Subject: Fw: Robert Fisk
Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 14:38:28 +0100


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postings. (thats the theory)
H
> Subject: Robert Fisk again: actor John Malkovich wants him shot dead
>
> Hollywood actor John Malkovich might want to have his head examined
> after
> telling the Cambridge Union that Robert Fisk should be shot...I dare not
>
> think at his fate had he attacked a journalist in the same manner for
> being
> pro-Israeli...
>
> Malkovich also threatened Scottish MP George Galloway with the same
> fate,
> displeased by the latter's criticism of Israel and the US:
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/scotland/newsid_1967000/1967317.stm
>
> See also:
> http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Exclusive/0,4029,711268,00.html
>
> Karim
>
> "Robert Fisk: Why does John Malkovich want to kill me?
> He might be denied any further visas to Britain until he apologises for
> his
> remarks. But the damage has been done
> The Independent 14 May 2002
> Middle East
> It used to be just a trickle, a steady drip-drip of hate mail which
> arrived
> once a week, castigating me for reporting on the killing of innocent
> Lebanese under Israeli air raids or for suggesting that Arabs - as well
> as
> Israelis - wanted peace in the Middle East. It began to change in the
> late
> 1990s. Typical was the letter which arrived after I wrote my eyewitness
> account of the 1996 slaughter by Israeli gunners of 108 refugees
> sheltering
> in the UN base in the Lebanese town of Qana.
> "I do not like or admire anti-Semites," it began. "Hitler was one of the
>
> most famous in recent history". Yet compared to the avalanche of
> vicious,
> threatening letters and openly violent statements that we journalists
> receive today, this was comparatively mild. For the internet seems to
> have
> turned those who do not like to hear the truth about the Middle East
> into a
> community of haters, sending venomous letters not only to myself but to
> any
> reporter who dares to criticise Israel - or American policy in the
> Middle
> East.
> There was always, in the past, a limit to this hatred. Letters would be
> signed with the writer's address. Or if not, they would be
> so-ill-written as
> to be illegible. Not any more. In 26 years in the Middle East, I have
> never
> read so many vile and intimidating messages addressed to me. Many now
> demand
> my death. And last week, the Hollywood actor John Malkovich did just
> that,
> telling the Cambridge Union that he would like to shoot me.
> How, I ask myself, did it come to this? Slowly but surely, the hate has
> turned to incitement, the incitement into death threats, the walls of
> propriety and legality gradually pulled down so that a reporter can be
> abused, his family defamed, his beating at the hands of an angry crowd
> greeted with laughter and insults in the pages of an American newspaper,
> his
> life cheapened and made vulnerable by an actor who - without even saying
> why
> - says he wants to kill me.
> Much of this disgusting nonsense comes from men and women who say they
> are
> defending Israel, although I have to say that I have never in my life
> received a rude or insulting letter from Israel itself. Israelis
> sometimes
> express their criticism of my reporting - and sometimes their praise -
> but
> they have never stooped to the filth and obscenities which I now
> receive.
> "Your mother was Eichmann's daughter," was one of the most recent of
> these.
> My mother Peggy, who died after a long battle with Parkinson's three and
> a
> half years ago, was in fact an RAF radio repair operator on Spitfires at
> the
> height of the Battle of Britain in 1940.
> The events of 11 September turned the hate mail white hot. That day, in
> an
> airliner high over the Atlantic that had just turned back from its
> routing
> to America, I wrote an article for The Independent, pointing out that
> there
> would be an attempt in the coming days to prevent anyone asking why the
> crimes against humanity in New York and Washington had occurred.
> Dictating
> my report from the aircraft's satellite phone, I wrote about the history
> of
> deceit in the Middle East, the growing Arab anger at the deaths of
> thousands
> of Iraqi children under US-supported sanctions, and the continued
> occupation
> of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza by America's Israeli ally.
> I
> didn't blame Israel. I suggested that Osama bin Laden was responsible.
> But the e-mails that poured into The Independent over the next few days
> bordered on the inflammatory. The attacks on America were caused by
> "hate
> itself, of precisely the obsessive and dehumanising kind that Fisk and
> Bin
> Laden have been spreading," said a letter from a Professor Judea Pearl
> of
> UCLA. I was, he claimed, "drooling venom" and a professional "hate
> peddler".
> Another missive, signed Ellen Popper, announced that I was "in cahoots
> with
> the archterrorist" Bin Laden. Mark Guon labelled me "a total nut-case".
> I
> was "psychotic," according to Lillie and Barry Weiss. Brandon Heller of
> San
> Diego informed me that "you are actually supporting evil itself".
> It got worse. On an Irish radio show, a Harvard professor - infuriated
> by my
> asking about the motives for the atrocities of 11 September - condemned
> me
> as a "liar" and a "dangerous man" and announced that "anti-Americanism"
> -
> whatever that is - was the same as anti-Semitism. Not only was it wicked
> to
> suggest that someone might have had reasons, however deranged, to commit
> the
> mass slaughter. It was even more appalling to suggest what these reasons
>
> might be. To criticise the United States was to be a Jew-hater, a
> racist, a
> Nazi.
> And so it went on. In early December, I was almost killed by a crowd of
> Afghan refugees who were enraged by the recent slaughter of their
> relatives
> in American B-52 air-raids. I wrote an account of my beating, adding
> that I
> could not blame my attackers, that if I had suffered their grief, I
> would
> have done the same. There was no end to the abuse that came then.
> In The Wall Street Journal, Mark Steyn wrote an article under a headline
>
> saying that a "multiculturalist" - me - had "got his due." Cards arrived
>
> bearing the names of London "whipping" parlours. The Independent's
> web-site
> received an e-mail suggesting that I was a paedophile. Among several
> vicious
> Christmas cards was one bearing the legend of the 12 Days of Christmas
> and
> the following note inside: "Robert Fiske (sic) - aka Lord Haw Haw of the
>
> Middle East and a leading anti-semite & proto-fascist Islamophile
> propagandist. Here's hoping 2002 finds you deep in Gehenna (Hell), Osama
> bin
> Laden on your right, Mullah Omar on your left. Yours, Ishmael Zetin."
> Since Ariel Sharon's offensive in the West Bank, provoked by the
> Palestinians' wicked suicide bombing, a new theme has emerged. Reporters
> who
> criticise Israel are to blame for inciting anti-Semites to burn
> synagogues.
> Thus it is not Israel's brutality and occupation that provokes the sick
> and
> cruel people who attack Jewish institutions, synagogues and cemeteries.
> We
> journalists are to blame.
> Almost anyone who criticises US or Israeli policy in the Middle East is
> now
> in this free-fire zone. My own colleague in Jerusalem, Phil Reeves, is
> one
> of them. So are two of the BBCs' reporters in Israel, along with Suzanne
>
> Goldenberg of The Guardian. And take Jennifer Loewenstein, a human
> rights
> worker in Gaza - who is herself Jewish and who wrote a condemnation of
> those
> who claim that Palestinians are deliberately sacrificing their children.
> She
> swiftly received the following e-mail: "BITCH. I can smell you from
> afar.
> You are a bitch and you have Arab blood in you. Your mother is a fucking
>
> Arab. At least, for God's sake, change your fucking name. Ben Aviram."
> Does this kind of filth have an effect on others? I fear it does. Only
> days
> after Malkovich announced that he wanted to shoot me, a website claimed
> that
> the actor's words were "a brazen attempt at queue-jumping". The site
> contained an animation of my own face being violently punched by a fist
> and
> a caption which said: "I understand why they're beating the shit out of
> me."
> Thus a disgusting remark by an actor in the Cambridge Union led to a
> website
> suggesting that others were even more eager to kill me. Malkovich was
> not
> questioned by the police. He might, I suppose, be refused any further
> visas
> to Britain until he explains or apologises for his vile remarks. But the
>
> damage has been done. As journalists, our lives are now forfeit to the
> internet haters. If we want a quiet life, we will just have to toe the
> line,
> stop criticising Israel or America. Or just stop writing altogether."
>
> --
>
> --
> 01100110 01101001 01110011 01101000 01100101 01111001 01100101
>          o
>         O
>           O  o
>            o
>           O
>            o
>             <-AT-><
>  Overgrow the Government!
>
>  There ain't no Sanity Clause.
>