NEWSLETTER

So the fear is there, but you still get out in the field.

Yes, but sometimes I imagine Tony Blair watching a videotape of me begging him to withdraw the British troops from Iraq or else I will be beheaded. What would he say? “Hum… poor old boy.” After all I wrote about him, I guess he wouldn’t move a finger to save me!


You’re probably quite lucky to still be alive.

When my second book came out, my editor bought me champagne—not to celebrate the book launch, but to celebrate that I survived. And I have been lucky. I remember the Battle of Fish Lake during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. I was on the Iranian side. The Iraqis were shelling heavily. I remember a British journalist who was there saying, “I don’t think I could take more than a day of this.” When we got to the end of the dike, a revolutionary guard took me up to the front line and I could see the lights of the Sheraton hotel in Basra on the other side. The bullets were flying like wasps, but at a time like that I find you lose your fear of death because you’re too close to it.

AP’s Beirut bureau chief, after being taken hostage by Shiite Hezbollah militants in 1985 (and having his glasses taken away). Photo by Getty

So why is it so important to take such risks and to report from war zones?

For the sake of history but also so that people in the future will never be able to say, as they did with the Holocaust, “We didn’t know. No one told us.” We write about the Middle East simply so that people will know what happens here.

In your view, what is the biggest threat in the area today?

Pakistan.

Wow, you didn’t even hesitate for a second there.

We are told that the biggest threat is Iran, but it’s rubbish. The story of Iran’s nuclear crisis isn’t what you’d expect. Originally the Shah of Iran, who was like our policeman in the Gulf—our friend—wanted nuclear facilities. We practically gave them to him. The nuclear facility at Busher was built by Siemens, a German company. The Shah even went to New York and gave an interview to CBS or ABC, I can’t remember, where he said, “I want a bomb because the Americans and the Soviets have one.” President Jimmy Carter welcomed him. There was no problem. Then later on, during the Islamic Revolution, I was in Tehran when the Ayatollah Khomeini said, “Nuclear facilities are the work of the devil.” He used the word sheitan, meaning “devil,” and he said, “We are closing them down.” And he did. In 1985, when Saddam was swamping Iran with chemical weapons that had been given to him by the U.S., the Iranians said that they would have to reopen the nuclear facilities because they were afraid that next time, Saddam would use atomic bombs against them.

Anyway, I think that Pakistan is a much greater threat to the West than any other country in this region.

I’m almost afraid to ask this, but why?

Because it’s a Muslim country packed with Taliban and al-Qaeda supporters, because it has a nuclear bomb and a dictatorship which could be overthrown at any time, and because it has security services which I believe substantially support the Taliban and al-Qaeda. At the moment, Pakistan’s dictator, General Pervez Musharaf, is our friend, so there’s no problem with Pakistan. It’s on our side. Iran is the bad guy. This is what my colleagues in journalism would say. But I say that Pakistan is the danger.

Be sure of one thing though: We will not bomb Pakistan, because it has the bomb. It’s the same reason we will not bomb North Korea.

What do you think of as the greatest scoop of your career?

It was in 1996, when Israel bombed the UN compound in Cana, South Lebanon. One hundred and six people were killed, half of whom were children. Israel immediately said it didn’t know it was targeting a UN compound, but I proved the opposite. I got a UN video showing an Israeli drone over the camp. The UN officer who gave it to me said, “I give it to you because the children who died in the compound were the same age as my own children.” The next day, I flew to London and I asked all the senior editors of my newspaper to watch the videotape of the drone flying over the camp as it was being bombarded. We could even hear a UN officer shouting, “Help! Help! We are being bombarded!” The story made the three front pages of the Monday edition. It was titled “Video Puts Israel in the Dock.” I gave dozens of interviews after it went out and we sent the video to all major media outlets.

One of the many piles of massacred corpses in Sabra and Shatila, Israel, 1982. Photo by Reuters

Does a story stand out for you that was particularly life-changing? Something that transformed you personally?

The Massacre of Sabra and Shatila in September 1982. I spent the whole day, September 18th, climbing over the dead bodies of children, women, men… even horses. My hands smelled like death. That day, I said to myself, “I’m not afraid anymore of being abused or categorized as anti-Semitic or racist or whatever.” It didn’t matter anymore what people would say. I would face up to anyone who would dare to lie and say that I was anti-Semitic. The Israelis watched the whole massacre and let it happen.

How do you cope with the pressure of your job?

[Laughing] I hate the word cope and I hate when journalists are asked, “How do you cope? Do you need counseling?” It’s rubbish.

Sorry.

The people here who suffer and are killed in air raids—they need help. We don’t. We are quite well paid. We can go home in business class if we want.

Let’s rephrase it. How do you relax?

I listen to music. I have the entire works of Bach. I read a lot of poetry. I read Shakespeare. I always remember an extraordinary poem that W.H. Auden wrote. I think it was called “Epithaph on a Tyrant.” It was obviously written about Stalin but I always thought it applied quite well to Saddam. It reads, “Perfection of a kind is what he was after,/And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;/He knew human folly like the back of his hand,/And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;/When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,/And when he cried the little children died in the streets.”

I think you’ve got to transfer history into art to truly understand it.

Does your job affect your personal life?

I’m afraid that my personal life is called journalism. It doesn’t give much room for anything else.

KATIA JARJOURA


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