Jonathan Cook

Johnathan Cook pictured in Nazareth

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.

He is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

• Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006)
• Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008)
• Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008)

He has also contributed chapters and essays to several edited volumes on Israel-Palestine.

In 2011 Jonathan was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. The judges’ citation reads: {{QB| “Jonathan Cook’s work on Palestine and Israel, especially his de-coding of official propaganda and his outstanding analysis of events often obfuscated in the mainstream, has made him one of the reliable truth-tellers in the Middle East.” ))

The same year, Project Censored voted a report by Jonathan, “Israel brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank”, one of the most important stories censored in 2009-10.

Jonathan’s reports and commentaries have appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, the Times and the New Statesman (London); The International Herald Tribune and Le Monde diplomatique (Paris); Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo); The National (Abu Dhabi); The Daily Star (Beirut); The Middle East Report and Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Washington); and The Irish Times (Dublin). He has contributed to many online sites, such as CounterPunch, Israeli Occupation Archive, Al-Jazeera.com and Electronic Intifada.

He has been a senior consultant and lead writer on two major reports by the International Crisis Group, a leading think-tank based in Washington and Brussels dealing with conflict resolution.

Based in Nazareth

Jonathan is the only foreign correspondent to be based in Nazareth, the capital of the Palestinian minority in Israel. He explains the significance of his choice of location:

“Most reporters covering the conflict live in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, with a handful of specialists based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The range of stories readily available to reporters in these locations reinforces the assumption among editors back home that the conflict can only be understood in terms of the events that followed the West Bank and Gaza’s occupation in 1967. This has encouraged the media to give far too much weight to Israeli concerns about ‘security’ – a catch-all that offers Israel special dispensation to ignore its duties to the Palestinians under international law.
“Many topics central to the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, including the plight of the refugees and the continuing dispossession of Palestinians living as Israeli citizens, do not register on most reporters’ radars.
“From Nazareth, the capital of the Palestinian minority in Israel, things look very different. There are striking, and disturbing, similarities between the experiences of Palestinians inside Israel and those inside the West Bank and Gaza. All have faced Zionism’s appetite for territory and domination, as well as repeated attempts at ethnic cleansing. These unifying themes suggest that the conflict is less about the specific circumstances thrown up by the 1967 war and more about the central tenets of Zionism as expressed in the war of 1948 that founded Israel and the war of 1967 that breathed new life into its settler colonial agenda.”

Experience and qualifications

Jonathan graduated from Southampton University in 1987 with a degree in philosophy and politics, and then earnt a postgraduate diploma in journalism from Cardiff University in 1989. He gained a masters degree in Middle Eastern studies, with distinction, from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, in 2000.

He worked on regional newspapers before becoming a staff journalist at the Guardian in 1994. He later joined the Observer newspaper. He moved to Nazareth to become a freelance reporter in September 2001.  

Documents by Jonathan Cook

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:A dissenting opinion on Nelson Mandela	article	6 December 2013	Nelson Mandela
Document:A lesson from Brussels we refuse to learn	article	24 March 2016	"Terrorism" "War on Terror" Simon Jenkins 2016 Brussels Bombing	Commentary on the shortcomings of a Simon Jenkins article on the Mass murder in Brussels
Document:A year late, the Guardian finally permits us to use the term 'genocide'	blog post	8 November 2024	"The Holocaust" The Guardian Genocide Katharine Viner Ethnic cleansing Omer Bartov	In running an opinion piece that suggests it may now be acceptable to use the term genocide about Gaza, The Guardian has admitted it has been, even according to Omer Bartov – its own resident genocide expert – complicit in obscuring that genocide for a half a year.
Document:Abuses show Assange case was never about law	blog post	27 May 2019	United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Emma Arbuthnot Julian Assange/Imprisonment	Craig Murray says: "As a summary of the truly breathtaking series of legal abuses by states against Julian Assange, that the corporate and state media has been deliberately distorting and hiding for a decade, this excellent account by Jonathan Cook cannot be bettered."
Document:Anti-semitism is cover for a much deeper divide in Britain's Labour party	Article	20 February 2019	"Antisemitism" Luciana Berger Labour Friends of Israel Jeremy Corbyn Joan Ryan Tom Watson Ruth Smeeth Jewish Labour Movement Jewish Voice for Labour International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance	Paradoxically, the Labour breakaway group may have inadvertently exposed the weakness of its hand. The eight MPs have indicated that they will not run in by-elections, and for good reason: it is highly unlikely they would stand a chance of winning in any of their current constituencies outside the Labour Party.
Document:Antisemitism threats will keep destroying Labour	blog post	12 February 2020	"Antisemitism" Board of Deputies of British Jews Jeremy Corbyn Brexit Owen Jones Jewish Labour Movement Jewish Voice for Labour 2020 Labour Party leadership contest	If we are only allowed to gently chide Israel in ways that cannot meaningfully advance Palestinian rights, if we are prevented from discussing the strategies of staunchly pro-Israel lobbyists to silence Israel’s critics, if we are denied the right to push for an international boycott of Israel of the kind that helped blacks in South Africa end their own oppression, then nothing is going to change for the Palestinians.
Document:Assange ruling a dangerous precedent for journalists and British justice	Article	10 December 2021	War crime Julian Assange/Imprisonment Ian Burnett Timothy Holroyde	And yet despite all this, the English High Court ruled on 10 December 2021 that it was satisfied with “assurances” that Assange’s wellbeing would be protected were he extradited to the United States. British judges may be persuaded by those assurances. Many others, including Assange, will not be.
Document:Biden’s pier for Gaza is a hollow gesture that will change almost nothing	blog post	8 March 2024	Gaza Israeli–Palestinian conflict Joe Biden Genocide US/2024 Presidential election Occupied Palestinian Territory 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War	President Biden needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for. He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.
Document:Brexit reveals Corbyn to be the true moderate	blog post	12 September 2019	Neoliberalism Boris Johnson Jeremy Corbyn Tom Watson Brexit Capitalism	It is time to stop acting like zealots for neoliberalism, squabbling over which brand of turbo-charged capitalism we prefer, and face up to our collective responsibility to change our and our children’s future.
Document:Craig Murray’s jailing is the latest move in a battle to snuff out independent journalism	blog post	30 July 2021	Craig Murray Wikileaks Julian Assange Vanessa Baraitser National Union of Journalists Ed Vulliamy Jigsaw Identification Leeona Dorrian	Assange and Murray are not only telling us troubling truths we are not supposed to hear. The fact that they are being denied solidarity by those who are their colleagues, those who may be next in the firing line, tells us everything we need to know about the so-called mainstream media: that the role of corporate journalists is to serve establishment interests, not challenge them.
Document:Empire of Lies	speech	25 February 2011	Iraq War 2003 Corporate Media/Propaganda
Document:George Monbiot’s excuses for not speaking out loudly in defence of Assange simply won’t wash	blog post	6 October 2020	The Guardian Neoliberalism George Monbiot David Leigh Julian Assange/Imprisonment	Faced with a barrage of criticism from some of his followers, George Monbiot, The Guardian’s supposedly fearless, leftwing columnist, offered up two extraordinarily feeble excuses this week for failing to provide more than cursory support for Julian Assange over the past month, as the Wikileaks founder has endured extradition hearings in a London courtroom.
Document:HSBC and the sham of Guardian’s Scott Trust	Article	3 March 2015	BBC The Guardian Glenn Greenwald Seumas Milne Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed HSBC Alasdair Milne Scott Trust Ltd Swiss Leaks	Britain, we are told, is privileged to have two “liberal” media outlets, the BBC and Guardian, that are seen either as neutral or as a leftwing counterbalance to the rightwing agenda of the rest of the media. Here are three illuminating articles and a short video that should help to dispel any such illusions.
Document:How top Labour officials plotted to bring down Jeremy Corbyn	Article	16 April 2020	"Antisemitism" Jeremy Corbyn Tom Watson Iain McNicol Keir Starmer Equality and Human Rights Commission Sam Matthews	The stench of cover-up is already in the air. Keir Starmer's Labour needs to come clean and admit that its most senior officials defrauded hundreds of thousands of party members, and millions more supporters, who voted for a fairer, kinder Britain.
Document:Israeli immigration plan for ethnically pure bunker state	article	18 January 2012	Israel
Document:Jonathan Freedland rewrites history to hide an ugly truth about Israel	blog post	25 August 2024	"Antisemitism" Israel Zionism "The Holocaust" Palestine Jonathan Freedland Jeremy Corbyn Theodore Herzl Tony Greenstein Auschwitz-Birkenau Adolf Eichmann Rudolf Vrba Alfréd Wetzler Rezső Kasztner	The anti-Zionist Rudolf Vrba's story exposes the ideological foundations of Israel to be fully in sympathy with ugly European ethic nationalisms that culminated in Nazism. Vrba's story explains how Israel was always capable of, and is now committing, a genocide in Gaza.
Document:Keir Starmer's ‘antisemitism’ sacking is a signal that Israel is safe in his hands	Article	29 June 2020	Israeli–Palestinian conflict Palestine Keir Starmer Rebecca Long-Bailey Maxine Peake	Crackdown by UK Labour leader on left-wing rival will subdue critics of Israel in his party ahead of Israel's annexation move
Document:Labour's next leader has already betrayed the left	blog post	21 February 2020	Board of Deputies of British Jews Labour Friends of Israel Jeremy Corbyn Keir Starmer Jewish Labour Movement Rebecca Long-Bailey 2020 Labour Party leadership contest Lisa Nandy	The next Leader of the Labour Party is already a prisoner to the "institutional antisemitism" narrative. That means their hands are chained not only to support for Israel, but to the reactionary politics in which Israel as a Jewish state makes sense – a worldview that embraces its style of ethnic, chauvinist, militaristic, segregationist politics.
Document:Labour’s witch-hunt against Ken Livingstone	article	31 March 2017	Jonathan Freedland Jeremy Corbyn Ken Livingstone Iain McNicol Owen Jones Jewish Labour Movement	Labour's kangaroo court trying to justify suspending Ken Livingstone for stating the fact that Hitler supported Zionism
Document:MI6, Theresa May and the Manchester attack	Article	30 May 2017	MI6 Theresa May Amber Rudd Cressida Dick 2017 Manchester bombing Salman Abedi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group Saleh Ibrahim Mabrouk Hashem Abedi Ramadan al-Abedi Ismail Abedi	And so the story of MI6 and Theresa May, their sponsorship of Islamic jihadism, and the likely “blowback” the UK just experienced in Manchester is a sleeping dog no one seems willing to disturb.
Document:Monbiot is not only a hypocrite, but a bully too	Article	12 January 2018	Syria Bashar al Assad George Monbiot White Helmets	It is time for George Monbiot’s legion of supporters to call him out. Not only is he a hypocrite, but he is becoming an increasingly dangerous one!
Document:More Guardian ‘brainwashing’ on Putin	commentary	24 March 2014	Corporate media 2014 Ukraine coup	A master-class in how the celebrated 'Free-Press' of the Western commercially controlled media is harnessed to the narrative requirements of the Establishments of which they are a part, turning them into little more than propaganda organs where major foreign policy issues are concerned.
Document:My offer to Owen Jones: A tour of Nazareth	article	3 April 2017	Zionism Moshe Dayan Jerusalem Owen Jones Jewish Labour Movement Two-state solution	One has to look at what Zionism did when the Labour party was directing it – in Israel’s formative stages and for most of its history. Only then can you understand that what you see in Hebron or Nablus was created in Haifa and Nazareth first. The template was set in Israel, at a time and place where there were no security issues. It was not Palestinian bombs Israel feared from its Palestinian citizens but their wombs.
Document:No fair hearing for Assange at the Guardian	article	5 February 2016	Wikileaks Julian Assange Corporate media The Guardian United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention	Demonstrates the Establishment-friendly double standards of the UK's flagship 'Left-wing' newspaper - The Guardian - through analysis of its coverage of a UN decision on the political asylum of Julian Assange
Document:Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and his genocide	Article	26 July 2024	Gaza Benjamin Netanyahu Palestine US Genocide United States Congress International Court of Justice International Criminal Court Hamas Rashida Tlaib Nancy Pelosi Kamala Harris 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War	Members of the US Congress roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, just as Roman senators once roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would continue forever. Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.
Document:Police escalate the British state's war on independent journalism	blog post	17 October 2024	The Electronic Intifada Terrorism Act 2000 Israel Lobby Genocide Asa Winstanley Richard Medhurst Sarah Wilkinson Operation Incessantness	"This isn't about terrorism, except by the British state. Even the name of the 'counter-terrorism' raid is performative: 'Operation Incessantness'. The message the state wants to send is that it will not rest till it has us all behind bars."
Document:Pulling no punches at yesterday's rally for Palestine in Bath	Speech	17 November 2024	Israel Genocide Ethnic cleansing UNRWA Keir Starmer David Lammy	"From their own mouths, Lammy and Starmer have told us who they are. They are genocide deniers. They are enablers of genocide. They are conspirators in genocide, just like those who preceded them in the British government."
Document:Spot-Shoot	article	13 July 2010	Drone Israel/Defense Forces	On the use of drones against Palestinians
Document:Starmer’s purges of Labour have mutated into the arrest of Palestine supporters	blog post	30 August 2024	Craig Murray "Terrorism" Gaza Israel Benjamin Netanyahu Genocide Labour Party Gerry Adams Hamas Keir Starmer Richard Medhurst Hannibal Directive Ismail Haniyeh Sarah Wilkinson	Britain’s authoritarian new prime minister is expanding the scope of already draconian laws to redefine his critics as ‘supporters’ of terrorism. Starmer wants to be judge, jury and executioner. We must not let him get away with it.
Document:The 7 years of lies about Assange won’t stop now	Blog post	11 April 2019	Julian Assange	A brief resume of the lies and deceptions promoted by The Establishment about Julian Assange during his asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Document:The Antisemitism Industry doesn’t speak for Jews. It speaks for Western elites	blog post	14 March 2024	"Antisemitism" "The Holocaust" File:The Holocaust Industry.pdf Jeremy Corbyn Norman Finkelstein Hajo Meyer Jonathan Glazer Dehumanisation	Film-maker Jonathan Glazer’s crime at the Oscars was to threaten the establishment’s stranglehold on the West’s Official Narrative about Israel – and itself
Document:The BBC is weaponising its Lebanon reporting to help disguise Israel's crimes	Article	27 September 2024	Gaza Israel Benjamin Netanyahu BBC Lebanon Hezbollah Hamas Sarah Smith Orla Guerin Paul Adams Herzi Halevi Yoav Gallant Jeremy Bowen Anna Foster Doron Spielman Israeli–Lebanese conflict	By the third week of September, Israel had killed more than 750 Lebanese, compared to 33 Israeli deaths. The differential is even starker now. And yet the western media has not framed Hezbollah’s attacks as its "right to defend itself" – a right we are continuously reminded Israel has.
Document:The Dangerous Cult of The Guardian	article	28 September 2011	"Antisemitism" The Guardian	Criticism of The Guardian's policy on censorship of topics including "anti-semitism" and Wikileaks
Document:The EHRC’s report into Labour antisemitism is the real ‘political interference’	blog post	7 November 2020	Board of Deputies of British Jews Boris Johnson Jonathan Freedland Jeremy Corbyn Joan Ryan Ken Livingstone Keir Starmer Jewish Labour Movement Campaign Against Antisemitism Equality and Human Rights Commission Ephraim Mirvis Pam Bromley	It is instructive to compare the certainty with which the EHRC treats Councillor Pam Bromley’s ambiguous remarks as irrefutable proof of antisemitism in Labour with its complete disregard for unmistakably antisemitic comments from Boris Johnson, the man actually running the country. That lack of concern is shared, of course, by the establishment media and Jewish leadership organisations.
Document:The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face	Article	30 April 2024	Gaza Israel Benjamin Netanyahu Palestine Joe Biden US Hamas 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/Israeli invasion of Gaza Rafah	"The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance by Israel and the United States. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making their plan a reality."
Document:The corporate media’s world of illusions	blog post	11 June 2018	Official narrative Israeli–Palestinian conflict Corporate media/Censorship Razan al-Najjar	Once one is prepared to step through the door, to discard the old Great Western Narrative script, the new narrative takes its hold because it is so helpful. It actually explains the world, and human behaviour, as it is experienced everywhere.
Document:The deeper truths journalists are blind to	article	21 February 2016	Corporate media	Corporate media is constitutionally incapable of honest objective reporting on matters affecting the vital interests of Establishment power
Document:The dirty secret Europe is hiding at the COP27 climate summit	Article	16 November 2022	Big Oil Nord Stream "Climate crisis" 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine COP27 Energy Charter Treaty	Grand declarations at COP27 on tackling the climate emergency are sabotaged by the Energy Charter Treaty from the 1990s that sees European nations held to ransom by the energy companies
Document:The method in Netanyahu's madness	speech	18 July 2011	Benjamin Netanyahu Mark Regev
Document:The official death toll in Gaza is a lie. The casualty numbers are far, far higher	blog post	31 July 2024	Gaza Israel "Disinformation" Palestine Save the Children WHO 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War	In July 2024, researchers to The Lancet medical journal very conservatively estimated that the total number of Gazans who will die over the coming months – not just from bombs but as a result of the lack of medical care, insanitary conditions and famine – is 186,000, or 8 per cent of the population.
Document:The plot to keep Corbyn out of power	blog post	3 July 2019	Jeremy Hunt Boris Johnson Jeremy Corbyn Mike Pompeo Chris Williamson Equality and Human Rights Commission Russell Brand	The weaponisation of anti-semitism against Corbyn has become so normal that, even while I was writing this post, a new nadir was reached. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary who hopes to defeat Boris Johnson in the upcoming Tory leadership race, as good as accused Corbyn of being a new Hitler, a man who as prime minister might allow Jews to be exterminated, just as occurred in the Nazi death camps.
Document:The sharks circling around Corbyn scent blood	blog post	26 March 2018	"Antisemitism" Jeremy Corbyn Jewish Chronicle	The sharks circling around Jeremy Corbyn will not ignore the scent of his bloodied wounds; rather, it will send them into a feeding frenzy. As hard as it is to do when the elites so clearly want him destroyed, Corbyn must find his backbone and start to stand his ground.
Document:The witchfinders are now ready to burn Corbyn	Blog post	28 February 2019	Labour Friends of Israel Jeremy Corbyn Tom Watson Jon Lansman Momentum McCarthyism Jewish Labour Movement Campaign Against Antisemitism Jewish Voice for Labour Chris Williamson WitchHunt Jackie Walker Marc Wadsworth	Jeremy Corbyn’s allies are being picked off one by one, from grassroots activists like Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth to higher-placed supporters like Chris Williamson and Seumas Milne. Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him.
Document:To continue the Gaza genocide, Israel and the US must destroy the laws of war	Article	31 May 2024	Benjamin Netanyahu International Court of Justice International Criminal Court Yossi Cohen Fatou Bensouda Karim Khan Yoav Gallant	Now, as Netanyahu and Gallant risk being put in the dock at The Hague, Washington is finally finding its resolve to act. Not to stop genocide. But to offer Israel protection to carry on.
Document:UK Labour party teeters on brink of civil war over antisemitism	Article	27 July 2020	"Antisemitism" Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn Iain McNicol Keir Starmer David Evans Mark Howell	Labour Party member Mark Howell is suing former General Secretary Iain McNicol for “breach of contract” and is demanding that those named in the leaked report be expelled from the party (see "Mark Howell for Justice": https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mark-howell-for-justice/).
Document:US says Israel may have breached international law with American weapons in Gaza	commentary	11 May 2024	Israel War crime Genocide Israel/Defense Forces US State Department 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/Israeli invasion of Gaza International humanitarian law Joe Biden/Presidency	"If that sounds like extreme linguistic, legal and moral gymnastics in defence of continuing US complicity in genocide, it's because that is exactly what it is."
Document:Under Trump, the Israel lobby is a Hydra with many heads	Article	30 May 2018	Benjamin Netanyahu Military-industrial-congressional complex Saudi Arabia Christian Zionism Donald Trump Mike Pence Nikki Haley "Alt-right"	Since Trump took office, the Israel lobby has mobilised four other powerful lobbies: Christian evangelicals, the alt-right, the military-industrial complex and Saudi Arabia
Document:Was there a Wuhan lab leak?	blog post	1 June 2021	Biological weapon/Research COVID-19 Wuhan Institute of Virology WHO Anthony Fauci Peter Daszak EcoHealth Alliance Nicholas Wade	No meaningful lessons will be learnt about what really happened in Wuhan. Maintaining the illusion of truth will continue to take precedence over uncovering the truth. And for that reason we are doomed to keep making the same screw-ups. As the next pandemic will doubtless attest.
Document:Watch the West continue to make a mockery of international law	blog post	19 July 2024	Israel Benjamin Netanyahu Palestine Genocide International Court of Justice International Criminal Court International law Apartheid Western world Occupied Palestinian Territory	The World Court concludes that the Palestinians are owed massive reparations. At a bare minimum, western governments must recognise the state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel until it withdraws from the occupied territories.
Document:Whenever it truly matters, from Assange to Corbyn, George Monbiot cripples the left	Article	11 October 2022	Julian Assange The Guardian Jeremy Corbyn George Monbiot	George Monbiot is treated by much of the left as a figurehead, one whose environmentalism earns him credibility and credit with the left on foreign policy issues, from Syria to Ukraine, in which he echoes the same talking points one hears from Keir Starmer to Liz Truss. While on matters at home, like Assange and Corbyn, he sucks the wind out of the left’s sails.
... further results

See Also

• Jonathan Cook Wikipedia Page
• Jonathan Cook's web site

References

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