Robert Fisk in the Independent, April 14, 2002:
As Israel's indisciplined soldiery yesterday continued to hide their deeds from the outside world by preventing the Red Cross, aid workers, ambulances and journalists from entering the rubble of Jenin, Mr Powell was sitting idly by in Israel, calling for the "utmost restraint'' from an army that has not yet finished filling the mass graves of Jenin.Robert Fisk on a recent Irish television broadcast, screaming hysterically in an attempt to defend himself from the suggestion that the above [false and unretracted] description of the Jenin battle was a blood libel:
Don't you dare call me a blood libel [sic]. That's a highly racist comment. ... How dare you make that accusation. I want it withdrawn by you. I'm sorry. I don't make blood libels. I want that withdrawn.... that expression "blood libel" [is] highly libelous. It is slanderous and it is actionable.But, Bob, it was blood libel. So sue me.
UPDATE: As a reader notes in the comments below, Fisk's latest column mentions the Irish broadcast:
I did not say they committed a massacre. But I should have.Whatever, "Blood Libel" Bob. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 24, 2004 04:59 PM
In today's article, Fisk writes " “I did not say they [Israeli troops] committed a massacre.”
I suppose the Israeli troops were filling the mass graves with--what?--people they hadn't massacred?
Posted by: /editor on April 24, 2004 07:41 PMForgot the link:
Posted by: /editor on April 24, 2004 08:03 PM
There is something really disturbing about all of those guys especially the host. Nerdy leftist elitist know it alls bantering back and forth and the intensity of their own estimation of their viewpoint and sanctimony.....
The host had about as much spine as a jelly fish.
Could there be some association with the lower testosterone and sounding like a bunch of nerdy assholes. And yet Fisk and his whole clan Chomsky, Finkelstein, Tariq Ali are all very dangerous. 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq have been great for business. Now they can speak to crowded hyperactive college kids and pretend they're rock stars... instead of nerdy moonbats.
Mike
Someone on Tim Blair's blog posted this:
"I pray for the day that repulsive lump of dogshit joins Walter Duranty and Joseph Goebels in the hell prepared for the willing mouthpieces murderers and tyrants.
If only those Afghans had beaten him to death, if only that security contracter the self-righteous little shit harassed outside the hotel in Bahgdad had flipped and put two in his head.
But no such luck, Pat Tillman lies in his grave and that cocksucker Fisk will live to be a hundred and five. Get cancer, Fisk. Drive drunk, piss off some of your beloved swarthy locals, something, anything. Die you fuck."
I was under the impression that the term "blood libel" referred to a very particular lie about Jews (involving matzoh). If this is the case, then not all lies about Jews are "blood libel". In fact, most aren't.
Blood-libel Bob's Arab News column is as marked by self-pity and paranoia as that fascinating video clip. And that's being charitable. Hard to tell if he's actually serious or merely polemical (or whether he can any longer distinguish the two), but he seems to contend with a straight face that mere criticism of Israel arouses the wrath of the Elders of Zion. Mary Robinson, he says without a trace of irony or mention of "Durban," is such a victim. An astonishingly mendacious performance, even by his low rent standards, capped off by this hallucinatory, free-associational reference to Deir Yassin:
"The day also marked the fourth day of the eight-day Jewish Passover. It also fell on the anniversary of the 1945 execution by the Nazis of Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer at Flossenburg concentration camp. Jewish liberation 3,000 years ago, the death of a Palestinian Jew 2,000 years ago, the death of a German Christian 59 years ago and the massacre of more than 100 Palestinian men, women and children 56 years ago. Alas, Deir Yassin Remembered does not receive the publicity it merits."
(Nice touch that, "a Palestinian Jew.") And now, Blood-libel Bob joins the ranks of victimhood, simply because he had the temerity to take on the Jews.
Posted by: wm. tyroler on April 25, 2004 05:27 PMWhat is the definition of "blood libel?" I think it would include what Fisk said.
Posted by: Jed on April 25, 2004 05:35 PMA libel involving blood assumably meaning murder. And I don't think there is just 1 particular one involving Jews in Europe... There were different ones invented. I read an article that in Poland a blood libel was occuring after WWII was over even when most of the remaining Jews left as a result. A local governor or something (See Aish history) would pay someone to paint himself in blood and scream something about the Jews running by the synagogue etc...
QUESTION -
Which "latest study" regarding Jenin is Fisk talking about since he never says?
Is it the "HumanRightsWatch" report?
And I would say the hysteric screaming about a "Massacre" in Jenin screamed by the atypical liars in the PLO and written with frothing eagerness by most of the European media qualifies as a "blood libel" by any definition.
The Arabs can murder Kurds in Syria, Palis in Jordan and Syria, expel hundreds of thousands of Palis from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, level a city in Hama, Syria, Enslave and murder nearly a million Sudanese Christians by Muslim Sudan, etc.... etc....
but you go to watch those brutal fing Jews!!
and Mr. Fisk is sure going to make his life's work dam sure of that...
You see because there isn't enough foreign media in Israel and the Territories while there is plenty in China, Tibet, Chechnya, Syria, Iran, Saddam's Iraq, Sudan, etc... LOL!