From National Review‘s August 10, 2009, issue’s “The Week” columns:
“In 2001, Robert Fisk, the hard-Left, jihad-sympathetic British journalist, was attacked by Afghan refugees along the Afghan-Pakistani border. He wrote that ‘young men … Began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn’t see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees … I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.’ Flash forward to November 2008. A Dutch journalist, Joanie de Rijke, is kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan. They did ‘horrible things to me,’ she has now written in a book. They raped her for days on end. But ‘they also respected me.’ And ‘they are not monsters.’ Between bouts of rape, they gave her tea and biscuits. And the commander, she explains, ‘could not control his testosterone. I had the impression that afterwards he regretted what had happened.’ De Rijke denies that she is suffering from Stockholm syndrome. But she and Fisk are suffering from something.”
