Robert Fisk - Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War

Robert Fisk

LEBANON AT WAR

Third edition

One is left in awe at the mans industry, commitment and courage in reporting the ugliest of the worlds current conflicts: wonder, too, that Fisk can still write with sanity after witnessing such inhumanity.

John Sweeney, Literary Review

brilliant Fisk makes enthralling reading, and his account of modern Lebanon stands out as the most interesting book on the war in recent years.

Amanda Mitchison, Sunday Correspondent

people lament the demise of the foreign correspondent, the fearless pursuer of truth, the man who stays with a story and sees it through to the end and is prepared to risk his life to do so. This book shows that the species is still alive and well, living where so many others have died, in Beirut. And he has written a magnificent account of his experiences.

Hugh Kennedy, Scotsman

he is a devastating witness to the failure of politics to guard mankind against itself.

Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times

Robert Fisk is Middle East Correspondent of the Independent, based in Beirut, and this highly acclaimed book is the fruit of 25 years reporting from Lebanon where he covered the civil war and two Israeli invasions. Educated in Britain and Ireland, Fisk holds more journalism awards24than any other foreign correspondent for his reporting of the Iranian revolution and wars in Lebanon, the Gulf, Kosovo, and Algeria. He won last years Amnesty International award for his reports from Serbia on NATOs bombardment of Yugoslavia and received this years David Watt Memorial Award for his reporting from the Middle East.

By the same author

The Point of No Return:the Strike which Broke the British in Ulster

In Time of War:Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality 193945

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Robert Fisk 1990, 1992, 2001

First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Andr Deutsch Limited
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback 1991
Second edition first published 1992
Third edition first published 2001

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ISBN 0192801309

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For Lara

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity the nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.

Khalil Gibran
The Garden of the Prophet
(London, Heinemann, 1934)

CHAPTER 1 Sepia Pictures on a Wall
Szymon Datner and the ash pits of Auschwitz

CHAPTER 2 The Keys of Palestine
The foundation of Israel and the Palestinian diaspora

CHAPTER 3 The Pied Piper of Damascus
The rise and fall of the Lebanese state

CHAPTER 4 The Garden of Earthly Delights
Syrians, Palestinians and Israelis in Lebanon 19768

CHAPTER 5 The Gentleman from Marjayoun
The United Nations as a prisoner of Lebanon

CHAPTER 6 Let Them Come!
The armies of Lebanon prepare for war 19802

CHAPTER 7 No White Flags
Israel invades Lebanon June 1982

CHAPTER 8 The Gravediggers Diary
The Israeli siege of Beirut JuneJuly 1982

CHAPTER 9 Surgical Precision
The Israeli bombing of Beirut JulyAugust 1982

CHAPTER 10 Dawn at Midnight
The PLO leaves and the Israelis enter west Beirut AugustSeptember 1982

CHAPTER 11 Terrorists
The massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Chatila camps 1618 September 1982

CHAPTER 12 Pandoras Box
Reporting under siege

CHAPTER 13 The Root
The return of the Multinational Force

CHAPTER 14 Beirut Addio
The humiliation of the West in Beirut

CHAPTER 15 The Retreat
The Israelis are forced out of southern Lebanon 19835

CHAPTER 16 Wait for Me
Islamic Jihad and the torment of Lebanon

CHAPTER 17 Freedom
The Israeli army retreats behind its borders

CHAPTER 18 The Massacre
Israelis artillery slaughters 106 Lebanese at Qana

In the spring of 1978, on Easter Sunday, on a winding little hill road outside the village of Qana in southern Lebanon, I was interviewing two farmers in a tobacco field when an Israeli tank suddenly drove over the nearest ridge and opened fire on us. As if in a movie and first experiences of such warfare tend to have a distinctly unreal air about them we flung ourselves into the undergrowth as a series of great orange flames bubbled around us, the sound of the explosions so loud that the inside of my head hurt for hours afterwards.

Behind us, in a little forest of silver birch trees, Palestinian guerrillas had been setting up a makeshift mortar position, and we had driven blithely past them a few minutes earlier, unaware that we were passing through their front line. The tank coming over the ridge at Qana was Israels front line and it was shooting at what its crew supposed to be terrorists which meant at the time that they were firing at any human being that they could see in front of their vehicle. It was a hot mid-morning and on the tape-recording which I was making at the time, you can still hear the cicadas hissing from the bushes seconds before the first shell comes whizzing down the road towards our car.