The Blue Octavo Notebooks posted this insightful exposé on the mendacity of Robert Fisk yesterday. The post focuses on Fisk's enthusiastic contributions to the "Jenin massacre" hoax and his blatantly false and convoluted denial of same ("I did not say they committed a massacre. But I should have.").
In the course of thoroughly proving the point, TBON quotes and links to an old but popular Fiskism that warrants some belated attention.
Has he [Secretary Powell] forgotten that the Israeli Kahan commission held Mr Sharon "personally responsible'' for the massacre of those 1,700 civilians? Does Mr Powell really think that Jenin, albeit on a smaller scale, is much different?
If you Google Sharon "personally responsible" massacre, you get 1,990 hits. Most of them have scare quotes around "personally responsible" and many of them are of a virulently anti-Israel nature. A search for Sharon "personal responsibility" massacre, on the other hand, yields only 773 hits, most of which appear to lack the vitriol. Now let's see what the Kahan Commission actually said:
We have found, as has been detailed in this report, that the Minister of Defense bears personal responsibility. In our opinion, it is fitting that the Minister of Defense draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office - and if necessary, that the Prime Minister consider whether he should exercise his authority under Section 21-A(a) of the Basic Law: the Government, according to which "the Prime Minister may, after informing the Cabinet of his intention to do so, remove a minister from office."
Which is, in fact, exactly what Begin did.
So what's the difference and why should anyone get bent out of shape because sloppy reporters and commentators have adopted a slightly distorted version of what the Commission actually said? Well, in common parlance, "personally responsible" has connotations that imply active oversight, direct action and/or immediate intervention. And these are precisely the implications that Fisk et al. would like the public to draw from its use.
But the Kahan Commission found exactly the opposite with respect to Sharon's responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres. The assessment of responsibility section of the report is carefully divided into two sub-categories: direct responsibility ("i.e., who actually perpetrated the massacre") and indirect responsibility ("to the extent that this applies to Israel or those who acted on its behalf"). That section concludes:
To sum up this chapter, we assert that the atrocities in the refugee camps were perpetrated by members of the Phalangists, and that absolutely no direct responsibility devolves upon Israel or upon those who acted in its behalf. At the same time, it is clear from what we have said above that the decision on the entry of the Phalangists into the refugee camps was taken without consideration of the danger - which the makers and executors of the decision were obligated to foresee as probable - that the Phalangists would commit massacres and pogroms against the inhabitants of the camps, and without an examination of the means for preventing this danger. Similarly, it is clear from the course of events that when the reports began to arrive about the actions of the Phalangists in the camps, no proper heed was taken of these reports, the correct conclusions were not drawn from them, and no energetic and immediate actions were taken to restrain the Phalangists and put a stop to their actions. This both reflects and exhausts Israel's indirect responsibility for what occurred in the refugee camps. We shall discuss the responsibility of those who acted in Israel's behalf and in its name in the following chapters.
And they do. With respect to Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, the Commission found as follows:
It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for having disregarded the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps, and having failed to take this danger into account when he decided to have the Phalangists enter the camps. In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the Minister of Defense for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre as a condition for the Phalangists' entry into the camps. These blunders constitute the non-fulfillment of a duty with which the Defense Minister was charged.
The Commission then goes on to detail those matters of indirect responsibility outlined above for which Sharon was not accountable.
The report also goes to some lengths to detail just what, exactly, "personal responsibility" on the part of a government official entails. Although it's not exactly stimulating reading, I recommend it, anyway. But I think it's best summarized in the conclusion of the paragraph above: "the non-fulfillment of a duty with which the Defense Minister was charged" or in its ultimate finding: "the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office." In other words, although Sharon was found to bear no direct responsibility for the massacre itself, he failed to fulfill his duty to his people and his government to take certain precautions that might have prevented it.
Is it possible that neither Robert Fisk nor any of the other hundreds of commentators who casually employ the phrase "personally responsible" to describe the Commission's findings vis a vis Sharon have ever bothered to read the report itself? More likely, they simply don't care that they're distorting its meaning and substance to further their own ends.
