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Gargeling sounds

Helicopter sounds

Explosion and shooting

(Man) Two, three, four...

One, two, three, four five, six, seven, eight, nine...

After much arguing, the Iraqi authorities

have just agreed to allow us to go much nearer to the city of Abadan,

what is in effect the Iraqi frontline

on this side of the Shatt al-Arab River.

We're now in the streets of a deserted town,

just beside the Iraqi frontline.

Shots

There doesn't seem to be anybody here,

but there's a lot of small arms fire very near.

More small arms fire, sniper fire crackling

across the river from my right.

We're behind a wall at the moment.

There are oil depots blowing up in Abadan...

Explosions thundering away around us.

Shots

A rocket-propelled grenade.

More shots and explosions

I'm beginning to wonder why I went into journalism.

Explosion

Well, the Iranians are still alive in Abadan,

at least now that they know we're here.

-Yes -(Other man) Proof.

(Man) Jesus.

Back over here I think, around this way.

Let's work our way up.

Shots

Keep your heads down.

They can see you from the other side of the river.

Explosions

Come on, we're getting out! The other way around, let's go!

(Other man) The other side.

(Man) All together, go! Run! Run! Run!

- (Other man) Jesus. - (Man) Just in time.

I think they can see us running around.

- (Other man) Yeah. - (Man) Let's go. Hang on.

Okay, there's our driver!

We're just trying to get back to the car and get to safety.

We're near.

We're driving... We're driving away with our heads down in the car.

As long as we keep going fast, we should be alright.

This is Robert Fisk,

Middle East correspondent of The London Times...

Reporting from barely 200 yards from the Iranian hill city of Abadan.

Calm music begins

(Robert) This amazes me because this is...

It's still alive but it's still death, isn't it?

I mean, there's simply nobody here. It is an utterly abandoned place.

And there's nothing. It's left exactly as it was.

If you look down some of the side streets,

the barricades are still there. Look at that one, for example.

When the final battles took place here when the Syrian army

were opening up this road, it's not been touched since then. It's like...

You could bring a Hollywood crew over and make a movie here,

only the dead can't talk or the living are all gone.

Music continues

(Robert) The first time I went through those long miles and miles

of ruined streets outside Homs,

I can't think of where on Earth have all these people gone.

Where did they go to?

And then it occurred to me, you know, this was their year zero.

They're at the bottom of the Mediterranean.

Or they're in Greece. Or Hungary. Or Germany.

This is where they came from.

This is the beginning of the story, which has overwhelmed Europe...

But this is the beginning, this is where the match was lit.

Total, absolute destruction.

You, you question the capacity of human beings to create this.

And I wonder, in some ways, whether the ashes of cities...

Are constantly recreating

what's happened historically for hundreds of years?

In history, there is a history in which you will always find ashes.

And it's cruel and unfair to say this perhaps,

but I think that somewhere in the soul of human beings...

There is something there that within us

we permit these terrible things to happen.

Do we permit them because in some way they seem natural...

That there's something about us that permits this?

And I do not know the answer to that question...

But I think about it. I think about it.

(Male host) Our guest today is Robert Fisk,

who is the Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper.

He holds more British and international journalism awards

than any other foreign correspondent.

(Female host) Many of you here

will be familiar with the life and work of Robert Fisk.

The many armed conflicts he has reported on,

and his unwavering voice in the Middle East.

(Male host 2) As you know,

Robert's work is always well researched and of the people.

It is regularly contrarian and controversial.

(Male host 3) Robert Fisk has been reporting

from the Middle East with incomparable depth and understanding...

Music begins And also extraordinary courage.

(Female host 2) As we turn to Robert Fisk,

he's been reporting from the Middle East,

whether in Afghanistan or Iran, Lebanon, the Occupied Territories,

Israel, or in Iraq year after year.

Music intensifies

Typing sounds

Music ends

(Robert) For the moment, we're going up

the main international highway which runs from Damascus to Aleppo...

As far as Homs we can go, and then we turn off

into the desert in order to get to Hama,

which is the city which you can easiest get into the area

of the Idlib battlefield.

Wednesday night I've got to write my column

for The Independent which runs on Thursday...

And the question is whether tomorrow we see enough

of frontline in southern Idlib province...

To get me a good frontline piece,

Syrian Army in sight of the various rebel fighters,

the opponents of the regime in Idlib...

Because that's where the last battle is supposed to be.

Rebel fighters from the Free Syrian Army

who oppose the government of Basha el-Assad

are preparing for battle in the province of Idlib,

the last remaining militant and terrorist stronghold in Syria.

(Male reporter) This last battle for Syria threatens

a humanitarian catastrophe

on a greater scale than any seen in seven vicious years of fighting.

(Lowcock) The worst humanitarian catastrophe

with the biggest loss of life of the 21st century.

(Robert) All of the headlines,

the Syrian Army was massing around the last stronghold of the Islamists.

The Syrians and the Russians had said "We're going to attack."

NATO warning of use of gas and horror, massacres,

all of which might well have happened...

And I headed there and thought, I want to have a look at this.

- (Robert) Good to see you again. - (Man) Welcome.

(Robert) Thank you very much.

(Yara) You will meet with the commander of the

Security Committee in Idlib.

(Robert) Where is he?

- (Yara) About one hour... - (Robert) From here?

Okay, that's fine.

(Robert) Well, we're close

- to Jisr al-Shughur. - (Yara) Yes.

(Robert) That was bombed yesterday, right?

Well we are going a long way. It's what I asked for yesterday.

(Yara) We will see the area that the army controls.

(Robert) Very good.

Sad music begins

(Robert) Wow.

Brigadier talking

(Yara) This town is...

(Robert) Is Nusra...

Is Nusra [Syrian Al-Qaeda] in the town?

(Robert) When did these guns last fire?

Yara asking brigadier

- (Yara) Today morning. - (Robert) Today?

We were shelling because they attacked our position with rockets.

(Robert) It's deserted, there's no traffic on the roads, nothing.

Yara asking general

(Yara) The general said that before the operation...

When Al-Nusra knew about the operation,

they displaced all the area here.

- (Robert) Got out. - (Yara) Yeah.

(Robert) Nobody there.

(Brigadier) Every town in the mountains is held by Al-Nusra.

A front called 'The Guardians of Religion'

joined Al-Nusra six months ago.

And there are factions belonging to Al-Qaeda.

Brigadier talking

(Yara) We are very close to the Turkish border.

- (Robert) Eight miles or so? - (Yara) Fifteen.

(Brigadier) Is there any place else you want to see?

(Robert) Anything more I can see, please, if...

(Yara) Isn't there a hot spot or attacks here?

(Brigadier) We can turn it into a hot spot

but we have a ceasefire now.

Brigadier talking

(Yara) We are in a dangerous area.

All of the hills around us are under the control of Al-Nusra.

Maybe they will target us.

Quite, yes.

(Brigadier) Militants tried to destroy the bridge.

(Robert) They tried to blow it up.

And the blast came down rather than up..

(Brigadier) They used booby-traps

but not enough to bring the bridge down.

This is a frontline and stopping here is not a good idea.

Hurry up!

Brigadier talking

Sad music

- (Brigadier) Hurry up! - (Brigadier 2) Come on!

Speed up through here!

Now we are beside Al Koaa. So hurry up!

- (Brigadier) Here are militants! - (Brigadier 2) Snipers!

(Robert) Here we're on a bit of frontline road.

The Syrian guns are in all the hills around here

firing over our heads to mountain sides beyond that ridge...

Which is where Al-Nusra opposition armed groups,

Islamists, are positioned.

I'm just wondering if they're gonna shoot back,

are we gonna hear more... Explosion

That's an explosion. That's not a gun firing.

It came from over there.

Another explosion

That's Syrian artillery firing out, over these hills,

into the mountains beyond.

This army has not moved forward in the last two years.

I was here two years ago,

they're in exactly the same line as they were.

Maybe there will be a battle after all for Idlib.

Piano music

(Robert) Wars are dodgy things to predict.

Are the Syrians going to pour forth from the basin

of the Orontes and lay waste to the province of Idlib...

Which has long been the dumping ground for Syria's enemies,

for Nusra fighters and Isis...

And the other jihadis who refused to give up

when they evacuated the big Syrian cities?

Is this really about to be the Berlin 1945 of this vast tragedy?

The idea that this ancient countryside,

with its old stone houses and the green drift of the Orontes,

is about to become the site of the last and final battle

of the Syrian war seems strangely out of place.

Typing sounds and sad music

(Robert) When I was a little boy, I think what happened is that...

I became fascinated by the idea of recording things

through my own eyes.

I remember very clearly my dad talked and talked and talked

about the Great War, the Second World War...

So I grew up knowing the history of the 20th century

in which I was born and which has never lost its grip on me.

And I remember when I was about twelve years old

I saw Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent.

Intro music plays

In Foreign correspondent, Huntley Haverstock...

A fake name like a lot had in those days.

Was sent off to cover the outbreak of the Second World War.

You've guessed that I'm a foreign correspondent.

Are you? That's nice!

(Robert) He watched a Dutch diplomat being assassinated in Amsterdam,

chased by the German secret police across Holland,

shot down by a German pocket battleship,

won the most beautiful woman in the movie

and survived to send a great scoop back to his office in New York.

And I thought to myself, my god, look at this

excitement, adventure, reporting, scoops, beautiful women, spies!

This sounds like the job for me!

I wanted to be a reporter or a correspondent,

preferably a foreign correspondent...

And my parents wanted me to go into one of the professions.

You know, a lawyer, doctor.

But I wanted to be a reporter.

Oh hello, it's Bob Fisk on The Times here.

Two men have been shot in Rathlin Street.

A gunman got out and sprayed the two men with automatic gunfire.

When I became a correspondent full-time,

I was almost immediately sent to Belfast.

My parents started talking about,

"Our boy works for The Times."

My father was very proud of me...

"He works for The Times."

The Times was almost a profession, you see.

We're near Divis Street now...

One scene of the great battles of two years ago.

They shot from the top of the tower...

And the army have a post just behind the school building

and this place used to fly with bullets.

Amazing. It was the only place in the world

where you could sit in a side street and watch a gun battle take place.

Belfast had a great influence in preparing me for the Middle East...

Particularly when I found that the British army were killing innocents...

And at one point crossing the Irish border.

And I broke those stories and the British army,

my army, turned against me.

After investigating enough stories,

I did not believe the army had a monopoly on truth...

And that started problems for me immediately

because I wasn't onside.

I should be on the side of the authorities.

Sad music

I've been here three years now and

one almost anesthetizes one's sensitivity to what goes on

to the extent that one is so conscious

at the very beginning of saying...

"I mustn't be biased or be seen to angle this

against Catholics or against Protestants

or against the security forces"...

That you almost come out in having no emotions...

That isn't completely true.

I mean, I can think of particular moments when I have felt emotion.

I remember when a bomb went off

in the Oxford Street bus station.

People in that bus station had been blown to pieces.

And this isn't a nice description but there was a piece of somebody,

just a piece of someone's body lying across the fireman's hose.

And I remember the fireman

who was standing there, trying to put out the fire...

Just fell onto the ground on his knees and started crying.

And however much they wouldn't like to hear one say it,

knowing it was the IRA one couldn't help but think, they're bastards.

And one is affected by emotion.

(Robert) I want to get over

as close as possible to where Idlib province is.

If Idlib is a big battle the only way out is into Turkey,

and that's the bit I want to see today.

(Brigadier) Hi guys.

I's fine, this is a news crew which has approval.

Guard talking

I'm Brigadier Younis

from the Security Committee accompanying them.

(Guard) And who is he?

The British journalist Robert Fisk.

- And his crew. - (Guard) I need information.

Take what you need.

We have an approval. Show him.

(Robert) I've got a very fortunate position in journalism...

In that I'm both a street reporter,

I'm on the frontline of wars, I see the war,

but I'm also a columnist.

Most columnists live in New York or London or Paris.

Most reporters can't be columnists.

What I've had the great fortune of being is both at the same time.

When I write a series of articles about Syria,

I've just come from the Syrian frontline.

I'm not recording what someone said, or reporting what I saw on YouTube.

When I went up to Idlib Province

all my colleagues were saying, "Idlib Battle about to begin"...

But in that trip I didn't see another journalist.

I didn't even see a Russian journalist.

If you don't go to the scene and sniff it

and talk to the people and see with your own eyes

you cannot get near what the truth is.

(Brigadier) Sniper fire?

Did you see them?

(Robert) I feel, especially in the age of the Internet,

when so little is proved and so little checked out

that there's more reason to do the old kind of journalism

that I was doing in Belfast...

Padding around to find out what I actually see.

And have a notebook and a pencil or a pen!

It's just a valuable today as it always was.

People talking syrian

Syrian guns.

People talking

Fired a long time ago.

People talking

(Female reporter) The people of Idlib are facing

an imminent military offensive, and they're preparing for the worst.

(UN Spokesman) We could see a battle more cruel

than any previous battle in this, the cruelest war of our generation.

(Reporter) Meanwhile, Damascus maintains

that the much-anticipated offensive on Idlib province hasn't started yet.

According to eyewitnesses, reinforcements from the Syrian Army

are still pouring into the outskirts of Idlib province.

(Yara) This is the closet road to the front.

(Brigadier) Yeah.

(Robert) Virtually every road we've been on,

since we left the Turkish border on the Mediterranean

all the way around Idlib up to Aleppo, on military roads

which no one else can travel on except the army,

and we haven't seen the reinforcements.

And this is supposed to be the biggest battle ever.

The last battle of the Syrian War.

I'm at the moment trying to work out what article I'm going to write.

Have I been fooled?

Did I see lots and lots of soldiers who weren't there, or were there?

I've got to say, "Look, if the battle is coming, it's hard to find it."

One of the problems I think is that people here have no idea

of what the international community

is saying about the catastrophe to come.

And the UN is saying it,

and most of the people outside Syria at the UN in Washington...

They don't have much idea of what's happening here.

They wouldn't believe that we've gone all this journey

and haven't seen the massed invasion force.

But we sure haven't. We really haven't seen it.

Night sounds

Robert and soldiers talking

(Robert) When I first got a letter from my then editor,

Louis Heren, from The Times,

I was in Portugal for the aftermath of the revolution,

he offered me the Middle East. I felt like an Arab king being

offered a country by Churchill.

And he said, "It would be a great adventure with lots of sunshine."

Lots of sunshine! God, he's right about that.

Lawrence of Arabia called sunshine a sword and he's about right

mid-summer in the Gulf.

People talking

The number of times in Beirut, at risk,

I've gone out on stories and written them

and I know that when I file a story it's going to be printed.

And for all I know, Rupert Murdoch may have cloven hooves

but he's bringing my paper out every night and I'm a journalist

and that's what I want.

When I joined The Times it printed what I wrote fairly,

unchanged, untouched.

Then Murdoch came and took The Times over.

He promised he would make no changes at all,

have no influence on editorial policy.

Of course he did.

And headlines would suddenly take a very right-wing view

of what I was writing about

even contradicting what I was actually saying in my copy.

And then we reached this period in 1988,

when I found out the truth about why and how the Americans

had shot down an Iranian civilian passenger aircraft

and they wouldn't run it.

Instead, they ran a totally untrue editorial

saying that the pilot tried to carry out a suicide attack

on an American warship when, in fact, the truth was

the Americans panicked and shot down an innocent aircraft.

(Soldier) We got it, guys! That was dead on!

(Robert) For years and years, I'd risked my life

for this paper, The Times and suddenly they wouldn't run my story.

And my reaction was, if you have to risk your life in the Middle East,

editors have to be brave in London and stand up

to the owners of newspapers

and my editor failed to do so.

And I thought that it was a disgrace for me

to continue to work for that paper.

And that's when I decided I'd have to go to The Independent.

The Independent was founded, effectively, to take over

the independence of the press from the Murdoch empires of this world.

Music plays

News music begins

(Reporter) After 30 years, British newspaper,

The Independent, is stopping the presses.

The final print edition ran on Saturday

and is now only available to an online readership.

The Independent is the first national newspaper in the UK

to move to an entirely digital model.

(Spokesperson) This isn't the end of The Independent.

We're just switching our focus to a digital future.

We've got millions of daily readers.

Most of them read us online and digitally

and we're gonna focus on the millions that read us digitally.

(Reporter) Can news organizations, such as The Independent,

survive the transition from paper to pixels?

Can serious investigative journalism continue in a virtual world?

Only time will tell.

Peolpe talking

(Teacher) Every student in this room

is studying modern Middle East history

and what better speaker to come talk to you guys than someone

who has experienced and written about the Middle East

for the past 40 years.

Mr. Fisk once said that journalists must challenge authority

especially when governments and politicians lead us into war.

And today is really a conversation between the youth here in Lebanon,

our future, and the prolific Mr. Fisk.

So welcome, Mr. Fisk!

Thank you very much.

I came here when I was 29.

I've got the same job, the same place, the same area to cover.

Different newspaper, slightly different salary,

not as much as I'd like.

By staying here, with all the problems and all the

effects of having a long period,

40 years have taught me a lot about this region.

And it's since Sykes Picot, I think,

that this region has endured the worst period of injustice

of any part of the world that I can think of.

During the First World War Sykes and Picot,

the British and French diplomats scandalously made their

secret agreement to carve up the Middle East.

And I always reflect on the fact that in the 17 months

that followed that war we the west created

the borders of Northern Ireland, problem.

Yugoslavia, problem.

And almost the entire Middle East, problem.

And I don't know where this arrogance came from.

Whenever we want to promote freedom and democracy

we always arrive with all our guns and our soldiers.

And I don't think there should be a single western soldier

in the Middle East because it doesn't belong to us.

It's your countries.

Most of the people in this region,

are Muslims and they have kept the faith.

They still believe in God.

And God governs the way they treat their families, their lives

in a way that the west has completely lost that faith.

What you've got in the Middle East

is a people who actually believe in the word of God Himself

who are dominated and oppressed culturally,

politically, economically, militarily,

by a people who have largely lost their faith.

How and why did that happen?

And I haven't the slightest idea

what the answer is or even if the question if correct.

Anyway, since my newspaper is turning into a website

let's see what happens to The Independent.

I'm still the Middle East correspondent.

On that note, you better shoot at me.

Applause, calm music

God, you're all taller than me. That's very frightening.

Students talking

-Today is the 23rd -Of february.

2016.

People talking

- Some words? - (Robert) What should I write?

(Robert) That's okay.

People talking

(Woman) So where are you going to leave your papers

and your diaries when you finally leave to the new?

I'm still working at the moment, still a full-time correspondent.

If I end up deciding to write poetry in the garden,

then I'll start thinking about that.

Streetnoises

(Robert) The greatest thing I've had going for me as a journalist

has been the length of time I've been in the Middle East.

From the age of 29 up to now.

Teakettle whistles

In one way, I've been very lucky.

Very few journalists have had the good fortune

to live that length of time, virtually unscathed,

through the whole period.

Calm music begins

I remember, it was quite an important moment in '86.

Beirut was desperately dangerous.

Every westerner had either been kidnapped or fled, wisely so

and I decided to try and hang on.

And I walked out of the AP bureau from where I used to file.

On a bright spring morning.

And I thought, my god, I've been here now from '76 to '86, ten years.

My then editor said, "If you go to Eastern Europe

you can become political editor

and that's the way to become an editor."

And I said, "I don't want to become an editor!

I don't want to go and live in London.

I live in Beirut. This is my home."

Music goes on

I like my life in Beirut.

I'm married to a journalist, so we do the same job.

I love reporting and I love writing.

Car honks

Throughout all the time I've been in the Middle East

I can fully understand the fury and anger at the colonial world,

which I originally come from.

The idea that we must save them

with our wonderful western science and civilization

is ridiculous nowadays.

I don't think it's the job of a foreign correspondent to save anybody

but it might be the job or a foreign correspondent

to explain to the people who read what one writes

the reality of the world in which the people you live among exist.

And that's what I try to do.

(Reporter) Some critics say

you've lived too long in the Middle East.

(Robert) No, this is an old game.

If you haven't been there long they say

you don't know the situation.

If you've been there longer

they say, "you've been there too long."

Excuse me, the longer you're there, the more you learn.

(Reporter) Why do you stay there in Beirut?

(Robert) I suppose because

covering the Middle East is a bit like reading a great novel

Tolstoy's War and Peace, Anna Karenina...

And you sit up and you say, it's near midnight, just one more chapter.

And then you say, I'll just read the next chapter

- to see what happens next. - (Reporter) A never-ending novel...

It'll go beyond my lifetime.

But I still want to know what happens next.

It's a great human tragedy and I cannot draw myself away

from what happens next.

Man and Robert talking

(Robert) Antranik, are you going to sell me a book today?

I want to sell this one. This has just come out.

Where from? It's by a French guy, isn't it?

- Yes. - I'm not gonna do that,

I'm not gonna read The Sunni Tragedy... No.

You've got Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine. Very good.

The Water Crisis in Yemen, no.

No, I'm not going to do the Yemen water crisis.

It's the Saudi crisis in Yemen I'm interested in, not the water crisis.

What about Pity of the Nation?

Not anymore! It's finished!

We ordered 50 copies, we're going to get them next week.

You're still waiting for them, okay. Very good.

- You mean I'm sold out in your shop? - Yes! But you have...

- That's good... - But your new book?

You have to wait another year. I'm only on page 635.

It comes out in one year's time.

(Antrarik) We don't have time, we need the earnings.

(Robert) Well so do I!

And I haven't even finished the book!

- I can't write to your financial... - You must write.

I think I'm gonna go for the Invasion of Syria, 1941.

- Okay. Thank you. - Thank you very much...

If you would wrap it for me and a receipt, that would be great.

Typing sounds

(Robert) Gone, that's it. Work over, hopefully.

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, Will.

(Robert) I don't mind if you can promise me

that it won't get tampered with or messed around with.

Editor on the phone

Would you be there to guard over it yourself, Will?

Let me put it that way.

Editor on the phone

And you know that my mortar shells will fall on your office

if you don't look after it.

Editor on the phone

Okay fine. So you would run it tomorrow as a big Saturday piece

but it would run tomorrow?

Right, thanks very much. That's fine, Will.

And there won't be obviously...

There won't be a Fisk column this week after that.

Car honks

Sirens

(Robert) I believe in newspapers, not non-newspapers.

I don't find any interest in reading websites myself.

So I ask myself, would I even be interested

in reading The Independent, unless I could sit down

and turn the pages and have a coffee?

But to be fair, I cannot say that websites

are a diminution of journalism. They're not!

And they certainly give a much bigger readership to what I write.

With a website, instead of having a readership of 60,000 copies,

you've got several million people reading you within a few hours...

And that is what a journalist wants,

even if it's not quite in the paper form they would like it.

The tools and the implements may change,

but I'm not totally convinced

the printed newspaper is going to the grave.

The thing about a newspaper is

that you can scissor out an article and keep it.

All my files, all my archives are on paper. And they work.

Because I did a PhD and I had to do constant research,

I learned the importance of documents and papers and archives and files,

recordings and film and photographs

and that became part of my life which is why as a journalist

I've kept every document,

keeping the original record of events to check back.

The World Wide Web does not contain all the materials I've got on paper.

Music begins

Men talking

(Robert) I think that if you watch wars, and out here you do

the history in the Middle East, is largely about wars.

Making of history, the construction of politics is done through violence.

And I think you're watching history happen and telling people about it.

And I think what happens is

that you develop the idea that the old ideas of journalism

that you've got to be neutral and take nobody's side, is rubbish.

I think as a journalist you've got to be neutral

and unbiased on the side of those who suffer.

I'm a person writing this,

I'm not an agency tap-tap-tapping away on a machine.

People say, "Oh, you're letting off feelings."

Why not? I'm the nerve ending. I'm not a machine.

What I try to do when I'm writing,

I try to talk to the reader, like someone they know.

I'm trying to write as if I'm writing to a friend

"you won't believe what I've just seen".

That's the key to getting people to understand what's going on.

At the end of the invasion, in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila,

there's no doubt what horrified me most at the time...

Massacres are difficult to forget when you've seen the corpses.

For anyone who was there

the memories are as fresh as if the killings happened yesterday.

And as I walked up the hill, the first thing I saw were horses...

Dead horses, behind that white building.

And we still hadn't seen anyone dead.

And as we got just up here, 20 yards more,

we saw two women lying on the ground on their backs...

Their clothes were torn and things scattered around them.

And just beyond them, behind their heads lying on the ground,

was a baby that was dead with a bullet in its head.

Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982,

I'd never seen so many dead people before.

It was close to a sort of massacre in the Second World War.

In fact, I remember thinking that when I was literally

physically climbing over corpses in Shatila,

trying to get from one street to another.

You could still hear shots, and there was an embankment.

And I tried to climb over it.

I got on top, and when I was on it,

it became all kind of spongy and it moved up and down.

And I realized it wasn't an embankment,

it just had a covering of earth.

And when I looked down I saw a face, an elbow...

They were all bodies... Somebody's stomach.

And I just literally held my breath and jumped off the other side

and went running down that road down

where I could hear my friend's voices.

I was so frightened.

I'd never seen anything on this scale of war crime before

and I realized, that this was the responsibility of the Israelis.

They had surrounded the camp, sent in their allied militia,

and watched while those people were killed.

There was evidence of the Israeli inquiry

from the individual Israeli soldiers.

One of them, Sergeant Grabowsky

watched the civilians being taken away for slaughter

and was told, "Do nothing."

And I realized then that journalists

who had feared to write critically of Israel,

might not be quite so fearful again.

I certainly wasn't. I pinned it on Israel at once...

This is Ariel Sharon's responsibility.

Of course, I got the usual shit back.

I got a letter from a lady in support of Israel, saying

Why do I keep mentioning Sabra-Shatila?

"It's the nearest I've ever seen to a Nazi massacre."

"Why do you keep mentioning that?"

You should, and I do, and this is Sabra-Shatila.

Sorry, the wrong side was involved, I can't help that.

It was certainly after Sabra-Shatila

that I started to think through

what the job of a foreign correspondent was

in a kind of detail that I'd never done before.

From then onwards, I felt that nothing would stop me

from going in to look at these things and see them

that there was something different from just journalism.

These were the people who suffer

and that's what we should be writing about.

These people would want me to be here.

These corpses would want me to tell their story.

After this, I had a self-confidence in writing

about brutality in war crimes I never would have had before.

That's the end of allowing fear to make the decisions for you.

That's the end of being frightened of gunmen and editors,

and being accused of being anti-Semitic.

From now onwards, you tell the truth and that's it.

(Robert) Hi. British journalist... Channel 4 Television.

Thank you.

One of the big problems in the Middle East

is that people are so frightened of upsetting one of the sides

that they give 50 percent to each side in a dispute.

You interview the Palestinians,

you've got to interview 50 percent with the Israelis.

Like it's a football match, but it's not.

This is a bloody tragedy

which is worth more than that kind of journalism.

If we were reporting the slave trade,

would we spend our time interviewing the slave ship captain,

to balance our reporting

on the survivors of those who were thrown off the boat?

No. If we're reporting

on the liberation of an extermination camp in Eastern Europe

do we give equal time to the Nazis and the SS spokesman?

No! We dwell 100 percent on the victims.

When I was at Sabra and Shatila in 1982,

did I give equal time to the Israelis who watched the massacre?

No, I talked to the survivors.

That's what I mean.

And that is doing what any human being would do.

Men talking

(Robert) The bodies are actually in that patch there?

And then again from here...

They were wrapped up, covered in quick lime, and put there...

Men, women all together. Without any names.

(Man) Remember when we came

the Red Crescent people and the Red Cross

they were trying to make a big line of the corpses.

Suheil, you're very lucky not to be down there, aren't you?

Yeah. Yeah.

One day or another, we'll have to go there

but no one likes to go cheap and killed with brutality like this.

(Robert) Sabra and Shatila were the scene of war crimes.

The mass grave still lies beneath a tide of mud behind a stand of trees

where Syrian refugees sell cheap shirts and DVDs.

As a witness to the massacre of 1982

I went back often to this place of memories and ghosts

to talk to the few survivors.

The names of Sabra and Shatila are today associated

with the shame which no one could have imagined 34 years ago.

Drug dealing has now tainted the camps, by the Syrians

more than the Palestinians,

and there have been murders and prostitution.

No one in Sabra and Shatila hides their sorrow.

The massacre, the survivors' grief,

the years of misery and the siege did not break the Palestinians...

But it doesn't take long today

to understand the depth of their despair.

Children screaming

So what actually happened? What happened with your father?

(Woman) He was going to the bourj to fix the electricity

and one of the drug dealers shot him while working and he died.

(Robert) I'm so sorry for you.

What was your father's name?

My father is Abu Waseem Hazineh.

- (Robert) What's your name? - Nirmeen.

- Nirmeen? - Yeah.

And how many brothers and sisters do you have?

We are four brothers and two sisters and me.

(Robert) What is life like here in the camp?

(Nirmeen) Life is good in one side and bad on the other side.

- (Robert) What do you mean by that? - (Nirmeen) There are

- good and bad things. - The good things first.

(Nirmeen) Here in the camp people are together.

They help each other when they have problems or something.

But sometimes they get crazy and they make conflict together.

(Robert) I was told there's a problem for women. Dealing them like drugs.

Is that true or not?

(Nirmeen) My father also was working on this, I was helping him.

He catch a group of people doing this.

- Trading with women, you mean? - Yeah, trading with women...

But they killed him so nobody can stop them.

(Robert) And how is your mother? How is she taking all this?

She always starts to remember and cry. Always.

Now she cannot meet, uh, with...

No, no, I knew that. Don't worry.

Would you say how sorry we are for her?

Would you tell her how sorry I am for her?

Thank you for talking to me. It's very kind of you, thank you.

Thank you very much.

(Suheil) She's not from the Islamists.

(Robert) I know but I'm always respectful.

(Nirmeen) You're like my father.

- (Robert) He was a good man. - (Nirmeen) Yeah.

(Robert) It was as if a beautiful light

had suddenly been switched on amid the vile slums of Sabra and Shatila,

brighter than any lamp

her father could have lit with his electricity supply.

Nirmeen talked of her hope for better days.

There was still some justice, she said.

One of her father's alleged murderers had been arrested and awaits trial.

And of course, I cruelly remembered

that not one of the Christian militiamen,

who, in sight of the Israelis,

slaughtered 1700 of Nirmeen's fellow Palestinians

was ever charged with any crime.

(Robert) And then I realized that Nirmeen was only 18

that the massacre had occurred well over 7 years before she was born

and that to have maintained their identity

and resilience in this wretched place for so long

the Palestinians must survive.

(Robert) So I think that'll be the column, 1000 words this Sunday.

Sabra and Shatila, that's S-a-b-r-a and Shatila camps.

They were the scene of the massacre in 1982, you know

1,700 Palestinians by Israel's Lebanese militia allies.

But of course, watched by Israel itself.

In Beirut. They're in Beirut. The camps are in Beirut.

You can Google Sabra and Shatila

or read anything by me on Sabra-Shatila.

You'll work it out.

Great.

Thanks, Joe. Take care. Bye-bye.

There you go.

He did have to be reminded where Sabra and Shatila was.

That's part of time passing.

When I was there, it was the great war crime of the world that year.

And now younger people don't remember it. They have no idea.

(Robert) I saw an American newspaper reference

to the "alleged Sabra Shatila massacre".

It comes out in different ways, not always as alleged.

It says, "The Sabra Shatila massacre

where the Palestinians say 1,700 were killed".

In other words, it always carries a little caveat to cast doubt

on the reality or the truth of the thing.

It's like the agency reports on the Armenian genocide

of one and a half million Christian Armenians by the Turks in 1915,

which will inevitably now, though not in my reports

carry the words "a claim

which is hotly disputed by the Turkish government."

First you tell the truth, and then you get someone to deny it.

(Robert) Over here, piles of shoes...

Don't these people look at these shoes and say, "What happened?

Why do people keep on walking through the desert without shoes?

Or were they so destitute, were they so broken

that they didn't even realize they were walking on their bare feet?"

Last picture, please. So he went on shooting.

They actually pass you.

They go through this room, and are going to die.

This young boy here...

You see they've even got carts, animals to carry them.

Here are the pile of shoes and more shoes down here.

And that of course is where the photographic records ends.

You've got to keep on finding these pictures and getting new movie film.

Keep the genocide alive,

even if we have to make these people

relive on screen before us their last journey.

(Guide) We've collected and we've taken notes

on what each picture says.

And it's glorious to have a picture but it's very few that we have.

(Robert) Are you actually still receiving pictures?

- We are, we are. - So you could have someone

come in and say, they have pictures?

(Guide) Originally the people were genocide survivors

and it was this personal collection of stories

and photographs that otherwise would be lost or forgotten.

That's what we're battling against.

Of course, yes.

(Robert) I wrote and wrote about the Armenians

because I'd arrived in the Middle East

in time to still interview the survivors

who witnessed the rape of their children, daughters and wives

and the hanging of their grandparents.

And then the time has ticked on

there are no more survivors. And there will come a time soon

when the survivors of the Jewish Holocaust are all dead

and all we'll have is written record, photographs, recording, film.

The denial of the Armenian genocide seems to me to be just as grotesque

as people who deny the Jewish Holocaust.

I say to the Turks, "Don't you dare tell me one and a half million

Armenian weren't killed by your ancestors in that genocide.

And it's the same thing. You've got to get at the story.

And the person who denies a genocide in Armenia

will deny the Jewish Holocaust in Europe

and will deny any other kind of massacre that comes to hand.

(Soldier) In the year of PTSD...

(Robert) Ah, they didn't have that in World War II, did they?

-What was it called, yellow belly? -(Robert) It was called shell shock?

- (Soldier) Has it affected you? - Oddly, no.

The only time I ever had a nightmare was after Sabra and Shatila

and I dreamt there were corpses piled on the bed around me.

And the reason was that I'd climbed over so many bodies

that the smell of them, they were decomposing,

was on my clothes and I could smell it.

And the next day my cleaning lady said,

"I want to burn your clothes, I don't want to wash them."

But other than that, I've never had a nightmare.

I've been able to see terrible things and then go out to dinner afterwards.

You're not there to have emotional breakdowns...

You're there to find the bad guys, print their names.

I think our job is to record people's suffering

and let the world know about it.

And you can't do that with mental breakdowns.

Yeah.

Slow music begins

Soldier talking

(Robert) What is Isis, now we move into the serious territory?

I'm still trying to find out.

I think the most extraordinary thing

about Isis is that it's a creature without emotion.

I've begun to think that Isis is just a weapon.

It has the emotions of an anti- aircraft missile. Whose weapon is it?

Well, the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia,

of Isis, of Taliban.

Which particular institutions have police organisations

for the propagation of virtue and the suppression of vice?

Saudi Arabia, Taliban, Isis. There you go.

I'm not saying the Saudi government is sending cheques.

No. They're not that stupid anyway.

But I think Saudi Arabia has a big role in Isis.

Calm music begins

Street noises

(Robert) In the basement of a

bombed-out Al-Qaeda arms storage building

in eastern Aleppo last year I found a weapons log book

from a mortar factory in Bosnia with the handwritten name of one

of their senior officials, Ifet Krnjic on each page.

It was dispatched from the Balkans with a cargo of 500120 mm mortars.

The documents, now in The Independent's possession,

provide the most intriguing paper trail

yet discovered of just who is producing the weapons

that have armed the Assad regime's most ferocious Islamist opponents

and how they apparently reach the fighters of Syria

via countries friendly to the west.

The big story about weapons going into Syria is, how do they get there?

Who was arming the Islamists and other opposition groups in Aleppo?

The documents were clearly shipment documentation

from factories in ex-Yugoslavia,

one from a factory in Novi Travnik in Bosnia.

They can't sell a weapon under international law, etc...

Unless they have what is called an end-user certificate.

This is provided to them by the country

they're selling the weapon to.

And I thought, if we can find this factory

and even better, find Mr. Krnjic,

I can ask him, if he'll talk to me,

which country did he send these mortars to?

Phone rings

- (Robert) Hello? - Hi, Robert. It's Holly.

Hi Holly, how are you doing?

Thanks for ringing me in warm Yugoslavia, or Serbia to be better.

(Holly) Are you in Serbia? Lovely.

(Robert) Who is in over the weekend and next week?

- Is it Christian or Will Gore? - (Holly) Will Gore.

(Robert) I think so because I've got

a lot of stuff on weapons going to the Middle East,

which I think we need Will in on. Okay, I'll contact Will

over the weekend and I'll remember it's Hannah as well,

and I'll include her on CCs as well as Chris.

(Holly) Yes. Okay, brilliant.

(Robert) Before we reach Travnik we turn left to Novi-Travnik

and then we're gonna go a little bit south

to the village where I hope we'll find our man.

When we get there, first of all let's make sure he is the right guy

and before we ask him why his name was found in eastern Aleppo,

he might just say "piss on out of here" and slam his front door.

In which case we've got the right guy. Probably.

Or he might call the cops.

Also a possibility.

(Robert) He may invite us for lunch.

(Robert) Explain to him that in 2017 last year,

after the Syrian Army captured eastern Aleppo,

I went into a bombed building which was previously Al-Qaeda.

In the basement we've lots of weapons and other documents.

Translates

I found... Ifet answers

He said, "This is my signature."

I looked at this and I thought...

And this too I think.

Ifet answers

(Vesna) Yes, that's me.

I looked at this and I thought,

how far do I have to go from Aleppo to meet Ifet.

Ifet talks

(Vesna) I worked in the special industry for 44 years.

Ifet talks

You can find these papers from Uganda to God knows where.

Robert laughs

(Vesna) There is no place where we were not exporting.

(Robert) Does he have any idea where this particular weapon went?

Ifet talks

(Vesna) It went to Saudi Arabia.

(Robert) Did the Saudis come to the factory?

Did he see the Saudis themselves?

Ifet talks

(Vesna) Saudi civilians were in dishdasha,

but officers were in civilian.

Ifet talks

(Vesna) I know I should not say all this

but NATO and EU are giving us a green light to do.

(Robert) Yes.

The idea that I had was that if you could get the man

who actually signed the document, the piece of paper,

and he would tell you where he sent them, that stitched the story up.

We knew how the weapons got there.

And I thought if I can get Ifet Krnjic and he will talk,

I'll find out where those weapons went.

And I knew they went to the Gulf

and I guessed probably Saudi Arabia, and bingo, out it came.

There are two avenues of investigation in Europe

or in the Middle East,

which are always dangerous to individual journalists

human trafficking through the mafia or weapons trafficking.

When people are paying billions of dollars

that's more than a journalist's life is worth.

If you get too close or if you approach in the wrong way...

I think you can end up dead very easily.

When we went to the factory,

I called a military officer in Sarajevo and said,

"I'm gonna call you when I come out."

Hi, Robert here.

Just to let you know, I sent a message yesterday

to the people in Novi Travnik,

that I had the documents I wanted to discuss.

Got a very terse message, "Come now and hand them over."

But I'm gonna go down there.

I'd let you know I'm on my way there

in case you don't hear from me for some years.

I'm hoping nothing will happen. Okay, bye-bye.

All I want from them as a reporter for The Independent

is proof that they sent it to the Saudis

and that must be an end-user certificate

or a letter from the Saudis preferably signed by them,

of which I can have a copy or see.

If they do not have it, which I don't believe

or will not show it,

we can only say, "Well, do you want to talk to us about it?"

- What do you say? - Yeah.

Slow music

Greeting in Serbian

- (Robert) Good morning. - (Vesna) Dr. Fisk.

- (Robert) For Mr. Ikanovic. - (Vesna) Our documents.

-(Vesna) Dr. Fisk, Adis Ikanovic. -(Robert) Good to meet you.

Thank you very much, indeed.

Okay, look, I'll tell you the story.

My name is Robert Fisk. I'm the Middle East correspondent

- of The Independent, London. - Yeah, I know you.

(Robert) Okay. You can keep it.

When I was in Aleppo last year

I was going through the bombed ruins in eastern Aleppo.

- I don't know too much. - (Robert) Okay, we'll look.

In eastern Aleppo the fighters were from Nusra, Al-Qaeda, Isis.

In one of the basements of the bombed ruins

I found a number of weapons, documents, some from here.

What I'm trying to find out is how they got to Aleppo.

Which country did you sell them to?

I know a bit about weapons.

I think this gives you enough information to find out.

Yeah, but this... I mean, Papers, okay.

But, I mean...

- Legally speaking. - (Robert) Yeah, legally speaking...

If you don't have the mortar itself

with the plate on it, with the number...

(Robert) No, I don't need to.

I've got all the instruction books from you

as well as how to fire the mortars.

Believe me, the mortars went there. They clearly did.

There are bits of mortars all over if you want to collect signatures.

But I do need to know, who did you sell those to?

If they have an end-user certificate, that's all we need to know.

Yes...

Look, Adis, can you tell me roughly,

which countries you do sell weapons to from here?

I know a lot but...

- It's usually, you know... - (Robert) Is it...

Saudi Arabia, Emirates... I don't know.

Bulgaria, Turkey... I don't know.

I'm just a little period of time here so...

I appreciate that.

And which is the country which gets most of your weapons, do you reckon?

I don't know, I'd have to check. Saudi Arabia, probably.

(Robert) Have you seen any Saudis here yourself?

- (Adis) Sorry? - Saudi Arabians, do they come here?

No.

(Robert) I'll tell you what I think.

Because I live in the Middle East and I go to the Gulf.

I think you sold these weapons perfectly legally.

Saudi Arabia you can sell to because NATO doesn't mind,

and I personally think that NATO knows

where Saudi Arabia sends your weapons.

(Adis) Yeah, probably they do.

(Robert) An email reminder to Ikanovic six days after our meeting

for copies of the 2016 end-user certificate papers

for the mortar shipment elicited no reply.

Why don't NATO track all these weapons

as they leave Europe and America?

Why don't they expose the real end-users of these deadly shipments?

It was instructive that when The Independent asked the Saudis

to respond to Bosnian weapons shipment documents,

the Saudis replied that they did not provide support of any kind

to any terrorist organization,

and that the allegations were "vague and unfounded".

All these weapons, including the mortars,

were obviously sent to the Saudis,

so the Saudis must have provided an end-user certificate.

And since we had the documentation,

they must have the documentation in Riyadh in the Ministry of Defence.

I made unofficial approaches to NATO, who didn't want to help.

Why wouldn't they want to help?

Why wouldn't they want to find out

how weapons reached an Islamist group,

which was a terror organization according to NATO,

and which was attacking NATO nations, as well as Syria?

Didn't want to help.

Couldn't help. Sorry, Bob.

NATO knew these weapons went to Saudi Arabia

and must have known that they were passed on

to the Islamist fighters. War is a big business.

They're about money as well as political power.

As long as you have human beings who are prepared

to manufacture sophisticated weapons,

and to hand them over for money to any nation

that is going to use them for evil ends,

as long as that continues, wars will carry on

and I will be there reporting them to no possible purpose.

Because if you don't cut the weapons off, the wars will go on.

Soldiers shouting

Rocket sounds

Soldiers shouting

Explosion

Explosion

(Robert) People should know what war is like.

At least journalists can try to give them

a little bit more graphic, powerful,

painful idea of what's actually happening...

Because it really is about death.

War is not about winning or losing, or key players, or peace processes.

It is about the total failure of the human spirit.

There s a line in Tolstoy.

He s talking about Napoleons invasion of Russia, where he says:

"Ordinary people could commit crimes

the like of which they would be hanged for in any

court of law in the civilized world

and they could now do so with permission

and the encouragement of their countries."

And that outrage that this could be the case always stayed with me.

People screaming in fear

Sirens

Shooting sounds

(Robert) There s no doubt that for most people who have been in wars

those wars become the most important period of their life.

Even if they don t ever talk about them

they are undoubtedly the peak of experience.

And my father had been in the First World War trenches.

And he d been bitten by rats,

and he d been through something terrible.

Calm music, shooting sounds

(Robert) My father took photographs.

He took a little box camera into the trenches in 1918.

He was 19 years old.

It goes against all rules to take a camera

into the trenches of the First World War

but he did it to record the bit of history he was participating.

Many, many decades later, I asked him about the First World War

and he said, "All it was, fellah, was a great waste."

That was the stage in the '60s

when he began to see the First World War as being a lie.

My father suddenly realized that all the stories

he'd been given about his commanding officers were not true.

Then he stopped wearing the poppy and he said, "This is a lie."

There s a beautiful poem by a Canadian about the poppy.

He said it was written to make more people go into the army and kill.

It was not about peace and remembrance.

That was not what the poppy was about.

Sad music

(Robert) After I was 10 years old

he insisted that I went with him every year on his pilgrimage back

to the First World War battlefields. And I think that for my father

going back to the First World War trenches every year,

he was going back to establish

the last time when he could see himself as a military officer.

Soldiers were under his command. He had responsibility,

the honour of fighting for his country.

The decision, which was the finest decision of his life,

destroyed all that.

Just after the First World War he was asked to command

an execution party of an Australian soldier

who had killed a British military policeman in Paris.

He was drunk.

And my father was told

he was commanding the firing party and refused.

He said, "I m not going to kill another soldier."

He was told that he would be court martialled

but since the war had ended, he would just have to leave the army.

That was the end of his military career.

Only when I was writing my book, "The Great War for Civilization"

did I realize that

at a time when you must obey,

he hadn t just taken a camera to the First World War,

he d refused to shoot a man.

Piano music

Soldiers talking

Soldiers talking over radio

(Robert) Is your curfew finishing now?

It s finished? Your curfew is over?

You had a curfew here, is it finished now?

(Soldier) No, but... We re hanging around.

You re hanging around or we are?

We are, you re not.

(Robert) That s rule number one, challenging authority.

And it doesn t matter how much editors mistrust you

how much readers want to curse you,

how much your colleagues piss on you,

That's what you ve got to do.

And I have thought of that all my working life,

that I will challenge authority

at every press conference, every story I can do.

Or challenge the story.

Not because I have some kind of holy,

journalistic mission to change the world or alter history

but just, hold on a second!

We don t have to write like this

or follow what the prime minister said.

(May) Last Saturday, up to 75 people, including young children...

were killed in a displaceable and barbaric attack in Douma.

All the indications are that this was a chemical weapons attack.

We have seen the harrowing images of men, women and children

lying dead with foam in their mouths.

These were innocent families

who were seeking shelter underground in basements.

A significant body of information indicates

the Syrian regime is responsible for this latest attack.

(Reporter) Yesterday The Independent published a report from Douma

by their Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk,

which included the testimony of a doctor

who claimed that the video footage of people gasping for air

actually depicted patients suffering from oxygen starvation,

the result of a dust storm that had entered basements.

But Robert Fisk had only obtained access to the site

thanks to the Syrian regime.

He was part of the group of journalists visiting.

(Robert) As soon as we got into Douma

we drove away, left the journalists to do what they wanted,

with or without their government officials.

I was free to move around, walked down side streets, main streets,

through rubble, through dust. I was trying to find

where the gas victims had been taken,

and this of course is days afterwards.

I found a doctor who actually spoke quite good English.

He was not there at the time but that doctors

who were there were being interviewed in Damascus

by the International Chemical Weapons Agency.

And the doctor said, "This is the clinic where it was filmed.

People were coughing, frightened, there was panic, but it was dust.

And they were all breathing in dust and someone,

a 'white helmet' came to the door and shouted "Gas! Gas!"

And everyone went mad and started throwing water at each other.

I then went outside and walked around and we must have talked to 20 people.

And these are people living near to the underground clinic.

They all spoke about the heavy bombing of the Syrians and Russians,

of dust clogging the air.

Many of them were living in basements for weeks on end.

But I found no one there who d been there or seen it or had evidence.

So I said, the only thing I can do is write a story about what I found.

And that's all you could do

cast doubt on the "official version" that gas had been used

because I had no proof.

(Reporter) Aren't you compromised

by getting access to this area through the Syrian government?

I don't think soe

if you're not followed by a minder.

(Reporter) How do you know that the people that you saw,

weren t just planted there?

(Robert) How could they be planted?

I was walking through streets with thousands.

I asked people out of my choice.

How could they be planted? You can't plant thousands of people.

When you cover a war, you've got to go after any source you can

and make sure they are not being compromised

and you are not being compromised.

Woman talking to Robert

(Robert) If I'm covering a story in the Middle East,

I'm going to report it because I'm there.

The last thing you re gonna do is waste your time on secondary sources,

on an expert sitting in New York

who s telling you what he thinks is happening

when he might not even be able to find the place on a map.

You think you know what s going on, see it with your own eyes,

talk to people, have to make your own judgement of what happened,

and tell the reader what you think is going on.

That's the nearest you can get to the truth

through your own eyes, eye-witness reporting.

I was in Douma to find out whether gas was used.

I think gas has been used quite often in Syria,

I don t know if it was used in Douma.

Certainly, the people in Douma suffered

but it wasn t just a question of had people been gassed.

Remember that the western powers had launched attacks on Syria

on the grounds that there was gas used in Douma.

But the important question was,

did the west attack a foreign country because it used gas

or because it thought it used gas?

(Reporter) What's clear is that the events of April the 7th

are now subject to a vicious propaganda war,

one in which claim and counter-claim are beginning to obscure the truth.

The final word will come soon when UN report is published

setting out precisely what happened in Douma that day.

(Robert) When the preliminary report came out

from the chemical weapons inspectors,

which effectively said they didn t have any trace of sarin at all,

and that the doctors seemed to be uncontaminated and then nothing.

Now maybe they'll come out with a follow up report which will say,

"clear traces of sarin gas used in Douma".

It s conceivable. It s possible. But I saw no evidence of it.

(Reporter) Does it concern you that your report is shared

a lot on social media by defenders of the Assad regime?

(Robert) On phone No, not at all.

It isn't my job to write for friends of Assad or Russians.

I tried to find out what happened. I did.

I wrote my report and what people make of it is up to them.

Military speaking

(Military) This is the frontline of the militants.

(Robert) One of the key problems in Syria

is that we cannot cover both sides of the war.

If you cannot cross the frontlines,

does that mean that we must therefore not talk to those who support us

or who live in the regime s territory?

I said, "No. We ve got to go on covering Syria as best we can."

There was no doubt that anyone

who was going to cover regime-held territory was going to be condemned.

During the Syrian civil war,

I was said to be pro-regime, pro-Baathist, pro-terrorist.

Whatever side you're on in a war, whatever side I've been on,

starting in Northern Ireland through all the Middle East wars,

it s been the same. I've been a pro-Palestinian,

pro-terrorist, pro-Zionist at one point I remember

the Palestinians called me pro-isolationist,

when I spoke about killed Christians, pro-Catholic, pro-IRA, pro...

And after all this, do you really think I care?

Not really.

I know what s coming and if you're going to do what I try to do,

people will throw sticks and stones at you,

sometimes, in my case, on the Afghan border, real stones.

You re going to have to expect that.

But you see, if you don't see that side,

if you're not shown the other side, you re not gonna hear it.

And I don't waste my time and energy on this stuff.

I do my job.

Cars honking

People talking and laughing

Woman talking and laughing

(Woman) In your mind, there isn't a genuine resistance

- to the Assad regime? - (Robert) No. That government,

they love fighting the Free Syrian Army

'cause they're not there and if they are they run away.

Nusra, they don't mind

because they can beat them. Isis is a different question.

The problem about the whole Syrian war is you can't report if properly.

In the old days, we used to have one reporter on the rebel side

and me with the government's army.

So we had both sides of the frontline covered and I could...

(Woman) Because you didn't know who was gonna hand you over...

Either you would be handed over for money by Nusra

or the Free Syrian Army which happened several times, to Isis.

And then you end up on a video tape in an orange jump suit.

It s the first war I've ever covered in the Middle East

where you can't cross the frontline.

But if you do you have a good chance of having your throat cup open

and your head torn off on video tape, and nobody's gonna do that.

Street noises

(Robert) I want a brown one like this.

(Shop keeper) This one is original leather, this one...

- What about this? - 20,000 and 30,000.

I ll go for 30. That one.

- This one? - Yeah, that one.

- Where are you from in Lebanon? - From Beirut.

- From where in Beirut? - Ras Beirut.

- From where in Ras Beirut? - Ras Beirut, this is Ras Beirut.

- Hamra. - Yes.

(Robert) Beautiful. Lovely, thank you.

- Thank you. - (Robert) How much?

- 30,000. - (Robert) Okay.

Cars honking

- (Woman) Do you speak Arabic? - (Robert) Yes, a bit.

I was in Sabra and Shatila at the time of the massacre in 1982.

- Oh, 1982! - I was here at the time.

I saw it with my own eyes.

- Did you see everything? - Yes.

(Robert) Arabs and Muslims in general

have been told over and over again

that the west is an alien, dangerous enemy force,

that it bombs the innocent,

that it allows Israel to bomb the innocent,

that it props up outrageous Arab regimes who repress the people.

Not only were they told these things, and you can say that's propaganda,

but the propaganda turned out to be true

and that means that that anger was real.

Hello!

I can remember the Qana massacre in 1996

when the Israelis fired shells

into a UN base filled with Lebanese refugees.

They killed 106, most of them children.

The Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad,

when an American jet fired a missile through an air vent,

more than 400 civilians were all liquified.

It s impossible to witness these things

and to hear the visceral anger of the people around you,

and not to realize what is building up, what is coming.

Sad music

People shouting, sirens

Death to America!

Man screaming

Death to America!

Death to Israel!

(Robert) I met bin Laden first in 93 in the Sudan,

then I met him in 96 in Afghanistan, and I met him in 97 in Afghanistan.

Like a lot of people who have read their Quran

but have not been educated in the liberal arts,

he was very single-minded in his views

and he was clear that these people around me

were hanging on his words.

When bin Laden told me the story that one of his brothers had a dream

in which I was a Muslim prelate on a horse,

he was trying to see if I could come across

and become a Muslim. And I immediately saw the danger

because everyone was hanging on his...

What s Mr. Robert gonna say?

And I said, "I m not a Muslim.

I'm a journalist and my job is to tell the truth."

And he said, "That is as good as being a Muslim."

And I breathed a great sigh of relief,

because all the al-Qaeda people grinned wanly towards me.

I knew that he was a powerful figure

because all over the Middle East people were hanging on his word.

There was no doubt that in terms of fighting, he was brave.

He fought against Russian fire positions in Nangarhar province

with shells falling around him.

One hit him but didn't explode, maybe sadly.

And then he said, "I pray to God that he permits us

to turn American into a shadow of itself." Those were his words.

I was on a plane going over the Atlantic on that day

and I started writing about how bin Laden must be responsible.

In the end I decided I d use the phone in my seat

and I just called London

and I just dictated out of my head, proper sentences.

And it began, "So it has come to this..."

On 9/11 we could ask who did it? How?

But if you tried to search for the reasons why something happens

you re supporting terror.

Is this because they come from a society which has suffered injustice?

Man screaming, sirens

No one said, "Hold on a second,

what s up in the Middle East? Is it a problem?"

It didn t occur to anybody that night.

I was trying to write it, and some of my colleagues were,

but by and large it was the men of evil. Terror, terror, terror...

Listen to the conversations between Dershowitz and me that night.

(Dershowitz) What happened in the World Trade Centre

has nothing to do with the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Nothing. So what we heard is the most patent nonsense.

It is so stupid and so blatantly wrong

and borders on anti-Semitism,

and if you can t engage in a serious argument with me, sir,

then don t make the kind of allegations you re making.

(Robert) Every time one tries to address the fact

that however brutal, vicious, sickening and wicked the violence,

is not done because someone gets up,

has a cup of tea and decides to become a terrorist.

These things have deep roots in the history of the area.

(Dershowitz) Mr.Fisk, there is evil and good in this world

and your absurd moral relativism leads us to a situation

where there s always going to be somebody

who is gonna justify the worst kinds of evil by reference to some excuse.

You re insulting an entire group of people. I stick to...

(Robert) That s the old smear I get in mail too...

Let s deal with the issue! Professor Dershowitz, please!

(Robert) How dare you call me anti-Semitic.

There are lots of real anti-Semites

and we must be against them.

Don t you use that cheap slur, that lie,

against any journalist who tries to tell the truth.

"You re a dangerous man" he said to me.

I think Dershowitz is a dangerous man

because once you close down the conversation,

then you re just sort of left with terror, terror, terror.

Terror, terror, terror,

terror, terror, terror...

You re getting it, aren t you? Terror...

I have it written down here 60 times, but you know the rest.

We are in love with the word.

We are seduced by it, fixated by it, attacked by it,

assaulted by it, raped by it, and committed to it.

It is love and sadism and death in one double vowel word.

The opening of every television symphony,

the prime-time theme song, the headline of every page.

A punctuation mark in our journalism,

a semicolon, a coma, our most powerful full stop.

Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror...

This tired, lazy, weak language

in which everything has to be fitted into the shortest headline

and tanks always run below the borders, war clouds loom.

We ve gotten so used to it.

We don t read it anymore, but it goes in somewhere.

It s the "de-semanticisation" of war.

Clash instead of kill,

like it's a natural phenomenon, like an earthquake or a flood.

Settlement instead of colony.

The settlement project in the West Bank by the Israelis

is a project of colonialism

but we don t call it that.

A wall, which you can see in front of you

and film and walk around and touch,

is called a fence, or a security barrier.

By changing the words and language,

and turning it from a war about colonialism, land theft, and killing,

it means that we turn a major political conflict,

deliberately by words, we de-semanticise this conflict

into something which bears no relation

to what's actually happening.

And thus, anyone coming fresh or even old to this account of events,

either doesn't care about it, doesn't understand it,

doesn't know the background to it or,

even more seriously, says, "Obviously the Arabs are to blame."

Calm music

However many photographs and pictures you see on the wall,

nothing prepares you for the real thing with your own eyes.

This massive concrete wall,

higher than the Berlin Wall, longer than the Berlin Wall

which our colleagues still refer to as fence or a barrier.

Incredible.

- (Robert) Hi, Amira. - Hi, Middle East.

- (Robert) Yes, indeed. How are you? - How are you?

- (Robert) Very well. - (Amira) Okay.

So I ll take you through a new wall

that separates now Beit El from a neighbourhood of El Bireh.

- (Robert) Okay. - Once you could see

but since they started again the demonstrations,

they protect now the settlers.

But I hope we can find an angle where we can see both.

(Robert) Very good. Excellent.

Are you writing in Hebrew or in English?

(Amira) Hebrew. They re translating the paper and I go over it.

But we often you feel that the terms...

Like I write "checkpoint", they would write "the border crossing".

They know that I never allow to use the word terrorist.

- Never. - Good, good. Good.

(Robert) One of the most important journalistic influences

in my life has been Amira Hass,

the Israeli journalist who lives in Ramallah.

She writes from there with eloquence and anger and dedication to the truth

about her own country's, Israel's, colonialism in the West Bank.

Her parents, survivors of the Jewish Holocaust,

taught her this rock-hard integrity.

(Robert) You told me that the purpose of being a journalist

was to challenge the centres of power. Is it still?

(Amira) Always, yeah. Only sometimes you get confused.

So if I write something against the PA or against Hamas

then they say that I cooperate with the army...

I know the feeling well. When you write something

against the army, you're a traitor.

Yeah, but this is an honour to be a traitor. I was raised as a traitor.

But there are so many centres of power, it s not only one.

(Robert) How are you getting on with all your Israeli readers, Amira?

(Amira) I don t think they read me.

I think I have 200, 500 of Israelis left,

and all the rest just don t read me.

You know, I also haven't learned

how to be very fashionable like some other writers.

- (Robert) You mean Israeli writers? - Yes.

Like I still care about facts and logic, and analysis.

(Robert) So that s the road there, isn t it?

There was a road here, yes.

And that's the other side of the road?

Yeah, and that's Jerusalem over there.

Which is not Jeru... I mean, which is Palestinian.

This place, I've always been showing it to people. Always.

Probably 100 times already.

And it never stops shocking me.

When my friends took me in Berlin to see the remains of the wall

I told them, "The Germans should have learned

from the Jews how to build a wall."

So my friends of course were shocked but they know my cynicism.

(Robert) What is the message of a wall?

What is it actually saying to you?

(Amira) What it tells me is because

Israel realized it cannot drive the Palestinians away

it has to hide them.

It has to conceal them from our own... From our eyes...

- So they cannot be seen from there. - Yes. Yeah.

(Robert) When did you come first to Israel?

(Man) I came in 2005.

I was researching my first book, my Israel Question...

Came here, and my views were a bit different.

I mean, I was critical.

But if you asked me then I would say

"I support a two-state solution, I believe in a Jewish state."

My views have changed on both of those since.

And I left pretty damn angry.

(Robert) And why did you come back?

(Man) Because I was... I don't know.

I couldn't really stay away. I guess I felt like I...

- That's sounds faintly familiar. - Yeah, partly I wanted to

document it, I wanted to cover it and report and...

I think it s got a lot to do with history, hasn't it?

It does. And also...

And being Jewish, although I'm an atheist Jew.

I am...

I'm ashamed of what's being done in my name.

People shouting

(Robert) The most important highway

through the West Bank, and it's blocked.

If the Israelis want to get rid of these houses

the Israelis are gonna have to open the road, right?

(Anthony) I mean a question with this whole situation is

is the EU gonna do more than say "you ve been a bad boy, Israel"

if and when this gets demolished, which I presume it will.

(Robert) They'll do nothing.

- Unless people get killed. - (Anhony) That s what I fear, too.

People demonstrating

(Anthony) To me, what's fascinating about the Israel-Palestine conflict

is despite the fact that there has been, in my view,

a protection racket by many in the media to protect Israel...

- (Robert) Yes. - Public opinion in much of the west,

the U.S. is a bit more of a complicated question, is changing.

Profoundly. That matters, right?

In other words, how can people find out about it and get different views?

Not from the mainstream press. That to me is alternative press

and social media. I think there's a danger to say

that by using social media as well as being on the ground...

- No. - You can do both.

(Robert) I think the phrase "citizen journalism" is a great one.

I think the idea that people have a blog

that comes out three times a week

once a week, whatever... Is a great idea.

But I have mixed feelings about online because, you know, before...

I think that's a problem, Robert.

The implication of that is if I am reading an article,

a news story, an investigation online,

that somehow the journalism is not as serious. That's where I...

(Robert) No, I don t say that at all. Look...

But you used to say, "I don t take the online as seriously."

(Robert) I'm not against technology, otherwise I couldn t see you, right?

You re on email now which was a big step, I must...

(Robert) The problem is now

if you look at most of the people I know in Lebanon

who are comparatively young,

they constantly ask me, "Is it true that..."

And I say, "This is bullshit."

"Is it true that Mohammed bin Salman had made a secret visit

to Netanyahu in Jerusalem?"

"But I just got it on Facebook."

And I say, "Stop! Cool down.

Put your feet on the ground, we live on planet Earth,

and just put that to one side."

(Anthony) That s a problem. Of course.

(Robert) Yes, thank you.

But you can be publishing bullshit,

in print as well. I mean...

- They do. - Of course.

But it seems like you re saying that there s more likely to be lies

published in a news story online than there is in print.

No, I don t think necessarily so.

But I think that the amount of information

that comes in through opening your screen

is causing a situation where people

start to believe in stories that aren t true.

So in terms of the Middle East, I simply have to say

"I cannot deal with this shit. I've got work to do."

(Chaim) I was interviewed a few months ago

by a guy from the Financial Times.

He was one of the few, other than you by the way,

he was one of the few journalists

that actually knew what he was talking about.

I was interviewed by CNN, BBC, ABC, NBC. You name it.

At least 50 outlets, and I can tell you, 95% of them

had no idea what they were talking about.

Here we have common ground. I entirely agree with you.

These people have flown here for a few days...

Yes, they do, don't they?

They think they can now discover the whole

Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a couple of days.

And their questions are ludicrous,

their knowledge is zero, and it's very frustrating.

I believe that that's a part that I can play that I can try and help.

In Beit El there are about 1200 families living here,

about six and a half thousand people.

I had a pretty good life in South Africa,

and I moved here for ideological reasons.

It was ideological?

I am a Zionist and I believe in Zion.

And, you know, without Zion there's no Zionism.

So I believed in coming to live in the land of Israel

and this is a way to express the return

of the native Jews to their homeland.

So for me that's a real expression of my identity and my nationality.

(Chaim) We are standing up here on a mountain

That's called Pisgat Yaakove.

We're looking southwards into Ramallah and below us

over here is Beit El.

We feel and see the realities of Judea and Samaria.

Do you think the world, i.e., the famous international community,

do you think they re ever going to accept

that the state of Israel goes all the way up

- to the Jordan River? - Absolutely. Absolutely.

I think that the world is in store for a lot of surprises.

Alliances and allegiances are changing all the time.

And I think the Palestinians are passé, they re so 20th century.

The Arab countries are not interested anymore in the Palestinians.

In fact, I read often that they despise them.

There never was a Palestinian people,

there never was a Palestinian history.

This land never belonged to them ever.

They never had a currency, a history, a state,

they never had any rights to this country...

The British Mandate.

But there were lots of Arabs who had not only British Mandate deeds,

they paid their taxes, they had Ottoman deeds.

This was their land and for generations they had lived there.

It was their land, their home, their olive grove.

I, as a moral person, do not believe in stealing anybody s land.

So if an Arab owns land individually and if they can prove that ownership,

then they must be compensated or be allowed

to live on the individually own land.

(Chaim) Would you be considered pro-Israel or anti-Israel?

(Robert) I think if you read all I write

you d say that I probably accept the existence

of the state of Israel whole-heartedly.

After all, I come and my passport goes in at Tel Aviv.

But I do think that Israel is heading

for very dangerous waters because of the situation here.

Calm music

(Robert) Now my faint memory is that that property

was actually down here

where they've got this huge gauging in the earth.

Surely there will be nothing left of the trees

or the chickens or the house.

But Sulieman would be about, let s see... 55, 60 years old.

A quarter of a century ago I watched Israel

take the Palestinian Khatib family's land.

The Israeli government had issued them an Order to Quit,

the document given to Palestinian landowners

whose property was to be seized.

I took the old road to Hizmeh village once again,

and there I found Sulieman who had not, as I feared,

emigrated to Europe or America,

but who now lived in a crowded apartment

with his wife and five children, scarcely two miles away.

60 now and a trifle broader in the beam

but with the same ponderous accent in English

and the identical politeness

with which he invited us onto his land a quarter of a century ago.

- Nice to see you again. - You too... Welcome here.

- Thank you very much. - And I didn t forget you.

I didn t forget you. That's why we came back after 25 years.

25 years, yes.

(Sulieman) After they demolished the house

- Yeah. - I didn't have

a place to live, so I came here.

(Robert) Jerusalem, holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians

has been annexed by Israel,

which still claims it to be its eternal and unified capital.

East of the city,

outside the internationally recognized border of Israel,

only a little bit of the old rural Palestine remains.

(Sulieman) Now if you see the land you will not recognize it.

(Robert) No, it s now villas, isn t it?

(Sulieman) It's now villas.

(Robert on video) It takes a brave Palestinian to hold out here,

to cling onto his own land

in the face of Israel's expanding settlements.

But in this little patch of orchard

is a family that's refused to leave its land,

despite an order to get out.

Good gracious, what's happening, Sulieman?

(Sulieman) They want us to get out of here.

(Robert) Sulieman, how long has your family owned this land here?

We have owned it for as long as we lived.

It's inherited from our grandfathers and fathers.

(Robert) How many years do you think that is?

- More than 100? - (Sulieman) Yes.

(Robert) Do you have the documents to prove it this?

- The original deeds and papers? - (Suleiman) Of course.

We have the documents from the Ottoman period

and from the period of British Mandate also.

(Robert) After we saw you and we filmed you,

what happened after that?

(Suleiman) The demolishing was in October, 1993. I was at school.

They came with their big forces...

The police, soldiers, bulldozers.

After demolishing the house, they were also demolishing the land,

the walls, the trees. Everything.

(Robert) When you think of the land now, what do you think in your mind?

(Suleiman) When I think about it, I get confused. What can I do?

Israel was established on the land of others.

And it s not easy to get it back from a state or a government like this.

(Robert) Have you ever thought of leaving?

No! No! Leaving Palestine? Of course not.

- (Robert) Because? - Because it s my land,

it s my homeland.

(Robert) Do you ever look at the piece of land where it was today?

(Suleiman) We are forbidden to go there.

We have to have Tasreeh, as they call it.

You need permission to look at the land you owned?

Yes, I am tourist in that area.

There's the wall and the checkpoint, the Hizmeh Checkpoint.

(Robert) I'm sorry we had to put your through all that.

We luxuriously wait at this end

for you to go through this cattle grid thing.

People talking

(Suleiman) This was our road to...

- Down here? - Down here.

- This way? - This way. Yes.

(Suleiman) This is the first time I come here after the buildings.

Because I... We don't dare to come.

(Robert) Well, if you don t feel easy we can...

(Suleiman) No, we'll try.

I think our land begins from here, it was.

From here to the... North and down.

Have you ever wondered who lives in these houses now?

Have you ever wondered about the families who live here now?

Asked yourself who they are, the people who live here?

They don t know the real story.

They only live...

They don't know how they did it, what people suffered before them.

(Robert) So this is where your land ended, isn t it?

Yes.

- Maybe if we can look from here... - Yes, sure.

(Robert) There you go.

I'm sorry to see it now in this case.

Now they are living luxuriously, but on the ruins of other people.

Because we have the West Bank identity, they consider us absents.

Absentee property owners. I know the phrase very well.

Thank you for bringing me here, Sulieman. Very sad journey for you.

And thank you too for bringing me.

It s the first time I come here, as if it wasn't my land.

It is for strangers now.

What can we do?

I'm sorry for everything that happened.

(Suleiman) For which newspaper are you working?

(Robert) The Independent. The Independent.

(Suleiman) I hope this article will reach our newspaper, Al-Quds.

(Robert) Yes, it will, you ll see it. You ll see it.

(Suleiman) Now we go out from here, we come back from here another way.

- Yes, of course. Take care. - Thank you very much.

(Suleiman) Thank you.

Calm music

(Robert) I used to think that dispossession

and courage are twins in the mind of a refugee.

They are not.

Dispossession is the end.

Courage, I fear, can be as pathetic as it is irrelevant.

I think we all hoped, in a naive way,

that with our film cameras

and our interviews with Sulieman, Mohammed and Saida,

that we might somehow save them

from the official theft of their property.

We should have known better.

Music goes on

(Robert) I feel more angry now than I used to

and I think the reason is not because I'm older.

I think the reason is

that I find that we don't manage to do much about it.

It doesn't matter how much we blame the bad guys.

I don't think it has a lot of effect.

It would be nice to believe that Foreign Correspondent,

the movie, was the real thing.

He manages to get the bad guys, the German spies,

everything works out fine.

But the truth is that this is not a movie.

And it s very arrogant of any journalist

to think they can change the world

or alter the course of a war.

You do like to think that sometimes

you can switch on the lighthouse and the beam touches something,

and something that would otherwise happen will not happen.

When you try to tell the truth

maybe, occasionally, the torture stops or the condemned cell opens.

And maybe we helped.

Mostly, I fear, what we write doesn't make the slightest bit of difference.

Like constantly having to tell the story of the Palestinians.

You will never win over the world to your version of events.

However accurate, however truthfully told,

however angrily written, you'll never win.

But you will lose unless you keep on fighting.

And to prevent that you must keep on reporting,

going out, fighting for it, challenging authority.

Calm music continues

Typing noises

(Robert) There are young journalists I meet

who are out there and getting out on the ground,

and I think that's a very good sign from my point of view,

because I think that's how you have to do it.

I still think if we journalists can do anything,

it s to write the story of what we see and witness with our own eyes,

to leave a direct and emotional record for people

who are not yet alive,

so that no one can say this didn't happen

and no one can say,

"We didn't know. No one told us."

Music goes on

Music stops

(Robert) George and Sue,

I hope you're listening to all that,

use as much accent as you can,

so you can tell how dangerous it was.

Please keep this cassette,

it's a memory that I want to remember for the rest of my life.

Whatever you do, don't throw it away.

There's a friend of mine at BBC,

who also had a lot of shit in here and likes a copy of this tape.

With that I'll have a cold beer when I get back to CBC for all f us.

Goodbye Sue, goodbye George.

I just found I didn't even have a card to adress. Bye bye.