Pity the Nation

Pity the Nation, by Robert Fisk

Written by one of Britain 's foremost journalists, this remarkable book combines political analysis and war reporting in an unprecedented way: it is an epic account of the Lebanon conflict by an author who has personally witnessed the carnage of Beirut for over a decade.

Pity the Nation is Robert Fisk's personal history of Lebanon from 1976 until 1990, during its series of civil wars and invasions by Syria, Israel and various western powers. Fisk was a personal witness to many of the events he describes in this book; throughout the period he lived and worked in Beirut. This makes Pity the Nation something different from a conventional history. Rather, it is more of an eyewitness account, of history being recorded as it is happening. At times this means that the story Fisk is trying to tell is overwhelmed by his own memories of events. However, this also gives Pity the Nation an immediacy that conventional history books lack. What Fisk does is using his own experiences in Lebanon as a narrative thread to help guide you through the complex and confusing twists and turns of the civil war, without neglecting the context in which those experiences took place.

That context is set up by Fisk in the first chapters, by setting up the two groups that would determine Lebanon's fate: the Israelis and the Palestinians. Fisk actually starts the book far away from Lebanon, in Auschwitz, as the background of the Holocaust determines most of Israel's actions. However the Holocaust has given the state Israel, as the one true representative of the Jewish people, a moral immunity for its crimes against the Palestinians and against Lebanon.

Fisk then goes into what brought the Palestinians to Lebanon: the war of 1948, "al Nakba", the Catastrophe, when the Palestinians were driven from their lands by Israeli terror and into banishment in the surrounding countries, still hoping to return one day. As disgusted Fisk is with the Israeli leadership he is also with the PLO, who at every step seem to lead its people away from Palestine, into conflict with those whom should've been its ally.

It is the Israel-Palestine conflict that drives much of the disaster that visited Lebanon from 1976. The PLO was kicked out of Jordan after an unsuccessful attempt to take over the country and was soon drawn into the complex conflicts between the various Lebanese powergroups: the Druze, Maronites, Sh'ite and Sunni Muslims, the Phalangists, few of which wanted the Palestinians there. For Israel, the presence of the PLO in Lebanon was a reason to undertake ever increasing military action against Lebanon, culminating in the 1982 invasion. Lebanon at that point had already had one foreign power in its borders, Syria, invited in 1976 as an Arab peacekeeping force at the end of the civil war. At first Syria was welcomed by most of the population, but relationships quickly soured, with the Syrians getting involved in Lebanese politics, acting for their own gain rather than the Lebanese. With the Israeli invasion, Lebanon now became the battleground of not just the Lebanese factions, but also the Israeli army, the PLO and Syrian army. Fisk has little time for any of the factions; his sympathies lie with the Lebanese people.

The heart of the book is formed by the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Fisk was one of the first journalists at the scene of the massacre, only hours after the murderers had gone and his descriptions do not spare the reader. It is impossible to read his account without becoming angry at those who set up the massacre. Fisk is especially scathing when it comes to Ariel Sharon, under whose responsibility the massacre took place and who was never punished for it. The Sabra and Shatila massacres were the ultimate results of Sharon's and Israel's policies.

His final chapter about the Israeli attack on the UN base at Qana with its Fiji soldiers and many civilians is shocking and a fitting finale to the book.

While none - including the PLO - come out as heroes the Israelis certainly do not look good, not just in the brutality inflicted on the Lebanese but in their racist arrogance and lies they often told to cover up their actions. For exposing these Fisk was subject to attack by the ubiquitous Israeli lobby in the US including the dreary and false charges of "anti-Semitsm". He is one of the few foreign reporters who has called attention to the Israeli practice of falling back on "the Holocaust" or accusations of anti-Semitism when caught out in one of their military outrages.

The march of folly doesn't end with Israel though; Fisk is also sceptical, with reason, about the various western attempts to bring peace to Lebanon, especially of the multinational force led by the US which went to Beirut after the Israeli invasion had lost steam. Fisk makes it clear none of the states involved had much idea of what was going on in Lebanon or any idea what to achieve and how to achieve it...

There are some very interesting comments on the role of journalism and the importance of words. With a fastidious eye for detail, he rails against day-tripping reporters who betray truth with their clichés and loose language, constantly defending language against false appropriation: "terrorism", for example, wielded by one side to describe acts committed against them, deprives the term of any objective purpose and thus legitimises reprisal. He makes reparation with this unique and passionate analysis, which remains the most relentless and convincing account yet of the bloodiest quarter-century in Lebanon's history.

Pity the Nation is a revelation, an excellent, readable overview of a very complicated situation. It will rank among the classic accounts of war in our time, both as historical document and as an eyewitness testament to human savagery.