David Hirst obit

David Hirst, author of groundbreaking work The Gun and The Olive Branch, dies at 89

 He was not on the list.

Veteran British journalist David Hirst, famed for his reporting on the Middle East, died from cancer on Tuesday at the age of 89.

One of the most acclaimed Middle East journalists of his generation, Hirst reported on events in the region for four decades covering everything from the 1967 war to the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords as a correspondent for The Guardian and other outlets.

Hirst became interested in the region at the age of 18 when he was deployed to Egypt and Cyprus to do military service.

He later moved to Beirut where he learned Arabic and stayed for much of the rest of his life.

He published his seminal book The Gun and the Olive Branch in 1977, which broke new ground in its critical take on Zionism and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

A history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the book was attacked by Israel supporters at the time for its honest discussion of the 1948 Nakba, the brutality of occupation and the growing power of the Israel lobby in the US. A particularly scathing review in The New Republic called it "the most malignantly anti-Israeli book ever to be published in English"

Hirst's reporting didn’t just earn him the ire of the Israeli government but of several Arab states, which banned him from entering at various times.

He was twice kidnapped in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, narrowly escaping his captors on both occasions.

During his career, Hirst provided accounts of some of the biggest events in the region over the past half-century, including Israel's 1982 siege of Beirut, the Hama massacre, and the 1991 Gulf War.

While Hirst met Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on numerous occasions, and the title of his book was based on Arafat's historic 1974 speech at the UN General Assembly, he was highly critical of his leadership, once referencing his "notorious egotism".

Hirst published his final article 'Gaza genocide: Is Israel going mad?' in Middle East Eye in late 2024, in which he charted the country's descent into what he called "Judeo-Nazi" fascism.