Jonathan Cook

Jonathan Cook is a MintPress contributor. Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

The US is Paving the Way to Israel’s Annexation of the West Bank

Seemingly unrelated events all point to a tectonic shift in which Israel has begun preparing the ground to annex the occupied Palestinian territories.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
A Jewish settler looks at the West bank settlement of Maaleh Adumim, from the E-1 area on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem.

Last week, during an address to students in New York, Israel’s education minister Naftali Bennett publicly disavowed even the notion of a Palestinian state. “We are done with that,” he said. “They have a Palestinian state in Gaza.” Later in Washington, Bennett, who heads Israel’s settler movement, said Israel would manage the fallout from

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The Israeli Army Can No Longer Salvage Its Image

Here’s a small sample of abuses of Palestinians in recent days in which the Israeli army was caught lying.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
Israel Palestine

It is has been a very bad week for those claiming Israel has the most moral army in the world. Here’s a small sample of abuses of Palestinians in recent days in which the Israeli army was caught lying. A child horrifically injured by soldiers was arrested and terrified into signing a false confession that he was hurt in a bicycle accident. A man

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The Authoritarians Who Silence Questions on Syria

It is not the critical thinkers on Syria who are demanding that only one side of the narrative is heard; it is western governments and supposedly “liberal” journalists like Brian Whitaker and George Monbiot.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, center, confers with members of the United Nations Security Council just outside the chamber before a scheduled vote on a resolution, Feb. 24, 2018, demanding a 30-day humanitarian cease-fire across Syria. (AP/Craig Ruttle)

Opinion -- I am loath to draw more attention to the kind of idiocy that passes for informed comment nowadays from academics and mainstream journalists. Recently I lambasted Prof Richard Carver for his arguments against BDS that should have gained him an F for logic in any high school exam. Now we have to endure Brian Whitaker, the Guardian’s

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The UK’s Hidden Hand in Julian Assange’s Detention

One has to wonder at what point will most people realize that this is – and always was – political persecution masquerading as law enforcement.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange appears at the window before speaking on the balcony of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, Friday, Feb. 5, 2016. (AP/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

It now emerges that the last four years of Julian Assange’s effective imprisonment in the Ecuadorean embassy in London have been entirely unnecessary. In fact, they depended on a legal charade. Behind the scenes, Sweden wanted to drop the extradition case against Assange back in 2013. Why was this not made public? Because Britain persuaded

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Ghada: How Israel Forced a 14-Year-Old Girl, Alone at Night, Into the Gaza Cage

For Israel’s gargantuan bureaucratic structure that has ruled over Palestinians for five decades, this was just another routine error. One mishap among many that day.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
A Palestinian girl sits inside a room of her family's home which was destroyed in Israel's 2014 bombing of Gaza, in the Shijaiyah neighborhood, Feb. 23, 2015. (AP/Adel Hana)

How did a 14-year-old Palestinian girl who has never set foot in the open-air prison of Gaza find herself being dumped there by Israeli officials – alone, at night and without her parents being informed? The terrifying ordeal – a child realizing she had not been taken home but discarded in a place where she knew no one – is hard to contemplate

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What’s Behind Israel’s Sudden Concern for Gaza?

After a decade of this horrifying experiment in human endurance, the Israeli army finally appears to be concerned about whether Gaza can cope much longer.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
A Palestinian boy looks from his family's destroyed house as workers rebuild another home destroyed by Israel's aerial bombardment of the Shijaiyah neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, July 23, 2015. (AP/Khalil Hamra)

Last week Israeli military officials for the first time echoed what human rights groups and the United Nations have been saying for some time: that Gaza’s economy and infrastructure stand on the brink of collapse. They should know. More than 10 years ago the Israeli army tightened its grip on Gaza, enforcing a blockade on goods coming in and

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Ahed Tamimi Offers Israelis a Lesson Worthy of Gandhi

This Palestinian schoolgirl – possibly facing a long jail term for defying her oppressors – has quickly become a social media icon.

Jonathan Cook
By Jonathan Cook
17 year-old Ahed Tamimi is brought to a courtroom inside Ofer military prison near Jerusalem, Dec. 28, 2017. Tamimi was arrested last week for slapping two Israeli soldiers who shot her 15-year old cousin in the face. She faces charges of attacking soldiers. (AP/Mahmoud Illean)

Opinion -- Sixteen-year-old Ahed Tamimi may not be what Israelis had in mind when, over many years, they criticised Palestinians for not producing a Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela. Eventually, colonized peoples bring to the fore a figure best suited to challenge the rotten values at the core of the society oppressing them. Ahed is well

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