Robert Fisk: Why does John Malkovich want to kill me?
14 May 2002
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.
Your
opinion |