http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0391/9103073.htm
Pity the Nation
By Robert Fisk Atheneum, 1990. 678 pp.
List: $24.95; AET: $19.95.
Reviewed by Samuel Hazo
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1991, Page 73
Even before the publication of Robert Fisk's Pity the Nation, first in England,
now in the US, there were several good books on the war in Lebanon. Among
those in print and available in the US are Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to
Jerusalem, Jonathan C. Randal's Going All the Way, George W. Ball's Error and
Betrayal in Lebanon, Ze'ev Schiff's and Ehud Ya'ari's Israel's Lebanon War and
Michael Jansen's The Battle of Beirut. Fisk's definitive book ' written later and
containing more information than any of those cited, further confirms and
elaborates their basic themes and conclusions.
All of the authors agree on the following:
1) Israel's invasion of Lebanon was de to demoralize the Palestinians on the
West Bank and in Gaza by eradicating the PLO; 2) Israel wanted to establish a
Pax Israelica by cantonizing the Levant (as it hoped eventually to do to the
entire Arab world) and developing a Greater Israel through the installation of a
client government in Beirut; 3) the Maronite Phalangists participated in this
betrayal until the 11th hour; and 4) during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon
the Arab states revealed their impotence by doing nothing, while the death toll
in Lebanon climbed past 23,000 (predominantly Lebanese) at the cost of more
than 600 Israeli lives, almost 500 Americans, 100 French and assorted others
in the multinational and UNIFIL forces. Fisk then goes on to note that the
ransom kidnappings (he was a close friend and colleague of Terry Anderson)
began after the pointless bombardment of Lebanon by the USS New Jersey (its
shells were the size of Volkswagens)-another legacy of the war in Lebanon
and further evidence of our diplomatic ineptitude in the whole area.
Fisk, born in Ireland and a correspondent first for the Times and now for the
Independent, is still based in Beirut-one of the last Western journalists to remain
there. Having twice avoided abduction and being determined to cover the
agony of Lebanon personally, he has compiled enough first-hand evidence to
convince even the most partisan skeptic of his veracity and impartiality. There
is enough dirt to spatter everyone.
The PLO detachments are condemned for their treatment of the Shi'i in the
south of Lebanon and for their internecine rivalries in Tripoli. The Maronite
Phalangists are condemned for their collusion with their country's invaders and
their suicidal sectarian chauvinism. The Syrians are blamed for their
manipulation of their proxies in Lebanon and the resultant damage to genuine
Lebanese nationalism.
It is the Israelis, however, who receive the deepest criticism. Fisk charges them
with total adventurism in Lebanon. The villain of the piece is Israel's
then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, with ancillary help from former Prime
Minister Menachem Begin and Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan. It was Sharon (with
the tacit encouragement of Alexander Haig) who bamboozled the invasion plan
through the Knesset. It was Sharon who, according to Israeli soldiers
interviewed by Fisk, colluded with the Phalangists in the massacres in Sabra
and Shatila.
It was Sharon who ordered the two-week around-the-clock bombardment, from
the air, land and sea, of Beirut, after he had already cut off electricity and water
from the capital. It was Sharon who permitted the use of phosphorus and cluster
bombs on civilian targets in so-called "surgical strikes." In one of the book's
most indelible images, a Lebanese mother is unable to bury her children for two
days because the phosphorus-covered bodies would not stop burning. Even
when she put them in their graves, the bodies again burst into flame.
This book is not for the timid. It castigates the naivete of political amateurs like
Us President Ronald Reagan and his national security adviser, Colonel Robert
McFarlane, that cost the lives of hundreds of Marines. Reagan administration
culpability in this matter has become part of the political amnesia of our time.
The book exposes the Hegelian arrogance of Bashir Gemayel before his
assassination, then reveals the political weakness of his brother (and successor
as president of Lebanon), Amin, and the chauvinism of General Michel Aoun.
Fisk strips Israel of what he calls its moral immunity" in the West by reporting
what its government and its soldiers actually did in Lebanon, and the record is
not a pretty one. Fisk's sympathies are with the Lebanese people and with
those who understood them and were also victimized, i.e., the kidnapped, the
tortured, the betrayed, the separated, the homeless.
Fisk's book should be required reading for any American who sees the Middle
East as a part of America's future, not in an economic or military sense but in a
human one. The book vindicates a writer for the Financial Times who said that
Fisk as "a war correspondent is ... unrivaled. "
His credibility as a witness is matched only by his insight into the Lebanese
psyche. This is evidenced by this passage from Kahlil Gibran's The Garden of
the Prophet, published in 1934, which Fisk found contemporary enough to
provide the title of his book. "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."
Dr. Samuel Hazo is director of the International Poetry Forum and a professor of
literature at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. His most recent books are
Stills (fiction, available from the AET Book Club) and Silence Spoken Here, a
volume of poetry.
