More about Robert Fisk

This week's Independent Weekly republishes a Robert Fisk piece from the London Independent. The full article is not available on either publication's website but can be found here.

This one is Fisk at his best, linking the past with the present and always looking at events from a fresh perspective. Here's a sample:

"Gallipoli was the West's greatest 20th-century defeat at the hands of a Muslim army. You must have a heart of stone not to be moved by New Zealand's casualties at Gallipoli. Out of 8,450 soldiers sent to fight in Turkey, 2,721 were killed and 4,752 wounded. What other nation can claim an 88 per cent casualty rate in battle?"

If you're interested in hearing more, ABC RN's Big Ideas recently broadcast a lecture RF gave at the Sydney Ideas Festival this year which you can download.

Of course not everybody shares my opinion of RF. Tim Blair and his acolytes definitely don't, as you can see by clicking on the link. They're all frothed up about his alleged inability to suggest a possible solution (or perhaps a solution they'd agree with) to the Israel - Palestine issue. This is what I posted last October after hearing him speak

in the lecture Fisk didn't propose any solutions, but when asked during question time he suggested that any settlement had to be based on UN Resolution 242
http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/59210ce6d04aef61852560c3005da209?OpenDocument. He did acknowledge that the resolution was a starting (or re-starting) not a finishing point but didn't elaborate in any detail.

I heard him repeat this at last month's Writer's Week. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea but it doesn't exactly duck the issue either.