I had lunch with Robert Fisk as an MA student in 2005, Australia. I was awed by his bravery, resilience, writing style, and passion for the truth. Then came post-2011 Fisk who whitewashed Assad’s crimes. It saddened me. I could not reconcile the two Fisks https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/veteran-journalist-and-author-robert-fisk-dies-aged-74-1.4397069?mode=amp

Also during the same lunch in 2005, when Robert Fisk found out about my Egyptian background, he told me of a then recent incident: “I arrived at Cairo airport, I asked the taxi driver to take me to Al-Ahram (pyramids) newspaper, he took me instead to the actual pyramids.”

As much as I cannot reconcile the two Fisks, I still need to give credit to the pre-2011 Fisk who did extraordinary work on Palestine and Lebanon.

I was president of the Arab student club at ANU, and along with other cultural/social justice clubs in the mid-2000s, our morale was down as we lived in the news shadow of the brutalization of Palestinians worsening since the 2000 Intifdah, fallout of the Iraq war & Abu Ghraib...

Australia's turn to the right under the Howard government and his refugee policies becoming insanely dehumanizing etc. Then comes Robert Fisk for a campus visit and guest lecture who electrifies us with a new language, visions, and infectious energy. Fisk was a rare one.

When one person in the audience hinted to Robert Fisk that as a journalist he should be impartial/non-emotional. Fisk replied (I'm roughly quoting here): "Even a banker is allowed to show emotion, why can't I as a journalist show emotion to the suffering that I see every day!?"

I'll never understand how Fisk came to dismiss Assad's crimes. It's a bizarre turning point. I don't know what to make of such fallen/contradictory figures. Nonetheless, RIP Robert Fisk. Thank you for giving us your 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, & 2000s. That was still something big.