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FISK KARSHED
Efraim Karsh is effing harsh on Middle East non-expert Robert Fisk:
It is difficult to turn a page of The Great War for Civilisation without encountering some basic error. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not, as Fisk has it, in Jerusalem. The Caliph Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was murdered in the year 661, not in the 8th century. Emir Abdallah became king of Transjordan in 1946, not 1921, and both he and his younger brother, King Faisal I of Iraq, hailed not from a “Gulf tribe” but rather from the Hashemites on the other side of the Arabian peninsula. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, not 1962; Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed by the British authorities, not elected; Ayatollah Khomeini transferred his exile from Turkey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf not during Saddam Hussein’s rule but fourteen years before Saddam seized power. Security Council resolution 242 was passed in November 1967, not 1968; Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, not 1977, and was assassinated in October 1981, not 1979. Yitzhak Rabin was minister of defense, not prime minister, during the first Palestinian intifada, and al Qaeda was established not in 1998 but a decade earlier. And so on and so forth.
Throughout the Middle East marches a lost tribe, of no shared cause, moving ever further from their destination. Their only point of commonality: each of them once asked Fisk for street directions.
(Via Little Green Footballs—or, as it is known to the Danes: Sma Gronne Fodbolde)
Hajj Amin al-Husseini, selected, not elected!
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2006 02 01 at 10:28 AM • permalinkThe review begins, “No foreign journalist is more closely identified with the Middle East than British writer Robert Fisk.” So, this journalist, who has been covering the area for 30 years, has managed to make a complete muddle of Middle Eastern history, revealing himself to be little more than an ill-informed tourist with a press card and a bad attitude. I eagerly await Fisk’s next book: “Hamas and the Golden Age of Palestine”.
Fisk went to journalism school with Dan Rather.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2006 02 01 at 11:10 AM • permalinkHmmm.
But aside from those, the book is entirely factual right?
HEHEHE
Posted by memomachine on 2006 02 01 at 12:09 PM • permalinkI’m nit-picking, I’m sure, but I thought “fisking” was a debunking of opinions-as-fact presented as the basis for an argument.
This is fact-checking citations for (egregious) mistakes of historical data.
“Fisking” Robert Fisk obtains a self-satisfying charm and irony. Perhaps I’m behaing as a spoil sport.
Cheers
Perhaps Knopf was targeting the Oprah book club.
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 02 01 at 05:15 PM • permalink#8--paco: That works for me. Kinda like a road warning sign, instead of “Dangerous Curves,” we’ve got “Fact Slapping” ahead!
Fiskings are often very entertaining. Lileks does them with extra mustard! Fact Slapping is to be expected from the reality-based community, as they make-up the facts as they go along. The list of errors in the post above are so numerous, as to make my eyes glaze over.
Maybe “cluebatting”? And, Fisk will counter that it was a 1000+ page exposition of ‘truthiness.’
What a Maroon.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 02 01 at 10:36 PM • permalinkJust got his ass fact checked, is all.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 02 02 at 01:38 AM • permalinkexpert, as in
X= unknown quantity
Spurt= What a dick does under pressure
Yup, Fisky boy is an X-Spurt by my definition.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 02 02 at 07:31 AM • permalinkThe way I first heard it Mole, it was:
Ex = a has-been
Spurt = a drip under pressureNow, maybe “drip” doesn’t have the same connotations in Strine as it does in “Murican.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2006 02 02 at 08:49 PM • permalink
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I love a good fisking and none better than a fisking of Fisk.