Colleagues praise 'fearless' David Hirst after journalist's death aged 89

Veteran Middle East correspondent David Hirst has been praised as a "fearless" reporter by former colleagues following his death, aged 89.

Hirst, who was based for many years in Beirut, died on Monday while suffering from cancer.

His career spanned more than half a century, working at the Guardian from 1963 to 1997, as well as writing for Christian Science Monitor, Middle East Eye and the Daily Star in Lebanon, among others.

Hirst's former colleague and current MEE editor-in-chief David Hearst called him a "fearless and distinguished" journalist who would be sorely missed.

"Hirst broke exclusive news stories like the gassing of the Kurds in Halabja by Saddam Hussain and the sacking of the Syrian city of Hama by its former leader Hafez al-Assad.

"But he was also a true historian of the Middle East and author of a seminal work: 'The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East', which was denounced when it first appeared in 1977 when Egypt's Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem.

"His words in 1993 about the Oslo Accords were as relevant then as they are today. He was truly a titan of Middle East journalism and he will be sorely missed."

Hirst was kidnapped twice and banned at various times from a range of Middle Eastern countries as a result of his reporting.

Writing in the Guardian, former colleague Victoria Brittain said that his one regret after receiving his cancer diagnosis was running out of time to finish the new edition of The Gun and the Olive Branch, the book that is sometimes cited as his most influential work.

In his last column for MEE, published in November last year, Hirst questioned whether Israel was "going mad" in its pursuit of genocide in Gaza and religiously inspired visions for a Greater Israel.

"So, at least, argued Moshe Zimmermann, a scholar of German history, currently participating in a research project on the topic of "Nations That Go Mad". Germany, he said, did so in 1933 with the rise of Hitler; Israel 'started' doing so in the aftermath of the 1967 war, with precisely that settling of the West Bank and Gaza as the principal manifestation of it," wrote Hirst.

"So, when all is said and done, will this Israeli madness actually turn out to have been the equal of that which brought down Hitler’s Germany, as Zimmerman suggests? Whatever does transpire, I doubt whether future historians will find cause to quarrel with him overmuch on that score."