Articles by Jonathan Cook
We found 148 results.
Israel’s Jewish Nation-State Bill ‘Declaration of War’
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 May 2017
New legislation to cement the definition of Israel as a state belonging exclusively to Jews around the world is a “declaration of war” on Palestinian citizens of Israel, the minority’s leaders have warned. Critics are also concerned that the Jewish Nation-State Bill is intended to stymie prospects of reviving peace talks with the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
→ read full articleLand Law Is Final Nail in the Two-State Solution Coffin
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Feb 2017
“The train departing from here has only one stop – at The Hague,” opposition leader Isaac Herzog said in reference to the home of the International Criminal Court. If ICC prosecutors take their duties seriously, the legalisation law significantly raises the pressure on them to put Israeli officials – even Mr Netanyahu – on trial for complicity in the war crime of establishing and nurturing the settlements.
→ read full articleIn Umm al-Hiran, Palestine, It Is a ‘Continuing Nakba’
Jonathan Cook | The View from Nazareth – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2017
Israel has advanced plans to raze the village of 150 homes and replace it with a town for Israeli Jews.
→ read full articleHow Israel Aims to Redefine ‘Ethnic Cleansing’
Jonathan Cook | The View from Nazareth – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Sep 2016
Netanyahu argues that a Palestinian demand to dismantle Jewish settlements amounts to the “ethnic cleansing” of some 650,000 Jews living in the occupied territories in violation of international law. His aim is not hard to decipher. Netanyahu can argue that when Palestinian leaders call for a state free of armed, Jewish-only colonies breaking up any hope of Palestinian territorial contiguity they should be labelled as ethnic cleansers.
→ read full articleNakba Survivors Share Their Stories of Loss and Hope
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 May 2016
In 1948, Zionist militias attacked Palestinian cities and villages and destroyed more than 530 Palestinian villages. About 13,000 Palestinians were killed and more than 750,000 were expelled from their homes, becoming refugees. Here Palestinians share their stories of displacement, loss and hope to return to their villages.
→ read full articleAnnexing Archaeology: Will UNESCO Take On Israel?
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 May 2016
19 May 2016 – Israel is stepping up its efforts to seize control of Palestinian heritage sites and antiquities in the occupied territories in violation of international law. The experts echoed criticisms leveled against Israel in a recent resolution passed by the United Nations’ cultural agency, UNESCO, that accused Israel of interfering with major holy sites in occupied areas.
→ read full articleZionism’s Roots Help Us Interpret Israel Today
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
Recognising Zionism’s ideological roots, inspired by racial theories of peoplehood that in part fuelled the Second World War, might allow us to understand modern Israel a little better. And why it seems incapable of extending a hand of peace to the Palestinians.
→ read full articleIn Israel, an Ugly Tide Sweeps Over Palestinians
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 May 2016
The trigger-happy soldier Elor Azaria and the peace camp leader Isaac Herzog have more in common than either might wish to admit. In their different ways, both have helped to turn all Palestinians into outcasts – and crush any hope of concessions from Israel to peace.
→ read full articleBehind Israel’s Campaign to Vilify Peace Groups
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2016
Far-right activists spying on Israeli human rights community received hidden funds from Netanyahu government.
→ read full articleWelcome to Israel’s Version of Apartheid
Jonathan Cook - CounterPunch,
18 Jan 2016
Moments before an Aegean Airlines flight was due to take off from Greece, three Israeli passengers demanded that two fellow passengers, from Israel’s Palestinian minority, be removed from the plane. Like a parable illustrating Europe’s bottomless indulgence of Israel, Aegean staff caved in to the pressure and persuaded the two Palestinian men to disembark.
→ read full articleSmart Resistance: A Palestinian Call for ‘Unarmed Warfare’
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Nov 2015
Some Palestinian intellectuals are advocating non-violent resistance as they warn against an armed uprising. Palestinians have a right in international law to resist the occupation, even violently, but this group emphasises the futility of violence faced with Israel’s military superiority. Theirs is a pragmatic argument.
→ read full articleOutrage at Israeli Plan to Build on Historic Muslim Cemetery
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Aug 2015
19 Aug 2015 – Officials in Jerusalem have approved a massive construction project, including plans for housing, shops and a hotel, on one of the largest and most historically important Islamic cemeteries in the Middle East.
→ read full articleIf the ‘Product’ Is Wrong, a Rebrand Won’t Help Israel
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jul 2015
Benjamin Netanyahu warns that Israel must “rebrand” itself to avoid pariah status from the growing movement calling for an international boycott. Ordinary Israelis are therefore being conscripted into an army of spin doctors in a campaign termed “hasbara” – Hebrew for “public diplomacy” or, most literally, propaganda.
→ read full articleIsraeli Court Says Arab Village Must Make Way for Jewish Town
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 May 2015
15 May 2015 – Israel’s Palestinian minority is preparing to hold a “day of rage” to protest against a court ruling last week that cleared the way to destroy an entire Bedouin village so that it can be replaced by a Jewish town. Palestinian minority fears decision will revive legislation to drive tens of thousands of Bedouin off their lands in Negev.
→ read full articleArab Village Fears Being Wiped Off Israel’s Map
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Mar 2015
While industrial parks, shopping malls and estates of luxury villas have sprung up all around them, Dahmash’s residents have been treated like “illegal squatters”. What distinguishes Dahmash from the communities around it is that it is Arab, an unwelcome relic from a time when the country was called Palestine.
→ read full articleIsrael’s Insolence to Obama Is Likely to Rebound on It
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Feb 2015
As with any mafia boss, Mr Obama is in trouble if he can no longer inspire fear, let alone respect. But the problem is of his own making. For six years, Mr Netanyahu “spat in our face”, as one White House official memorably observed while referring to his latest attempt to humiliate Mr Obama, but paid no discernible price.
→ read full articleTo Strike or Not to Strike: Israel’s Electoral Calculus
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Jan 2015
An Israeli air strike in Syria on Sunday [18 Jan 2015] that killed 12 commanders from Hizballah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard follows a long and ignoble tradition in Israeli politics. Prime ministers facing poor ratings have been tempted to launch a major military offensive in the middle of an election campaign. The strike was the biggest against Hizballah since summer 2006 and Israel’s first undisguised military clash with Iran.
→ read full articleThe US Feels the Heat on Palestine Vote at UN
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
The floodgates have begun to open across Europe. On Friday [12 Dec 2014] the Portuguese parliament became the latest European legislature to back statehood, joining Sweden, Britain, Ireland, France and Spain. Similar moves are expected in Denmark and the EU. The Swiss government will join the fray too this week.
→ read full articleIsrael’s Occupation Is More Complex Than a Genocide
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Oct 2014
And what to make of a plan just disclosed by the Israeli media indicating that Mr Netanyahu and his allies have been secretly plotting to force many Palestinians into Sinai, with the US arm-twisting the Egyptians into agreement? Such a policy would certainly satisfy Lemkin’s definition of genocide.
→ read full articleIsraeli Occupation’s Dark Underbelly Exposed
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Sep 2014
A letter signed by 43 veterans of an elite intelligence unit has sent shockwaves through Israeli society. The implication of their revelations is that the success of Israel’s near half-century of occupation depends on a vast machinery of surveillance and intimidation, while large numbers of Israelis benefit directly or indirectly from industrial-scale oppression.
→ read full articleThe Lesson Hollywood Cannot Teach Us
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Sep 2014
Possibly the most insightful statement ever made by a journalist was from Gary Webb, who killed himself in 2004, years after the CIA and media rivals destroyed his career and credibility. Now Hollywood is making a film, called ‘Kill the Messenger’, about the San Jose Mercury News reporter.
→ read full articleIsrael’s Gaza Backlash Targets Arab Minority
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Aug 2014
Record levels of incitement, street violence and harassment at places of work and universities has Israel’s Palestinian citizens feeling the heat.
→ read full articleIsrael: Anti-Palestinian Arson Attacks on the Rise
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 May 2014
A wave of violence over the past fortnight, including attacks on two mosques and a church, has shocked Israel’s large Palestinian minority. Growing ever bolder, it seems, Israeli right-wing extremists are shifting attention to Palestinian areas inside Israel. Palestinian leaders, meanwhile, have accused Israeli authorities of repeatedly turning a blind eye to the attacks.
→ read full articleNew Report Details ‘Brutal’ Israeli Policies
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Mar 2014
Remember that the defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, said that the army’s job was to ‘burn into the consciousness’ of the Palestinians their defeat. The only aim one can infer from that is that the army’s role is to use force to make the Palestinians weak and compliant.
→ read full articleThe Tide Turns against Israel
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Feb 2014
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rarely been so politically embattled. His travails indicate the Israeli right’s inability to respond to a shifting political landscape, both in the region and globally. The delegitimisation of Israel is truly under way, and the party doing most of the damage is the Israeli leadership itself.
→ read full articleNetanyahu Rolls Out New Roadblock to Peace
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jan 2014
To the surprise of observers, given the many issues blocking progress in the current Middle East peace talks, Israel and the United States now appear to regard the Palestinian refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish state as the key obstacle to an agreement.
→ read full articleGaza: Life and Death under Israel’s Drones
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2013
There are many things to fear in Gaza: Attacks from Israel’s Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter jets, growing isolation, blackouts from power shortages, polluted drinking water, rivers of sewage flooding the streets, and the anxiety-inducing constant buzz of the remotely piloted aircraft – better known as “drones” – that hover in the skies above.
→ read full articleIsrael’s ‘Exceptionalism’ and the UN
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2013
Israel ended a 20-month boycott of the UN Human Rights Council last month under pressure from Western allies. However, it did so only after securing promises of reforms that human rights groups fear will further weaken international efforts to hold Israel accountable for its illegal occupation.
→ read full articleHow Come Uri Avnery Knows So Little about Israel, or Apartheid?
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2013
What color the victims of apartheid are, what proportion of the population they constitute, whether the economy depends on their productive labor, whether the early Zionists were socialists, whether the Palestinians have a Nelson Mandela, and so on have precisely zero relevance to determining whether Israel is an apartheid state.
→ read full articleThe Disappearance of Palestine
Jonathan Cook: the View from Nazareth – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2013
The idea that a financial lifeline – whether Kerry’s plan or Netanyahu’s economic peace – is going to smooth the path to the conflict’s end is an illusion. Peace, and prosperity, will come only when Palestinians are liberated from Israeli control.
→ read full article(Castellano) El Arsenal Químico de Israel Vuelve a la Actualidad
Jonathan Cook - TeleSur,
30 Sep 2013
Israel mantiene una postura que califica de “ambigua” sobre si posee armas nucleares o químicas. Pero la opinión general es que Israel tiene un gran arsenal de bombas nucleares, ocultas al escrutinio internacional, y hay fuertes sospechas de que ha desarrollado en secreto un programa de armas químicas. Estas preocupaciones se intensificaron después de la revelación, este mes, de un informe confidencial de la CIA.
→ read full articleIsrael’s Chemical Arsenal under New Scrutiny
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2013
A plan to inspect and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons has focused new attention on Israel’s undeclared WMDs.
→ read full articleAnother Dead End in the Middle East: The Flawed Logic of the Peace Talks
Jonathan Cook - CounterPunch,
5 Aug 2013
The talks, which will begin in mid-August, are taking place not because either Israel’s prime minister or the Palestnian president believe a deal is in reach. The two sides are talking each to avoid being blamed for embarrassing John Kerry, the US secretary of state.
→ read full articlePalestinian Plight Hits UEFA Spotlight
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2013
Desmond Tutu, the leading South African anti-apartheid campaigner and Nobel peace laureate, in a letter to The Guardian argued along with other prominent human rights activists that UEFA was acting to “whitewash” Israeli racism. “We find it shocking that [UEFA] shows total insensitivity to the blatant and entrenched discrimination inflicted on Palestinian sportsmen and women by Israel,” they wrote.
→ read full articleIsraeli Football, Racism and Politics: The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game
Jonathan Cook, The View from Nazareth – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2013
Israel’s increasing integration into European competitions, despite its refusal to revive peace talks with the Palestinians, respect human rights and halt illegal settlement, is, according to critics, contrary to sporting values and should be met with international opposition of the kind faced by apartheid South Africa.
→ read full articleWhy Gaza Must Suffer Again
Jonathan Cook, The View from Nazareth – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Nov 2012
The inciting cause of the latest confrontation between Israel and Hamas has little to do with the firing of rockets, whether by Hamas or the other Palestinian factions. The conflict predates the rockets – and even the creation of Hamas – by decades. It is the legacy of Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians in 1948, forcing many of them from their homes in what is now Israel into the tiny Gaza Strip.
→ read full articleIsraeli Ministry of Tourism Map Annexes Over 60% of the West Bank
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Nov 2012
The map fails to delineate any territory identifiable as the West Bank, referring to it instead as the Biblical kingdoms of Judea and Samaria. That is also the way Israeli textbooks have presented the West Bank to generations of Israeli schoolchildren: as a single territorial unit of Greater Israel, ruled over by Israel. The Green Line was erased on Hebrew maps from the moment the occupation began. But the tourism map has been drafted not for a domestic audience but for a foreign one.
→ read full articleIsrael‘s Formula for a Starvation Diet
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Oct 2012
How 400 Trucks To Feed Gaza Became Just 67 – Six and a half years go, shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian national elections and took charge of Gaza, a senior Israeli official described Israel’s planned response. “The idea,” he said, “is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
→ read full articleThe Evil of Humanitarian Wars
Jonathan Cook – Global Research,
2 Jul 2012
Iraq, Libya, Syria: “We Have No Right to Play God”. Or Do We? In a traditional cowboy movie, we know what to do: we look for the guy wearing the white hat to be sure who to cheer, and for the one wearing the black hat to know who deserves to die, preferably gruesomely, before the credits roll. Since 9/11, the United States and its allies in Europe have persuaded us that they are waging a series of “white hat” wars against “black hat” regimes in the Middle East.
→ read full articleIsraelis Risk Jail to Smuggle Palestinians
Jonathan Cook – Global Research,
30 Aug 2010
600 sign up for campaign of disobedience.
→ read full articleIsrael Paves the Way for Killing by Remote Control
Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent – The National,
19 Jul 2010
It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick. The aim: to kill. Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army. Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people – Palestinians in Gaza – who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.
→ read full articleBig & Small Apartheids
Jonathan Cook - ZNet,
3 May 2010
The meaning of a Jewish state. Below is the text of a talk delivered to the fifth Bilin international conference for Palestinian popular resistance, held in the West Bank village of Bilin on April 21.
→ read full articleWHY THERE ARE NO ‘ISRAELIS’ IN THE JEWISH STATE
Jonathan Cook in Nazareth – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Apr 2010
A group of Jews and Arabs are fighting in the Israeli courts to be recognised as “Israelis”, a nationality currently denied them, in a case that officials fear may threaten the country’s self-declared status as a Jewish state.
→ read full articleISRAEL’S NEW ROCKET DEFENCE SYSTEM
Jonathan Cook, in Nazareth,
21 Jan 2010
The Screw Turns Tighter Still on GazaIsrael unveiled “Iron Dome” last week, a missile-defence system that is designed to strike a knock-out blow against short-range rockets of the variety fired into Israel by Hamas and Hizbullah. In the short term, Iron Dome is supposed to herald the demise of the rocket threat to Israeli communities […]
→ read full articleHOW ISRAEL BOUGHT OFF UN’s WAR CRIMES PROBE
Jonathan Cook,
9 Oct 2009
Israel celebrated at the weekend its success at the United Nations in forcing the Palestinians to defer demands that the International Criminal Court investigate allegations of war crimes committed by Israel during its winter assault on the Gaza Strip. The about-turn, following vigorous lobbying from Israel and the United States, appears to have buried the […]
→ read full articleHOW U.S. TAX BREAKS FUND ISRAELI “SETTLERS”
Jonathan Cook in Nazareth,
16 Sep 2009
Peace Group Targets Settlements’ Charitable Status Israeli peace activists are planning to ratchet up their campaign against groups in the United States that raise money for settlers by highlighting how tax exemptions are helping to fund the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Gush Shalom, a small peace group that advocates Israel’s withdrawal […]
→ read full articleISRAEL SEEKS WAYS TO SILENCE HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS
Jonathan Cook,
5 Aug 2009
First Goal is to Stop Gaza War Crimes Revelations In a bid to staunch the flow of damaging evidence of war crimes committed during Israel’s winter assault on Gaza, the Israeli government has launched a campaign to clamp down on human rights groups, both in Israel and abroad. It has begun by targeting one of […]
→ read full articleTURKEY’S FALLOUT WITH ISRAEL DEALS BLOW TO SETTLERS
Jonathan Cook,
28 Mar 2009
Ottoman Archives Show Land Deeds Forged A legal battle being waged by Palestinian families to stop the takeover of their neighborhood in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers has received a major fillip from the recent souring of relations between Israel and Turkey. After the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip in January, lawyers for […]
→ read full article