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Jonathan Cook (born 1965) is a British writer and a freelance journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, who writes about the Middle East, and more specifically, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A contributor of chapters to books published by academic presses, he is also the author of three books: Blood and Religion (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilizations (2008), and Disappearing Palestine (2008).

Background

Cook was born and brought up in Buckinghamshire, England, UK. He received a B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy and Politics from Southampton University in 1987, a postgraduate diploma in journalism from Cardiff University in 1989, and an M.A. in Middle Eastern studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2000.

Career

Journalism

Cook's career in journalism began in 1988 as a reporter and editor for regional newspapers the Southampton Advertiser and the Southampton Evening Echo. He was a freelance sub-editor with several national newspapers from 1994 until 1996. He was a staff journalist at The Guardian and staff at The Observer between 1996 and 2001.

Since September 2001, Cook has been a freelance writer based in Nazareth, Israel. He continued to write columns for The Guardian until 2007, and his articles have also been published in the The Observer, The International Herald Tribune, Le Monde Diplomatique, Al-Ahram Weekly, Al Jazeera,The National in Abu Dhabi, antiwar.com, CounterPunch.org, Dissident Voice, The Electronic Intifada, Modoweiss, AlterNet, among others.

Books

Cook authored three books between 2006 and 2008. In Blood and Religion (2006), published by Pluto Press, the central thesis is that, "Israel is beginning a long, slow process of ethnic cleansing both of Palestinian non-citizens from parts of the occupied territories that it has long coveted for its expanded Jewish state, and of Palestinian citizens from inside its internationally recognized borders." Cook ascribes this strategy to the Israeli perception of physical and demographic threats posed by terrorism on the one hand, and high Palestinian birth rates and the continued demand for a Palestinian right of return which would render Palestinians a majority over Jews in the region, on the other. A "state for all its citizens" is, according to Cook, viewed as threat by the Israeli leadership. Rami George Khouri describes the short book as, "important but disturbing."

In 2008, Cook authored Israel and the Clash of Civilizations: Iraq, Iran and the plan to remake the Middle East, published by Pluto Press. Of the book, Antony Loewenstein notes that, "Cook bravely skewers the mainstream narrative of a Jewish state constantly striving for peace with the Palestinians." Lowenstein also writes that Cook argues that Israel, "pursues policies that lead to civil war and partition," and that the idea of dissolving many of the nations of the Middle East, which was shared by the neocons and the Bush administration, was developed by Israel's security establishment in the 1980s. A review of the book in The Jordan Times calls it, "well-researched and very readable," noting that Cook writes of, "the seminal essay by Israeli foreign affairs official Oded Yinon, published by the World Zionist Organisation in 1982." This essay advocated for Israel's transformation into a regional imperial power via the fragmentation of the Arab world, "into a mosaic of ethnic and confessional groupings that could be more easily manipulated" (p. 107).

Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair was published in 2008 by Zed Books. The book is in two parts. The first half contains Cook's thesis that, "the goal of Israeli policy is to make Palestine and the Palestinians disappear for good," according to a review in Electronic Intifada. Writing in the Boston Review, Helena Cobban notes that Cook argues that Israel has made life unbearable for Palestinians, so to encourage voluntary emigration through, "the ever more sophisticated systems of curfews, checkpoints, walls, permits and land grabs." The second half of the book consists of reprints of articles written by Cook.

Reception

Cook is described by Neil Berry in the New Statesman as a writer of forensic rigour and a "maverick" journalist who chose to immerse himself in the culture that he writes about. According to Berry, he "exemplifies to an extreme degree the belief that when it comes to the Middle East, westerners of conscience are bound to be engaged with the Palestine/Israel conflict above all else. He regards Israel's treatment of the Palestinians as a monstrous injustice that must be resolved if stability is ever to be brought to the Middle East."

Jonathon Cook has been heavily criticized by the pro-Israel Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, who refer to him as "a free-lance writer whose tendentious articles charging Israel with gross wrongdoing frequently appear in Egypt’s Al-Ahram, in addition to other publications in the Muslim world". CAMERA accuse Cook of grossly misrepresenting demographic statistics, and alleges that he ignores the existence of Jews in Palestine before the founding of Israel, "seeks to exonerate Palestinians for their own actions which led to territorial losses" and "egregiously misstates the contents of the Oslo accords". CAMERA later criticized Cook for bias in ignoring "20-Plus Years of Terror" in characterizing Palestinian Arab terrorism, and "other inaccuracies".

Selected works

Books

• (2006) Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. Pluto Press. ISBN 0-7453-2555-6
• (2008) Israel and the Clash of Civilizations: Iraq, Iran and the plan to remake the Middle East. Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0745327549
• (2008) Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair. Zed Books. ISBN 978-1848130319

Chapters in books

• (2005) "Unrecognized Villages: Indigenous 'Ayn Hawd versus Artists' Colony 'Ein Hod," in Nur Masalha, Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel, and the Internal Refugees, Zed Books, ISBN 1842776231
• (2006) "Israel's Glass Wall: The Or Commission," in Joel Beinin and Rebecca L. Stein. The struggle for sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804753652
• (2008). Foreword in Hatim Kanaaneh, A Doctor in Galilee: The Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel. Pluto Press. ISBN 0745327869

Articles

• (2003) Declining to Intervene: Israel's Supreme Court and the Occupied Territories, Middle East Report, August 4, 2003.
• (2004) Israeli Constitutional Committee Faces Double Bind, Adalah's Newsletter. Volume 7, pp. 1-7, August 2004.
• with Lagerqiust, Peter. (2005) Crime and Punishment on Israel's Demographic Frontier, Middle East Report. No. 237, pp. 46-64, May 2005.
• (2006) Israel’s “Demographic Demon” in Court, Middle East Report, June 1, 2006.
• (2009) When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? Letter from Nazareth, review of Shlomo Zand's book, Holy Land Studies. Volume 8, pp. 113-117, May 2009.
• (undated) The Stand-Tall Generation, review of Dan Rabinowitz and Khawla Abu-Baker, Coffins on Our Shoulders (2005) in Holy Land Studies. Volume 5, pp. 121-124.

Notes

1. ^ Berry, Neil (June 12, 2008). "Poles Apart". New Statesman. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
2. ^ Cook, Jonathan. Short biography, Jhcook.net, accessed November 30, 2009.
3. http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2860
4. Catastrophe remembered: Palestine, Israel and the internal refugees, p. viii.
5. Jonathan Cook, The Guardian, accessed November 30, 2009.
6. "How occupation has corrupted Israel's soul". Antony Loewenstein, also published in Sydney's Sun-Herald newspaper on the same day. March 30, 2008.
7. ^ Rami G. Khouri (March 15, 2008). "Ethnic Cleansing Cannot be Ignored". Retrieved 2009.12.05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
8. Wim de Neuter (March 2007). "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State". Le Monde Diplomatique. Retrieved 2009-12-05.
9. Raymond Deane (11 February 2008). "Book review: "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations"". The Electronic Intifada. Retrieved 2009-08-31.
10. Antony Loewenstein (summer 2008). "THE RESOURCE WARS". overland literary journal. ISBN 978-0-9805346-0-3. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
11. Sally Bland (March 31, 2008). "Spreading 'organised chaos'". The Jordan Times. Retrieved 2009-12-05.
12. Pam Hardyment (May 18, 2009). "Disappearing Palestine, Israel's Experiments in Human Despair by Jonathan Cook". Retrieved 2009-08-31.
13. ^ Gabriel Ash (February 12, 2009). "Book review: Un-erasing the erasure of Palestine". The Electronic Intifada. Retrieved 2009-08-31.
14. Helena Cobban (July/August 2009). "Peace Out: The decline of Israel's progressive movement". Boston Review. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
15. ^ CAMERA (July 22, 2003). "Cooked Up Charges Against Israel". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) Cite error: The named reference "CAMERA" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
16. "(Review of) Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel, and the Internal Refugees". Journal of Refugee Studies. 19 (2). 2006. {{cite journal}}: Text "pp. 267-268" ignored (help)

External links

• Jonathan Cook's website, accessed November 27, 2009.
• Cook's profile page at The Guardian with links to his articles from 1999–2007.
• Bistrich, Andrea. "Israel kennt keine Gleichheit", interview with Jonathan Cook (German), July 1, 2006; edited English translation "Hurtling Towards the Next Intifada", Dissident Voice, August 31, 2006, accessed November 27, 2009.
• Gore, Jeff. "From Boycotts to Bilin: An Interview with Jonathan Cook", Electronic Intifada, October 9, 2009, accessed November 27, 2009.
• Humphries, Isabelle. "Book Review: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State", Islam Online (original in Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal), accessed November 27, 2009.
• Lendman, Stephen. "Jonathan Cook's Blood and Religion", The Baltimore Chronicle, March 27, 2008, accessed November 27, 2009.

Audio/Video

• Abunimah, Ali and Murphy, Maureen Clare. "Audio: Interview with journalist Jonathan Cook" (33 min), Electronic Intifada, May 4, 2007, accessed November 27, 2009.
• Jonathan Cook - Blood and Religion: Unmasking the Jewish and Democratic State, interview with Cook, December 28, 2006, accessed November 27, 2009.
• Jonathan Cook - “Israel is regional bully with nuclear weapons”, Russia Today Interview with journalist Jonathan Cook 22 July, 2010.

Template:Persondata

• 1965 births
• British journalists
• Living people
• People from Nazareth
• British expatriates in Israel
• Alumni of the University of Southampton
• Alumni of Cardiff University
• Alumni of the School of Oriental and African Studies