Anyone else read this? What did you think? I really enjoyed it, but it did seem like a bit of a rant at times, but I can definitely see where he is coming from. I’m not really qualified to comment on the accuracy of the details though…
It reads like a novel at times!
I have not read the book, and the following excerpt from Fisk’s wikipedia page is not intended as an assault on it. I just wonder how these kinds of mistakes make it past a proof reader. He has a proof reader, right? Right?!
Israeli historian Efraim Karsh, in a Commentary Magazine book review, commented on what he saw as Fisk’s carelessness with facts:
It is difficult to turn a page of The Great War for Civilisation without encountering some basic error. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not, as Fisk has it, in Jerusalem. The Caliph Ali, the Prophet Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law, was murdered in the year 661, not in the 8th century. Emir Abdallah became king of Transjordan in 1946, not 1921. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, not 1962; Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed by the British authorities, not elected; Ayatollah Khomeini transferred his exile from Turkey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf not during Saddam Hussein’s rule but fourteen years before Saddam seized power. Security Council resolution 242 was passed in November 1967, not 1968; Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, not 1977, and was assassinated in October 1981, not 1979. Yitzhak Rabin was Minister of Defence, not prime minister, during the first Palestinian intifada, and al-Qaeda was established not in 1998 but a decade earlier. And so on and so forth.
They may be important facts, but for the points he is making the fact that he might have gotten those things wrong, assuming he got them wrong, is pretty much irrelevant. He pretty much crucifies the actions of the Israeli government and if that is all an israeli historian can come up with to discredit him than that’s saying something imo.
“the fact that he might have gotten those things wrong, assuming he got them wrong, is pretty much irrelevant.”
Of course it’s relevant. We crucify people everyday here in the LR for being to incompetent or too lazy to get their facts straight. Maybe this is just a matter of a poor editing process, but maybe it’s an indicator of poor writing and poor research which brings into doubt all of his conclusions.
We crucify people everyday here in the LR for being to incompetent or too lazy to get their facts straight
Slowguy,
You are falling into the old trap that the rest of the world is able to meet the LR standard for accuracy.
Bernie
“You are falling into the old trap that the rest of the world is able to meet the LR standard for accuracy.”
Gee, I certainly hope that published historians and writers would meet a little bit of a higher standard than we do in here.
Fulla, I don’t necessarily disagree. I think the commodore has a point, in that a reporter of Fisk’s stature ougtht to meet higher standards than even those as lofty as in the Lavender Room, and I certainly think he should at least get Jesus’ birthplace right. But I haven’t read the book, and I don’t know that these mistakes really impact on his book’s overall points. Like I said, I didn’t mean to bring this up to attack the book or Fisk’s credibility. It was just an observation- I’m surprised that mistakes like these- so basic, and so many of them- made it all the way into print.
much of his argument is actually centred around things he has actually seen with his own eyes…