Stephen Weizman's Blog: Put Me Down I'm British
October 15, 2024
September 21, 2024
Middle East update
Put Me Down I'm British: A Reporter's NotebookAs diplomats and media analysts put out calls for a diplomatic solution to the latest round of fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, I find it astonishing that nowhere have I seen any reference to a United Nations resolution passed 18 years ago.
Drafted in the summer of 2006 to end just over a month of bitter fighting between the sides, UN Security Council resolution 1701 calls for: “A full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations.”
Granted, it was never implemented but surely that doesn’t mean that we need to reinvent the wheel.
Speaking after meeting his US, French, German and Italian counterparts, British foreign minister David Lammy demanded “a negotiated political settlement.”
“I’m calling for an immediate ceasefire from both sides so that we can get to that political settlement that’s required,” he went on to say.
Would it not have been more accurate to call for the implementation of the existing resolution. That may sound pedantic but there are few areas in which precise wording counts as much as it does in diplomacy.
Resolution 1701 prescribes a south Lebanon buffer zone between the Litani river and the UN approved border with Israel, known as the Blue Line, about 30 km to the south, and calling for, “the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon,” and the UN peacekeeping force there whose mandate renders it largely helpless.
The resolution was unanimously approved by the Security Council on August 11 2006 and within two days by the governments of Lebanon and Israel.
Since then, Hezbollah has not laid down its weapons and there has been no attempt by the Lebanese government or the UN force to disarm it. On the contrary, its arsenal has grown over the years and according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies it now has around 120,000-200,000 rockets and missiles.
The many launch sites hit by Israel on Thursday and identified by Israeli and Arab media appear to be well south of the Litani.
So if 1701 died a death, why should anyone believe that hammering out a new deal would ultimately fare any better.?
Shouldn’t that resolution’s impotence at least be mentioned as context somewhere in all the earnest statements and analysis. Or am I missing something?
Drafted in the summer of 2006 to end just over a month of bitter fighting between the sides, UN Security Council resolution 1701 calls for: “A full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations.”
Granted, it was never implemented but surely that doesn’t mean that we need to reinvent the wheel.
Speaking after meeting his US, French, German and Italian counterparts, British foreign minister David Lammy demanded “a negotiated political settlement.”
“I’m calling for an immediate ceasefire from both sides so that we can get to that political settlement that’s required,” he went on to say.
Would it not have been more accurate to call for the implementation of the existing resolution. That may sound pedantic but there are few areas in which precise wording counts as much as it does in diplomacy.
Resolution 1701 prescribes a south Lebanon buffer zone between the Litani river and the UN approved border with Israel, known as the Blue Line, about 30 km to the south, and calling for, “the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon,” and the UN peacekeeping force there whose mandate renders it largely helpless.
The resolution was unanimously approved by the Security Council on August 11 2006 and within two days by the governments of Lebanon and Israel.
Since then, Hezbollah has not laid down its weapons and there has been no attempt by the Lebanese government or the UN force to disarm it. On the contrary, its arsenal has grown over the years and according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies it now has around 120,000-200,000 rockets and missiles.
The many launch sites hit by Israel on Thursday and identified by Israeli and Arab media appear to be well south of the Litani.
So if 1701 died a death, why should anyone believe that hammering out a new deal would ultimately fare any better.?
Shouldn’t that resolution’s impotence at least be mentioned as context somewhere in all the earnest statements and analysis. Or am I missing something?
January 2, 2024
Review, by Emily Thompson, Discovery
Put me down I’m British is a fascinating book. Particularly reading it at the moment when there is fresh conflict in Israel and the middle-east.
Written by Stephen Weizman, a former Reuters journalist who witnessed many of the world’s recent atrocities - the book provides an interesting first hand account of international politics and conflicts.
It focuses initially on the Palestinian intifada in 1987 and provides a balanced view of the bloody battles...through personal accounts.
The book also covers Weizman’s work in Liberia (and) Zaire ...as well as gang warfare in Scandinavia and reporting on the border in Cyprus where he suffers a stabbing.
Throughout Weizman suffers personal injuries and near death experiences as well as regular bans on his reports and public humiliations at the hands of the governments not wanting the truths to be published. It feels like a battle not many people would have continued, not for a career and not for the truth.
This is a fascinating book about recent conflicts, told by someone who lived through them. The complexities of conflicts and the interconnected politics is bewildering. So the personal accounts of incidents in his life during this period help to bring the events to life and help them make sense to the reader.
A must for anyone interested in current events to understand the context of them.
Written by Stephen Weizman, a former Reuters journalist who witnessed many of the world’s recent atrocities - the book provides an interesting first hand account of international politics and conflicts.
It focuses initially on the Palestinian intifada in 1987 and provides a balanced view of the bloody battles...through personal accounts.
The book also covers Weizman’s work in Liberia (and) Zaire ...as well as gang warfare in Scandinavia and reporting on the border in Cyprus where he suffers a stabbing.
Throughout Weizman suffers personal injuries and near death experiences as well as regular bans on his reports and public humiliations at the hands of the governments not wanting the truths to be published. It feels like a battle not many people would have continued, not for a career and not for the truth.
This is a fascinating book about recent conflicts, told by someone who lived through them. The complexities of conflicts and the interconnected politics is bewildering. So the personal accounts of incidents in his life during this period help to bring the events to life and help them make sense to the reader.
A must for anyone interested in current events to understand the context of them.
October 2, 2023
HI, I'm Stephen Weizman
Welcome to my shiny new blog and my shiny new book "Put Me Down I'm British".
It's a journey to the frontlines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ,which opens with an eyewitness account of the eruption of the 1987 Palestinian intifada and a close-up look at the birth of the Hamas movement, essential reading for anyone trying to comprehend the latest Israel-Gaza conflagration.
Put Me Down I’m British also offers an inside view into West African wars and the bloody rampages of outlaw bike gangs in Scandinavia along with snapshots of encounters with Salman Rushdie, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Hillary Clinton and European royalty.
There’s also a stay with Muslim guerrillas in the hills of northern Liberia and the shock of being bayonetted and arrested by Turkish commandos in occupied northern Cyprus.
It is a voyage of self-discovery; of overcoming almost daily challenges and thinking on the hoof while retaining a sense of compassion and a sense of humour.
The title is taken from an incident during the first Palestininan intifada while I was on assignment for Reuters news agency in the West Bank city of Ramallah in 1988.
"One day I was driving around Ramallah and as I passed the main hospital I noticed a group of young men hauling buckets of stones and rocks by rope up to the building’s roof.
They were obviously waiting for Israeli soldiers to arrive on the scene, so that they could pelt them from above.
As usual on my walkabouts I was wearing a suit and tie to signal that I was a foreigner and I had no qualms whatever about walking
into the hospital and climbing the stairs to the roof for a chat.
The Ramallah boys apparently had missed the class on welcoming visiting journalists and took it into their heads that I was a Shin Bet
agent. They grabbed me by the arms and legs and started to drag me to the edge of the roof, with the clear aim of throwing me off.
With no time to offer them my press credentials or suggest that they call one of my Palestinian friends to vouch for me I blurted
out, “Put me down, I’m British!”
Not innate jingoism but desperate shorthand for “Please don’t kill me, I’m not an Israeli spook.”
They took no notice and started to swing me back and forth to build up a bit of momentum.
Fortunately, a doctor who had seen me on my way upstairs andimagined that this might not end well, had followed me up to keep an
eye on things.
When he told my tormentors to put me down they did so immediately, albeit with ill grace.
I left the building and was talking to some locals outside when an Israel army jeep appeared suddenly from around a corner. With
no warning a soldier fired a tear gas canister, hitting me on the shinbone and knocking me down.
Damn it hurt!
Those things were fired from a launcher looking like a fat shotgun and the metal canister was searing hot when it hit
me, burning through the trouser leg of my dove-grey woolen suit.
It seemed that nobody in Ramallah that day had any respect for my tailoring.
As I fell to the ground, the same young men who had only a few minutes earlier been trying to launch me into space ran forward to
pick me up, shouting in Arabic “Allahu Akbar” (God is most great) the traditional cry for a fallen comrade.
To them I had now become one of them, a victim of the Israeli occupiers, and they rushed me into the emergency room.
They gave me cold drinks and shook my hand, while a doctor examined me, put some kind of cream on my leg and pronounced me good to go.
You will be relieved to know that Reuters reimbursed me for the
trousers."
You can get the whole book as a paperback or e-book on Amazon.
Happy reading!
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Published on October 02, 2023 01:03 • Tags: put-me-down-i-m-british
It's a journey to the frontlines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ,which opens with an eyewitness account of the eruption of the 1987 Palestinian intifada and a close-up look at the birth of the Hamas movement, essential reading for anyone trying to comprehend the latest Israel-Gaza conflagration.
Put Me Down I’m British also offers an inside view into West African wars and the bloody rampages of outlaw bike gangs in Scandinavia along with snapshots of encounters with Salman Rushdie, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Hillary Clinton and European royalty.
There’s also a stay with Muslim guerrillas in the hills of northern Liberia and the shock of being bayonetted and arrested by Turkish commandos in occupied northern Cyprus.
It is a voyage of self-discovery; of overcoming almost daily challenges and thinking on the hoof while retaining a sense of compassion and a sense of humour.
The title is taken from an incident during the first Palestininan intifada while I was on assignment for Reuters news agency in the West Bank city of Ramallah in 1988.
"One day I was driving around Ramallah and as I passed the main hospital I noticed a group of young men hauling buckets of stones and rocks by rope up to the building’s roof.
They were obviously waiting for Israeli soldiers to arrive on the scene, so that they could pelt them from above.
As usual on my walkabouts I was wearing a suit and tie to signal that I was a foreigner and I had no qualms whatever about walking
into the hospital and climbing the stairs to the roof for a chat.
The Ramallah boys apparently had missed the class on welcoming visiting journalists and took it into their heads that I was a Shin Bet
agent. They grabbed me by the arms and legs and started to drag me to the edge of the roof, with the clear aim of throwing me off.
With no time to offer them my press credentials or suggest that they call one of my Palestinian friends to vouch for me I blurted
out, “Put me down, I’m British!”
Not innate jingoism but desperate shorthand for “Please don’t kill me, I’m not an Israeli spook.”
They took no notice and started to swing me back and forth to build up a bit of momentum.
Fortunately, a doctor who had seen me on my way upstairs andimagined that this might not end well, had followed me up to keep an
eye on things.
When he told my tormentors to put me down they did so immediately, albeit with ill grace.
I left the building and was talking to some locals outside when an Israel army jeep appeared suddenly from around a corner. With
no warning a soldier fired a tear gas canister, hitting me on the shinbone and knocking me down.
Damn it hurt!
Those things were fired from a launcher looking like a fat shotgun and the metal canister was searing hot when it hit
me, burning through the trouser leg of my dove-grey woolen suit.
It seemed that nobody in Ramallah that day had any respect for my tailoring.
As I fell to the ground, the same young men who had only a few minutes earlier been trying to launch me into space ran forward to
pick me up, shouting in Arabic “Allahu Akbar” (God is most great) the traditional cry for a fallen comrade.
To them I had now become one of them, a victim of the Israeli occupiers, and they rushed me into the emergency room.
They gave me cold drinks and shook my hand, while a doctor examined me, put some kind of cream on my leg and pronounced me good to go.
You will be relieved to know that Reuters reimbursed me for the
trousers."
You can get the whole book as a paperback or e-book on Amazon.
Happy reading!
Like • 0 comments • flag
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
Published on October 02, 2023 01:03 • Tags: put-me-down-i-m-british
