Robert Fisk

“The cedars 'know the history of the earth better than history itself.' If this was so, it was little wonder that they had clung to life only here, up in these high altitudes where the mountains, ice and wind ensured that the Lebanese who so often took the name of the cedars in vain would rarely appear.”

“In Palestine, the Israelis claim they found a land without people,' a Syrian officer explained to us. 'Now they will take southern Lebanon and claim they have found another land without people if these refugees do not return.”

“No militia or political leader is so powerful - his name never so influential - as when he is dead, enshrined on wall posters and gateposts amid naively painted clusters of tulips and roses, the final artistic accolade of every armed martyr in Lebanon.”

“Terrorism” is a word that has become a plague on our vocabulary, the excuse and reason and moral permit for state-sponsored violence— our violence—which is now used on the innocent of the Middle East ever more outrageously and promiscuously. Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. It has become a full stop, a punctuation mark, a phrase, a speech, a sermon, the be-all and end-all of everything that we must hate in order to ignore injustice and occupation and murder on a mass scale. Terror, terror, terror, terror. It is a sonata, a symphony, an orchestra tuned to every television and radio station and news agency report, the soap-opera of the Devil, served up on prime-time or distilled in wearyingly dull and mendacious form by the right-wing “commentators” of the American east coast or the Jerusalem Post or the intellectuals of Europe. Strike against Terror. Victory over Terror. War on Terror. Everlasting War on Terror. Rarely in history have soldiers and journalists and presidents and kings aligned themselves in such thoughtless, unquestioning ranks.”

“It was, I think in retrospect, the most dramatic individual personal act I have ever seen a soldier take. The mighty powers may try to cover up, but the little people can still sometimes win.”

“In the long evenings in west Beirut, there was time enough to consider where the core of the tragedy lay. In the age of Assyrians, the Empire of Rome, in the 1860s perhaps? In the french mandate? In Auschwitz? In Palestine? In the rusting front-door keys now buried deep in the rubble of Chatila? In the 1978 Israeli invasion? In the 1982 invasion? Was there a point where one could have said: Stop, beyond this point there is no future? Did I witness the point of no return in 1976? That 12 year-old on the broken office chair in the ruins of the Beirut front line. Now he was in his mid-twenties - if he was still alive - a gunboy, no more. A gunman, no doubt...”

“.. أصابت النكسات الجيوش التي وصلت لبنان : منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية والسوريون والسعوديون واليمنيون الشماليون والسودانيون والأسرائيليون والأميركيون والفرنسيون والإيطاليون وحتى المفرزة البريطانية – كلهم غادروا بيروت ومنهم من استولى عليه اليأس او لحقت به الإهانة أو خجل من نفسه. كل هؤلاء رحّب بهم اللبنانيون بسعادة وود ودهاء وشك. ففي تشرين الثاني 1976 راقبت الدبابات السورية وهي تعبر ضاحية الحازمية ببيروت. وكان أحد طاقم الدبابات الأولى يعزف على قيثارة. هذا بينما كان المسيحيون اللبنانيون يرشون ماء الورد وينثرون الرز على السوريين من شرفاتهم, وهي ظاهرة كنا نحن الصحفيين نصفها بأنها تحية عربية تقليدية , وبعد نحو خمس سنوات ونصف كنت أقف في البقعة ذاتها أراقب الإسرائيليين على الطريق ذاتها بينما كان اللبنانيون ذاتهم يحيونهم بالطريقة نفسها من شرفاتهم. وقال لي إذ ذاك كولونيل اسرائيلي مرح:"أنظر كيف يحيوننا , لقد جئنا لتحرير بلادهم, وكانوا في إنتظارنا"..”

“Soldier and civilian, they died in their tens of thousands because death had been concocted for them, morality hitched like a halter round the warhorse so that we could talk about 'target-rich environments' and 'collateral damage' - that most infantile of attempts to shake off the crime of killing - and report the victory parades, the tearing down of statues and the importance of peace.Governments like it that way. They want their people to see war as a drama of opposites, good and evil, 'them' and 'us', victory or defeat. But war is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents a total failure of the human spirit.”

“When I arrived in Beirut from Europe, I felt the oppressive, damp heat, saw the unkempt palm trees and smelt the Arabic coffee, the fruit stalls and the over-spiced meat. It was the beginning of the Orient. And when I flew back to Beirut from Iran, I could pick up the British papers, ask for a gin and tonic at any bar, choose a French, Italian, or German restaurant for dinner. It was the beginning of the West. All things to all people, the Lebanese rarely questioned their own identity.”