Writer, journalist, self-appointed media critic. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism
Bristol / Nazareth
Joined April 2014
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Jonathan Cook retweeted
The Butcher of Beirut – Israel’s alternative to Netanyahu.
Peter Oborne – just returned from almost a month in the Occupied Territories – came into the Double Down Newswatch studio to talk about the Israeli election, Britain’s feeble surrender to the Israelis over the consulate in East Jerusalem and the ongoing horror in the West Bank and Israeli prisons.
Plse share/1
Jonathan Cook retweeted
The @BBCNews correspondent describes Netanyahu as 'slick, experienced, media-savvy'.
How about: 'subject to an ICC arrest warrant for war crimes in Gaza'?
BBC 'News' = propaganda by omission.
The BBC’s Middle East correspondent frames the Israeli elections as Netanyahu against “leftist” and “centrist” figures like Eisenkot, whom she describes as “softly spoken” and “lowkey”.
What she leaves out is that he’s a former general and the architect of the Dahiyeh Doctrine, which calls for disproportionate force and deliberate targeting of civilians and their infrastructure.
In what world is that left wing?
Jonathan Cook retweeted
Watch this.
Lubna Speitan, author of the Greens4Palestine motion “Zionism is racism”, spells out the central obscenity of our age – the grotesque inversion whereby the victims of ethnic cleansing, Apartheid and genocide must constantly fend off accusations from their tormentors that it is they who are the racists.
“We as Palestinians are being silenced and gaslit and vilified [as we] witness the annihilation, the cold-blooded murder of our families, of our people… our children burnt with phosphorus, having to endure amputations with no anaesthetic, having their limbs torn and shredded, their bodies burnt by phosphorus, being starved to death … And to have to sit here … and try to bury my feelings so I can eloquently and diplomatically shield my anger, my rage, my anguish that every Palestinian is feeling, is an insult.” /1
Jonathan Cook retweeted
The reality of the "independent" review telling every school in England to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism: its author, Sir David Bell, was being paid by a government agency while he wrote it, and a pro-Israel charity has listed him on its council for ten years.
The government told the public he was "independent of Government" and had "no conflict of interest". Neither is true.
What we found:
- Bell was paid £20,000 a year as vice-chair of Skills England, a government agency, in a seat the Department for Education gave him. He held it until August, through most of the review.
- The Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East has listed him on its council since at least 2016. Its website says its one firm policy is opposing boycotts of Israel. It gives talks on Israel in schools, which is exactly what his review was asked to judge.
- In 2005, as chief inspector of schools, he singled out Muslim schools as a challenge to "our coherence as a nation". The chairman of the Association of Muslim Schools called it Islamophobia, and his own inspectors said he had presented a personal view as inspection evidence.
Then we followed the money:
- The department's £1.3 million antisemitism training contract had one bidder, according to the tender record. It went to Palace Yard, a company set up in 2022 by the former Labour MP Natascha Engel.
- That contract says all its training must use the IHRA definition "as a foundation". It was signed eight months before Bell was appointed. His review then recommended IHRA.
- Two of the people who advised Bell, from Partnerships for Jewish Schools and the Antisemitism Policy Trust, now sit on the group putting his recommendations into practice.
- The Union of Jewish Students, also on that group, holds a contract worth almost £1 million to train universities. Its own policies include "UJS to advocate for Israel within UK Policy and International Law".
- UK Lawyers for Israel* (UKLFI) and the Campaign Against Antisemitism* (CAA) both say the review adopted their recommendations.
*For context, UKLFI once justified the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli occupation as "good for obesity". Both these groups have staunchly defended Israel throughout its perpetration of a genocide in Gaza, and regularly conflate Jewish people with the apartheid state.
This matters because the review decides how every school treats what pupils and teachers say about Israel, and the IHRA definition it recommends treats some criticism of Israel as antisemitic. A review with that power should come from someone with no pay from government and no tie to a pro-Israel charity. Bell had both. The government put one in a footnote and left the other out.
We mapped every link, each with its source, explaining just how far this review is from "independent": newscord.org/editorials/davi…
In the past few days, Israel has banned entry to five foreign journalists working for publications seen as critical of Israel.
What does that say about the rest? That Israel knows it can trust them to pull their punches. They'll be even more careful about what they say from now on.
How Yemen, the Arab world's poorest state, took on Israel and the West's military-industrial complex – and won.
Watch here: youtube.com/watch?v=FDlBfQcs…
Aren't you doing exactly what you accuse me of: imposing your own framing? I can't legislate for how people "read" me, or how you read how you think some kinds of people (liberals) will read me. That's just a preposterous standard by which to write or to judge any writing.
This is feeling increasingly like a waste of everyone's political energies. It's not generating light, only more darkness. I'm bowing out.
Jonathan Cook retweeted
The Bell report on antisemitism in schools is just the latest example of manipulation of statistics to spread alarm and fear. The claim Jewish people are 9x more likely than Muslims to suffer hate crime is also untrue.
My latest for Double Down Newswatch.
youtube.com/watch?v=6pEiZYoR…
Jonathan Cook retweeted
Basic education piece:
Not all Jewish people are Zionists.
Lots of Zionists aren't Jews.
The Board of Deputies largely self identity as Zionists.
The Media often report the Board of Deputies as the opinion of Jewish people.
Yet many Jewish people say #NotInOurName
It was clear you hadn't seen the film. If we talk about the film's "framing" it is this: It is made by Israelis, and it looks very much like it's made *for* Israelis too.
In watching the film, we become complicit spectators in that conversation – just as we mostly have been complicit spectators in the Gaza genocide. The review was about how we respond to being spectators, both in watching the conversation and in spectating a genocide. That response in myself and others – what seems a fairly universal response among viewers – interested me.
Some respond – though mostly those who haven't seen it – by saying Israelis are bad, and I am good.
The film, I think, makes that an untenable position to adopt. That is what makes it worth watching. As I have said elsewhere, if you want the *what* of Gaza you'll be disappointed. If you want the *why*, you should seek it out.
Jonathan Cook retweeted
The claim in Sir David Bell's report that 3 in 5 Jewish students have experienced antisemitism was based on just 29 people - and was untrue.
My latest for Double Down Newswatch.
youtube.com/watch?v=6pEiZYoR…
It was a response to the poster's argument.
"We are all guilty" is a reference to the cultures we belong to that have spent 100s of years committing genocides in various forms. That is our legacy.
And of course, it's a truism. More importantly, it's a truism we invest a great deal of energy in obscuring, as the responses to my review have richly illustrated.
Why are western audiences stunned into silence by the new film NAZA? Because it shames us. It shows us who we are. It tells us exactly what the pillars of our western “civilisation” stand on.
Read my latest here: middleeasteye.net/opinion/na…
I spent three years watching the horror of Gaza, three years writing about it, and three years protesting it.
NAZA does none of that. It's an updating of the famous Milgram experiment in social obedience. It's a foretaste of the terrifying dangers of the AI rollout. And it's a case study in the human capacity for evil.
If you want more of the *what* of Gaza, NAZA will disappoint. If you want the *why*, seek it out.
My full review in the reply post below ⬇️
Yes, they must stand trial. Because, despite us having a capacity for evil, each one of us can also choose to overcome it.
It doesn't diminish responsibility. It widens it. We are all capable of evil, and we are all capable of overcoming it.
It's a choice, and each one of us is responsible for the choice we make.