Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East
By Robert Fisk, published by HarperCollins (Fourth Estate) 2024 pp.644
Robert Fisk, a long-time foreign correspondent for the Independent, died in Dublin in October 2020. This posthumous book which picks up from where his 2005 book The Great War of Civilisation left off and which covers the Arab Uprisings and the war in Syria up to the more recent conflicts between Israel, Palestine and Lebanon, was a work in progress when he passed away. He was a maverick who wrote harshly about Israel amid describing the Arab Middle East as a hallowed wonderland, even if populated by a collection of despots and autocrats. He was appalled at the human cost of war but attributed that horror mainly to Israel and to the West. Fisk was in essence a passionate writer about Palestinian suffering from within an Arabist bubble.
The Jewish and Israeli dramatis personae that Fisk has called upon to bolster his narrative were the many fellow-travellers in the long caravan of critics of the Zionist experiment. His selective omission of many excellent writers and analysts who have been scathing about Netanyahu’s follies, differentiating between government and state, is striking. This reflects Fisk’s moulding of both Israeli politics and Jewish history to fit his own narrative.
He is adept at scrutinising Moshe Dayan, representing the right wing in Golda Meir’s pantomime-horse government between 1969 and 1974, but is silent on the opposition of Abba Eban and Pinhas Sapir who strongly opposed Dayan in cabinet. Such an approach leads to a monochrome vision of Israel, based on simplicity and polarisation. There is no mention of dissenting organisations such as J-Street or the New Israel Fund which uphold Judaism’s universalist values in this one-dimensional book.
Fisk rightly accuses Netanyahu and his acolytes of erroneously interpreting the Mufti’s cultivation of Hitler in wartime Berlin to mean that this was the view of all Palestinians. Yet what would have happened if Rommel, having conquered Egypt, would have proceeded to occupy Mandatory Palestine? Would the Mufti have protected its Jews against Nazi deportations and extermination? This question never seems to have occurred to Robert Fisk – and more widely reflects the relegation of context in his writings.
Jewish nationalism and Arab nationalism arose at the same period in history – and laid claim to the same territory. Logically, this means partition – neither a Greater Israel nor a Greater Palestine. The public Robert Fisk would have none of this but there are glimpses in this book that the private writer understood the reality.
Patrick Coburn’s introduction about his friend, illustrating Fisk’s commitment to his trade, is both interesting and heartfelt. A tribute to Fisk’s journalism is accompanied by a comment about his ability as a historian. Yet there are often inaccuracies in several throwaway comments in his depiction of twentieth century events in this work. For example, Fisk notes that ‘when Balfour wrote his declaration, refugees were pouring out of Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution’. Yet Lenin and Trotsky overthrew the Kerensky government five days after the Balfour Declaration had been delivered to Lord Rothschild.
Zionism becomes a pejorative slogan in Fisk’s world despite its ideological origins in the French Revolution albeit with the Bible as a backdrop. Ben-Gurion who admired Lenin postulated that one purpose of Zionism was to create a new society unlike those that the first Zionists had left behind. Fisk scarcely mentions ‘socialism’ which the Jews enthusiastically embraced while the Palestinian Arabs favoured nationalism and Islamism.
Robert Fisk was often the bane of the Israel-advocate’s existence – an iconoclast who saw the world differently and viewed Israel as a settler-colonial state. He was an articulate writer who was unable to move outside his Arabist cocoon to join the peace camps of both Israel and Palestine — notwithstanding his occasional references to its activists. Despite irreconcilable narratives, some Israelis and Palestinians have attempted to look over the hill of division. This book indicates that Robert Fisk was someone who rarely sympathised with them.
Jewish Chronicle 19 July 2024