Which is the Big Lie?

Whenever I feel a bit too clean, I search the web for the articles by Robert Fisk. Reading the latest Fisking has always seemed not unlike wading through a pit of shit, but even I was shocked by the depths to which he appears to have sunk in his article, Israel's black propaganda bid falters as documents reveal an impotent leader not a terrorist mastermind. (The Independent, May 9th, 2002)

To the delight of his followers, Fisk alleges that “Israel's so-called Book of Terror – designed to prove that Yasser Arafat is a master of terror involved in suicide attacks on Israel – is riddled with errors, omissions and deliberate misinformation.” One wonders whether any of them actually bothered to read the small print – that is to say, the stuff below the headings – before leaping to the conclusion that the Israelis are a bunch of lying bastards who have intentionally falsified evidence against the ever saintly Arafat.

“You'd think that the people who scream so loud over the Protocols Of Zion would be a bit more discerning, but they never learn anything.” sniggered one writer.†

Whether Fisk would thank his fans for mentioning the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the same breath as his article, I am not sure. But to me, his article seems a fairly close parallel to the Protocols: what is it if not a Big-Lie conspiracy theory designed to legitimise violence against Jews?

It is worth looking closely at the standard of his argument: the evidence on which he bases his Big Lie is, as far as I can tell, that one (count them: one) document has been attributed to a recipient who is not mentioned on it (what does that prove?), and that some passages in other documents have been omitted from the translation. This in the context of dozens of documents, which you can see for yourself on the web, with their Arabic originals in facsimile, clearly showing that Arafat and the whole PLO hierarchy have been actively and massively involved in terrorism.

It is also worth thinking carefully about the plausibility of Fisk's conclusion (essentially, that Arafat is trying to prevent terrorism but is powerless to do so, and that the Israelis have perpetrated a massive forgery to incriminate him). Don't trust Fisk. Look at the actual evidence that he is re-interpreting (the six panels halfway down the page). Yet quite aside from these documents revealing the awful details, we ourselves have seen Arafat calling for “a million martyrs to march on Jerusalem”, and ranting “Jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad, jihad” on TV. Is this the behaviour of a person struggling impotently to prevent violence?

Incidentally, Fisk says: “...documents allegedly seized by Israeli troops in the West Bank have been doctored to ‘prove’ Arafat's responsibility.” Why would they doctor documents that they only allegedly seized? Fisk has sunk to a new low in this article, even for him (remember when he said of the upstanding folk who beat him half to death on the Afghan border for being Western: “They had every reason to be angry – I've been an outspoken critic of the US actions myself. If I had been them, I would have attacked me.”‡) and so has The Independent by publishing it.

Thinking that the Israelis have a right to defend themselves against murder naturally biases me against Fisk, but I am unable to draw a more favourable conclusion from his latest analysis than this: so committed has he become to his evil, conspiracy-theory-soaked, morally inverted world view, and so eager is he to exonerate Arafat and blame Israel, that he has lost touch with the elements of argument. He seems to me to have lost touch with truth and journalistic impartiality long ago.

Notes

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A major piece of anti-Semitic propaganda, compiled at the turn of the century by members of the Russian Secret Police. According to the Jewish Virtual Library the document was essentially adapted from a nineteenth century French polemical satire directed against Emperor Napoleon III, substituting Jewish leaders. The Protocols alleged that Jews were plotting world domination, and unfortunately, many people appear to be unaware that the document is a forgery.

† See this message.

‡ See UK journalist beaten by Afghan mob BBC, Sunday, 9 December, 2001, 06:20 GMT

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