Jonathan Cook

Unmasking the Jewish and Israeli State (video)

Jonathan Cook — 2007-04-02T21:35:00Z

A Conversation with Jonathan Cook, author of "Blood and Religion", recorded December 28, 2006, in Nazareth Israel.

Rights group disgrace

Jonathan Cook — 2006-12-02T08:17:00Z

In condemning Palestinian attempts to non-violently resist occupation and aggression, Human Rights Watch has shown itself to be morally bankrupt, writes Jonathan Cook

If one thing offers a terrifying glimpse of where the experiment in human despair that is Gaza under Israeli siege is leading, it is the news that a Palestinian woman in her 60s — a grandmother — chose last week to strap on a suicide belt and explode herself next to a group of Israeli soldiers invading her refugee camp.

Despite the "man bites dog" news value of the story, most of the Israeli media played down the incident. Not surprisingly; it is difficult to portray Fatma Al-Najar as a crazed fanatic bent on the destruction of Israel. (...)

[30 November - 6 December 2006 | Issue No. 822]

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / Al-Ahram Weekly

Syria is a convenient fallguy for Gemayel's death

Jonathan Cook — 2006-11-24T23:20:12Z

Nazareth— Commentators and columnists are agreed. Pierre Gemayel's assassination must have been the handiwork of Syria because his Christian Phalangists have been long-time allies of Israel and because, as industry minister, he was one of the leading figures in the Lebanese government's anti-Syria faction. President Bush thinks so too. Case, apparently, settled.

Unlike my colleagues, I do not claim to know who killed Gemayel. Maybe Syria was behind the shooting. Maybe, in Lebanon's notoriously intrigue-ridden and fractious political system, someone with a grudge against Gemayel — even from within his own party — pulled the trigger. Or maybe, Israel once again flexed the muscles of its long arm in Lebanon. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / Arabic Media Internet Network

Hollow Visions of Palestine's Future

Jonathan Cook — 2006-11-19T01:50:40Z

David Grossman's widely publicized speech at the annual memorial rally for Yitzhak Rabin earlier this month has prompted some fine deconstruction of his "words of peace" from critics.

Grossman, one of Israel's foremost writers and a figurehead for its main peace movement, Peace Now, personifies the caring, tortured face of Zionism that so many of the country's apologists – in Israel and abroad, trenchant and wavering alike – desperately want to believe survives, despite the evidence of the Qanas, Beit Hanouns and other massacres committed by the Israeli army against Arab civilians. Grossman makes it possible to believe, for a moment, that the Ariel Sharons and Ehud Olmerts are not the real upholders of Zionism's legacy, merely a temporary deviation from its true path. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / Antiwar.com

Israel's Minister of Strategic Threats

Jonathan Cook — 2006-10-25T18:40:23Z

The furore that briefly flared this week at the decision of Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, to invite Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party into the government coalition is revealing, but not in quite the way many observers assume.

Lieberman, a Russian immigrant, is every bit the populist and racist politician he is portrayed as being. Like many of his fellow politicians, he harbours a strong desire to see the Palestinians of the occupied territories expelled, ideally to neighbouring Arab states or Europe. Lieberman, however, is more outspoken than most in publicly advocating for this position. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / CounterPunch

Bad Faith and the Destruction of Palestine

Jonathan Cook — 2006-09-30T00:21:00Z

Nazareth.

A mistake too often made by those examining Israel's behaviour in the occupied territories — or when analysing its treatment of Arabs in general, or interpreting its view of Iran — is to assume that Israel is acting in good faith. Even its most trenchant critics can fall into this trap.

Such a reluctance to attribute bad faith was demonstrated this week by Israel's foremost human rights group, B'Tselem, when it published a report into the bombing by the Israeli air force of Gaza's power plant in late June. The horrifying consequences of this act of collective punishment — a war crime, as B'Tselem rightly notes — are clearly laid out in the report. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / CounterPunch

Human Rights Watch still denying Lebanon the right to defend itself

Jonathan Cook — 2006-09-26T18:42:00Z

In a recent article on this site criticising Human Rights Watch for singling out Hizbullah rather than Israel for harsher condemnation of its military actions during the Lebanon war, I made sure to quote the organisation fairly and accurately before seeking to refute its arguments. Unfortunately, in a response published on Counterpunch, HRW's Middle East policy director, Sarah Leah Whitson, did not return the favour. Possibly realising that her case was weak, she decided to paraphrase my argument instead, misrepresenting it, and only then try to rebut it.

According to Whitson, I claim to know that Hizbullah was trying to hit military rather than civilian targets in Israel during this summer's war because on several occasions its rockets actually did strike military targets. If only, for her sake, that were my argument. As she points out, it is easy to discredit such reasoning: if Hizbullah's rockets were entirely random, they might still have hit an Israeli military site or two by chance. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / Arabic Media Internet Network

How Israel is Engineering the "Clash of Civilizations"

Jonathan Cook — 2006-09-24T00:06:35Z

Nazareth.

The trajectory of a long-running campaign that gave birth this month to the preposterous all-party British parliamentary report into anti-Semitism in the UK can be traced back to intensive lobbying by the Israeli government that began more than four years ago, in early 2002.

At that time, as Ariel Sharon was shredding the tattered remains of the Oslo accords by reinvading West Bank towns handed over to the Palestinian Authority in his destructive rampage known as Operation Defensive Shield, he drafted the Israeli media into the fray. Local newspapers began endlessly highlighting concerns about the rise of a "new anti-Semitism", a theme that was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by the muscular Zionist lobby in the US. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / CounterPunch

How Human Rights Watch Lost Its Way in Lebanon

Jonathan Cook — 2006-09-07T16:46:00Z

Nazareth.

The measure of a human rights organisation is to be found not just in the strides it takes to seek justice for the oppressed and victimised but also in the compromises it makes to keep itself out of trouble. Because of the business that human rights defenders are in, they must be held to a standard higher than we demand of others.

Unfortunately, one of the best — Human Rights Watch — has failed that test during the war in Lebanon this summer. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / CounterPunch

Will Robert Fisk tell us the whole story? Time For A Champion of Truth to Speak Up

Jonathan Cook — 2006-09-05T13:45:00Z

Nazareth.

More than a little uncomfortably, I find myself with a bone to pick with one of our finest champions of humanitarian values and opponents of war. During Israel's attack on Lebanon this summer, the distinguished British journalist Robert Fisk did sterling work — as might have been expected — debunking some of the main myths that littered the battlefield almost as dangerously as the tens of thousands of US-made cluster bombs that Israel dropped in the last days of the fighting.

He documented the violations of international law by Israel in Lebanon, offering a personal record of the nature and scale of war crimes as more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians died in Israel's aerial bombardment of the country, hundreds of thousands more were made refugees, and most of the country's infrastructure — its roads, bridges, power stations, oil refineries and factories — went up in flames. For this he deserves our thanks and praise.

But possibly in an attempt at even-handedness, Fisk has also muddied the picture in relation to the actions of Hizbullah and thereby contributed towards the very mythical narratives he seeks to undermine. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / CounterPunch

Real War Crimes

Jonathan Cook — 2006-08-16T19:10:00Z

Nazareth.

During Israel's war against the people of Lebanon, our media, politicians and diplomats have colluded with the aggressors by distracting us with irrelevancies, by concocting controversies, and by framing the language of diplomacy. In the fragile truce that is currently holding while Lebanon waits for Israel to withdraw, we are simply getting more of the same.

One example of the many distractions during the war that neatly reveals their true purpose is the "faked Reuters photograph" affair. The supposed scandal of a Lebanese photographer tampering with a picture to add and darken smoke from an Israeli missile attack — to little or no effect, it should be noted — has not only been decried by activists on Zionist websites but amplified by mainstream commentators into a debate about whether we can trust the images of this war. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / CounterPunch

Hypocrisy and the Clamor Against Hizbullah

Jonathan Cook — 2006-08-09T18:58:58Z

Nazareth.

A reader recently emailed to ask if anyone else was suggesting, as I have done, that Hizbullah's rocket fire may not be quite as indiscriminate or maliciously targeted at Israeli civilians as is commonly assumed. I had to admit that I have been ploughing a lonely furrow on this one. Still, that is no reason in itself to join everyone else, even if the consensus includes every mainstream commentator as well as groups such as Human Rights Watch.

First, let us get my argument straight. I have not claimed that Hizbullah targets only military sites or that it never aims at civilians. According to the Israeli army, more than 3,300 rockets have hit Israel over the past four weeks. How can I know, or even claim to know, where all those rockets have landed, or know what the Hizbullah operatives who fired each rocket intended to hit? I have never made such claims. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / CounterPunch

The Deadly US-Israeli Shell Game at the UN

Jonathan Cook — 2006-08-07T19:35:37Z

Nazareth.

If there were any remaining illusions about the purpose of Israel's war against Lebanon, the draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a "cessation of major hostilities" published at the weekend should finally dispel them. This entirely one-sided document was drafted, the Hebrew-language media have reported, with close Israeli involvement. The top adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked through the resolution with the US and French teams, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry had its man alongside John Bolton [yet another of Israel's men, Eds ] at the UN building in New York.

The only thing preventing Israeli officials from jumping up and down with glee, according Aluf Benn of the daily Haaretz newspaper, was the fear that "demonstrated Israeli enthusiasm for the draft could influence support among Security Council members, who could demand a change in wording that may adversely affect Israel." So no celebration parties till the resolution is passed. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / CounterPunch

Israel, Not Hizbullah, is Putting Civilians in Danger on Both Sides of the Border

Jonathan Cook — 2006-08-04T18:40:00Z

Nazareth.

Here are some interesting points raised this week by a leading commentator and published in a respected daily newspaper: "The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert embeds his soldiers in Israeli communities, next to schools, beside hospitals, close to welfare centres, ensuring that any Israeli target is also a civilian target. This is the practice the UN's Jan Egeland had in mind when he lambasted Israel's 'cowardly blending ... among women and children'. It may be cowardly, but in the new warfare it also makes macabre sense. For this is a propaganda war as much as a shooting one, and in such a conflict to lose civilians on your own side represents a kind of victory."

You probably did not read far before realising that I had switched "Israel" for "Hizbullah" and "Ehud Olmert" for "Hassan Nasrallah". The paragraph was taken from an opinion piece by Jonathan Freedland published in Britain's Guardian newspaper on 2 August. My attempt at deception was futile because no one seems to seriously believe that criticisms of the kind expressed above can be levelled against Israel. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / CounterPunch

Why Do They Hate Us? Listen to Qana (Again)

Jonathan Cook — 2006-07-31T21:15:00Z

The crowds in Beirut last year demanding a Cedar Revolution, "the first shoots of democracy" supposedly planted by the United States, are a distant memory. Yesterday we saw in their place the fury of Lebanon directed against the capital's United Nations building — an early "birth pang" in Condoleeza Rice's new Middle East.

If Israel wanted to widen its war, it could not have chosen a better way to achieve it than by sending its war planes back to the mixed Muslim and Christian village of Qana in south Lebanon to massacre civilians there, as if marking a morbid anniversary. A decade ago, Israeli shelling on the village killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians sheltering in a local UN post. (...)

- Jonathan Cook’s Archive / CounterPunch