'”(RF867) In addition to the immediate suffering imposed on the
Iraqis, the long term consequences were highly problematic as well. Robert Fisk interviewed UN
employee Dennis Halliday who stated that “'[t]here are men and women now in their twenties and
thirties and forties who have known little more than the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War and the sanctions.
They see themselves surrounded by unfriendly people, and a very unsympathetic America and Britain.
They are out of touch with technology and communications. They have no access to Western television.
And these are the people who are going to run this country in the future. They are feeling alienated and
very Iraqi-introverted. Their next-door neighbours are going to have a tough time dealing with these
people.'” As mentioned elsewhere in this paper, the British government which had previously exported
components for mustard gas to Iraq was now stopping the vaccines for diphtheria and yellow fever, as
they “are capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction.”(RF871)
The 'no-fly' zones that were imposed upon Iraq after the 1991 Gulf war allegedly served the
purpose of protecting the Shīcahs and Kurds who had rebelled against Saddām Hussayn in the
aftermath of the war. Iraq was subject to aerial bombardments throughout the decade, though the
reasons for these bombardments varied and according to Robert Fisk were also at points highly
dubious. Various crises erupted as the Iraqi army redeployed along the Kuwaiti border, when it was
alleged that Saddām had been behind an assassination attempt on George Bush and as apparent
attempts to stop Iraq from rearming itself with weapons of mass destruction.
The American and British claims that the no-fly zones were set up to protect the Kurds and the Shīcah
had little to do with reality, Robert Fisk claims. “The southern 'no-fly' zone was supposed to protect the
Shīcah from Saddām, even though the Shīcah insurgents of 1991 were long in their mass graves, or still
hiding in their refugee camps over the border in Iran. In the north, the 'no-fly' zones was supposed to
protect the Kurds from similar aggression; but the 'safe haven' created by the allies of 1991 at least still
existed there, even if it was not enough to save the Kurds of Urbil when Saddām sent his tanks into the
city to break up a CIA-run operation in 1996.”(RF884) In addition to this, the Turks were conducting
their own war with the PKK in northern Iraq, which resulted in intensive attacks on the very 'safe
haven' the allies had intended for the Kurds.
Efforts undertaken after the 1991 war to disarm Iraq were successful, judging by the accounts
that Robert Fisk quotes (Scott Ritter, Iraqis who defected to Jordan in 1995). Iraqi allegations that the
UNSCOM mission in the country was in fact being used by the CIA to gather intelligence apparently
turned out to be true as “the UN was forced to admit that 'UNSCOM directly facilitated the creation of
an intelligence collection system for the United States in violation of its mandate'. US agents had
installed a 'black box' eavesdropping system into UNSCOM's Baghdad headquarters that intercepted
Saddām Husayn's presidential communications network.” The UN eventually decided to withdraw the
team of inspectors from Iraq after the mission had succeeded in destroying “40,000 chemical shells and
other munitions, 700 tons of chemical agents, 48 long-range missiles, an anthrax factory, a nuclear
centrifuge programme and 30 missile warheads”(RF887) under the leadership of Rolf Ekeus. This
withdrawal was followed by Operation Desert Fox, a renewed bombardment of Iraq for its non-
compliance with UN inspectors. The western actions against Iraq were characterized by “the lack of
any sane, long-term policy toward Iraq”(RF888), and the official reasons were lies according to Robert
Fisk. Thus Iraq, it was claimed, “could destroy the whole world [...] twice over.”(RF888) The attacks
on Iraq sparked the most anger among Arabs and Muslims, according to Robert Fisk, because of “the
hopelessly one-sided and hypocritical way in which we tried to justify the attack on Iraq.”(RF889)
These continued attacks on Iraq received little attention in the West but were, according to Robert Fisk,
often condemned in Arab media and Saudi officials were privately complaining that there was
“increasing fury among the young and more religious citizens of the Kingdom.”(RF894)
The case for war against Iraq 2003
The American invasion of Iraq 2003 was preceded by a media campaign to support the case for
war. “In Britain in 2003, newspapers screamed their arguments for war. In America they argued with
books, heaps of them, coffee-table books recalling the attacks of 11 September 2001, paperbacks
pleading for peace in Iraq, great tomes weighed down with footnotes extolling the virtues of 'regime
change' in the Middle East. In New York, the publishers as well as the media went to war. You only had
to read the titles of the 9/11 books – many of them massive photo-memorial volumes – on America's
news-stands: Above Hallowed Ground, So Others Might Live, Strong of Heart, What We Saw, The Final
Frontier, A Fury of God, The Shadow of Swords ... No wonder American television networks could take
the next war for granted.”(RF1138) The most 'meretricious'(RFs wording) of these books by Kenneth
Pollack, 'The Threatening Storm', argued the case for invading Iraq by comparing Iraq 2003 to
Germany in 1938. According to Robert Fisk, Pollack puts forward the rather odd argument that the
world was equally threatened by Saddām in 2003 as Britain and France had been before the Second
World War – this in spite of the fact that America could by all odds easily crush the Iraqi army. Pollack
apparently argues that the US should go to war because it could, thereby making “[w]ar ... a viable and
potentially successful policy option”(RF1139) to be pursued in other scenarios as well. Additionally,
Fisk sees Pollack's argument as essentially Israeli since a war on Iraq would weaken the Palestinian
struggle and ease Israel's situation in the Middle East.
Robert Fisk essentially sees the media campaign for war as “a mawkish, cheapskate attempt to
push Americans into war on the back of the hushed, reverent, unimpeachable sacrifice of September
11th.”(RF1139) In addition to the media, there was also a government initiative supporting the case for
war by frightening the population. Thus stories of “smallpox, dirty bombs, attacks on hotels and
shopping malls, a chemical attack on the Tube, the poisoning of water supplies, 'postcard target' attacks
on Big Ben and Canary Wharf, the procurement of 5,000 body bags, 120,000 decontamination suits,
survival classes for seven-year-old schoolchildren, news laws to quarantine Britons in the event of a
biological attack.”(RF1140) As Robert Fisk sees it, “[t]here seemed to be no end to this government
terrorism.”(RF1140)
The potential consequences of the invasion were problematic as Robert Fisk saw prior to the
war. As he states, “we will be in occupation of a foreign land. We will be in occupation of Iraq as surely
as Israel is in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. And with Saddām gone, the way is open for
Usāmah bin Lādin to demand the liberation of Iraq as another of his objectives. [...] Are we then ready
to fight al-Qācidah in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan and Pakistan and countless other
Description:the major reasons for this anger as they are expressed in Robert Fisk's book,
Middle East, but tries instead to reflect the way Robert Fisk explains Arab anger.
