HERE’S A FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT of Robert Fisk’s speech at George Mason University. In keeping with the post-9/11 crushing of dissent in America, he spoke without rioting protesters shutting down the event, the way they do in progressive countries like Canada.

UPDATE: Fisk, Fisked — reader Marc Intrater writes:

Reading through Amsoapundit’s facinating account of Robert Fisk’s speech at George Mason, I was struck by his comment that Arabs “wonder why the word “massacre” is never used in the Western press to describe the killing of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla camps in southern Lebanon in 1982.” This seemed odd, because I generally recall seeing that word used. I checked Google News for the words Sabra and Shatilla, and found the following quotes from the Western press

Three major Western periodicals:

Newsweek: Seething over the massacre that Lebanese Phalangist militias had just committed against Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps under Israel’s watch

The Scotsman: After the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps

The New Yorker: The massacre of seven hundred to eight hundred Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila [this in an passage by Bernard Lewis, describing how media coverage was unfair to Israel]

One Israeli web-site:

Israel Insider: Next there was the occurrence of the notorious massacre of many hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps

Two hits for IndyMedia (one a review of a Chomsky book) which are neither major, nor slanted pro-Israel.

The other hits were all Arab publications (Palestine Chronicle, Beirut Daily Star, IRNA)

Thus in the universe covered by Google News (most major newspapers and magazines for the past few months), all of the Western media references to Sabra and Shatila used the word ‘massacre’ or much worse. So easy to check, and completely wrong. And Fisk is billed as a Mid-East expert.

Yes, I recall hearing the term “massacre” used in this context nearly every time it comes up. Fisk’s reputation as a serious journalist is, to me, difficult to explain.