Audio Interview with Nazareth-based British journalist Jonathan Cook

[Douglas Carpenter]

Jonathan Cook is a British journalist who lives in Nazareth, Israel and is married to an Israeli citizen--Palestinian-Christian.

"On 1 May 2007, The Electronic Intifada's Maureen Clare Murphy and Ali Abunimah sat down with Jonathan Cook, EI contributor and author of the new book Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. Cook, who resides in Nazareth, discussed the implications of the Israeli Winograd report which faulted the state's handling of last summer's Lebanon war; the probe and resignation of former member of Knesset and Palestinian citizen of Israel Azmi Bishara; as well as his book."

click to listen to interview on Mp3 (Windows Media):

http://electronicintifada.net/downloads/audio/070504-interview-cook.mp3

link to Mr. Cook's new book "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745325556/theelectronic-20

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[Name removed]

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[Douglas Carpenter]

2. here is the link to the archives of Jonathan Cook's recent articles

link to archives of Mr. Cook's writings:

http://www.jkcook.net/Articlesindex.htm

With published articles on the following subjects:

GENERAL
_______________

Clash of Civilisations

Israel and Lebanon

Academic Boycott

Bias by Media / Human Rights Organisations

Book Reviews

ISRAELI JEWISH AFFAIRS
______________________

Israeli Politics

Israeli Racism

Censorship

Political Corruption

Political Tourism

The Holocaust / Anti-Semitism Debate

The Left / Peace Camp

The Nuclear Debate

ISRAEL'S PALESTINIAN CITIZENS
_____________________________

Destroyed Villages

Nazareth

Political Archaeology

Israeli Arab Politics

Demography

Land Day

The Or Commission

Discrimination in Israel

The Bedouin

Land Issues

Terror

Matrix of Control

OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
____________________

Israeli Settlers

Army Abuses

Jenin

Life under Occupation

Prisons

Jerusalem

The Separation Wall

The US Road Map

Disengagement and Convergence Plans

Palestinian Politics
____________________

link to archives of Mr. Cook's writings:

http://www.jkcook.net/Articlesindex.htm


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[Mr_Jefferson_24]

14. Thank you for the link to Mr. Cook's writing --- His observations are invaluable.

[Englander]

3. Blood and Religion

About the Book

What is Israel hoping to achieve with its recent pullout from Gaza? Journalist Jonathan Cook, who has been reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the Second Intifada, presents a lucid account of the motivations and implications behind the Gaza disengagement and Israel's building of a 700km fence-cum-wall around the West Bank.

At the heart of the issue, he argues, is demography. The Jewish state fears the impending moment when the region's Palestinian population inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories becomes a majority and Israeli rule inevitably draws comparisons with apartheid in South Africa.

The book charts Israel's increasingly desperate recent responses to its predicament:

* lethal military repression of Palestinian dissent on both sides of the Green Line;
* accusations that the country's Palestinian citizens and the Palestinian Authority are secretly conspiring to subvert the Jewish state from within;
* a ban on marriages between Israel's Palestinian citizens and Palestinians living under occupation to prevent a right of return "through the back door;"
* the redrawing of the Green Line to create an expanded Jewish state.

The path of unilateral separation will lead to ever greater abuses of Palestinian rights and ultimately, concludes the author, it will lead to a third, far deadlier, intifada.

Jonathan Cook, a former staff journalist of the Guardian newspaper, has also written for the Observer, the Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, the International Herald Tribune, al-Ahram Weekly, and Aljazeera.net. He is based in Nazareth.

http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=224729

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

15. "The path of unilateral separation...

... will lead to ever greater abuses of Palestinian rights and ultimately, concludes the author, it will lead to a third, far deadlier, intifada."

It looks like this is exactly where things are headed to me.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

16. Chomsky describes the steady takeover of the West Bank ...

... in effect, if it continues, as "the murder of a nation." He also describes Gaza as essentially a "huge prison."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKq38COoTG8

Advance to 3:50 to hear this part of his commentary.

[Lithos]

5. Mr Cook

Is an ignorant git who would rather believe in conspiracy and wishful thinking than anything grounded. His attempts to defend Hezbollah's random attacks into Israel as being tactical attacks against military targets as opposed to the strategic attempts to generate fear in the civilian population are incredibly grasping. His comments about the military failures all boil down to the "lack of planning" on the point of Israel and that Israel was unprepared is also similarly ignorant. How can you have "lack of planning" yet have this part of a plan to help the US prepare for an Iranian war which was his comment concerning why Israel was there in the first place?

Generally everything else he says boils down to an attempt to say it is all about an attempt to maintain a Jewish state. Maybe if you are talking about the existence of Israel as a whole, but the situation in the West Bank is far more complicated than that with only a small minority of radical right Israeli's wanting to extend the idea of Israel to include the West Bank.

[bemildred]

6. Oh, you don't want anyone to have any fun.

You know, I was thinking about the Winograd findings, particularly the parts about how the occupation has degraded conventional military readiness, and it reminded me of Mr. van Creveld's opinions about that subject, which I have discussed here a number of times:

Van Creveld: The same thing has happened to the Israeli army as happened to all the rest that have tried over the last sixty years. Basically it's always a question of the relationship of forces. If you are strong, and you are fighting the weak for any period of time, you are going to become weak yourself. If you behave like a coward then you are going to become cowardly--it's only a question of time.

The same happened to the British when they were here... the same happened to the French in Algeria... the same happened to the Americans in Vietnam... the same happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan... the same happened to so many people that I can't even count them

The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose/lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape.

Now the Israeli army has not by any means been the worst of the lot. It has not done what for instance the Americans did in Vietnam... it did not use napalm, it did not kill millions of people. So everything is relative, but by definition, to return to what I said earlier, if you are strong and you are fighting the weak, then anything you do is criminal.

http://www.counterpunch.org/creveld1116.html

(Forgive me for using CounterPunch, I was just googling up van Creveld on that subject, and that was just the first that was apropos.)

The other thing is people seem to be slipping into the mistake of placing all the blame on Olmert and Peretz. Winograd criticizes them for failing to restrain the IDF, for letting it behave stupidly, not for themselves creating the failed strategies and policies. The more fundamental criticism is aimed at the IDF itself, not at Ehud and Peretz (Edit: who are primarily criticized for being ignorant gits).

[Lithos]

7. That in a nutshell

Is what happened to the IDF. Though if you had asked the French, British, or the US prior to the start of the above mentioned conflicts, the military would have insisted it was more than up to the challenge. Only afterwards were the faults be revealed for these powers. The IDF had prepared itself to fight the wrong war (low-escalation asymmetric) when it was called up to fight something of a different nature. The inability for the General Staff to grasp the new reality was amazing. They did not listen to their own staff who warned them of Hezbollah's capabilities and at least consider the possibilities. I've a feeling they were prepared to fight the Lebanon of 1982 again as opposed to an enemy who was prepared to use 2000 era tactics learned against the Soviet and US armies.

Similarly, much of the fault in Lebanon would/should be placed at the hands of Olmert's predecessors - Netanyahu and Sharon, both of which failed to get the Lebanese Army to move in after the 2000 Israeli withdrawal and control the South Lebanese areas, which later became the battleground, as had been assumed as a key post-withdrawal requirement by the politicians. Huge strategic failure made all the worse by the fact these were the same prime ministers who sat through and probably authorized the weakening of the IDF. Being both a general and former Defense minister, this really is damning for Sharon - all the more when it was Lebanon again.

That said, Olmert did make mistakes. He definitely lacked an understanding of the protocols and conventions necessary to handle an emergency; more than likely caused by his lack of exposure to national government. He also I think was reacting to pressure rather than seeking to control it; he let Hezbollah drive the schedule politically.

[bemildred]

8. "Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip."

-- Barbara W. Tuchman

This piece mentions the fighting Lebanon of 1982 idea, too, a good piece I thought:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x174249

It was striking to me too, during the conflict, the degree to which Hezbullah was able to maintain the initiative. I still think they started the conflict with the full intent of getting a war going. I know Nasrallah has said he would not have done it, had he known how Israel would respond, but a.) he HAS to say that, and b.) I don't believe him or any other lying weasel of a politician. Part of the problem with the IDFs response was precisely that it was so predictable.

[Lithos]

9. Yep

Though I don't think Nasrallah was so much concerned about the Israeli reaction, but the (then apparent) chance that the Lebanese were likely to enter into matters. Increased Lebanese involvement would have probably been a greater pain than the Israeli incursion as it would have affected his underlying political base.

As for the IDF, yes, it was predictable. There is absolutely no way the tank-killer and helicopter-killer tactics would have worked had the Israeli's not tried to do things the old way. The Soviets had learned in Afghanistan and Chechnya how effective ambushes can be by prepared irregulars. The US got a taste in Somalia and is learning it the hard way in Iraq which is much less friendly to irregulars as the hills and valleys of Lebanon.

L-

[eyl]

13. That is, I think, (somewhat) unfair towards Sharon

by the time he became PM, the absence of the Lebanese army on the border was more-ore-less a fait accompli. Without any international will to bring about that change - and the passage of time since the withdrawal diverted international attention from the situation - it seems to me there was little Israel could do to bring that about (for that matter, what Israel tried during Netanyahu's term was ineffective, and I'm not sure what more could have been done).

That does not, of course, absolve him (or his predecessors, especially Netanyahu and Barak) from responsibility for letting the IDF's readiness slip so badly (especially as far as training went; for example, around the time the war began, there was a proposed law in the Knesset which would have meant most reservists would train once every three years).

[Douglas Carpenter]

10. I think that is a bit harsh -- One does not have to be in total agreement with

a given writer to find their insights to be valuable. I believe you once mentioned that your reading included diversity from Avi Shlaim to Bernard Lewis. I agree that Avi Shlaim is a competent academic and on the more reasonable end of Zionist thinking. Bernard Lewis however would meet my very definition of an "ignorant git" and I would no more look to Mr. Lewis for insights about Arab culture than I would look toward a raving anti-semite to understand Jewish culture. But perhaps there is some value in reading someone on the extreme right-wing of thinking just as there may be value in reading someone decidedly on the Left of non-Zionist thinking. And I certainly don't think Mr. Cook is as far to the left as Mr. Lewis is to the right; nor is Mr. Cook a bigot like Mr. Lewis.

Mr. Cook's views are by no means exceptional among Palestinians including the Israeli citizen Christian-Palestinians of the Galilee with whom Mr. Cook has spent a number of years.(links to some polls of "Israeli-Arab opinion: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=839029 and http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395572629&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull )

I do agree with you that it is a little bit more than a stretch to suggest that that Hezbollah rocket attacks were of a military-tactical nature. However I do believe Mr. Cook is quite correct in pointing out that the Israeli military was far more mixed in within Israel with the civilian population than Hezbollah was in Lebanon.

Mr. Cook has also suggested that the creation of chaos and disorder in Iraq and Lebanon is an intentional policy to divide and dominate. I would doubt that very much. But it should not come as a surprise that many Arab peoples do think exactly that when they look at the reality on the ground.

Mr. Cook's more basic suggestion that it is more than a small minority of religious-extremist who desire a situation of maximum land, minimum Arabs and that this view reflects in Israeli state policy does not seem to me the least bit implausible. (link to poll of Israeli opinion: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3231048,00.html)

.

[Lithos]

11. Maybe so

Mr. Cook has a backstory here which he seems to not want to let go and which I am afraid does him a grave discredit especially when he accuses HRW of being partisan. I'm sure you've read his article concerning claims of bias by HRW that were generated by pressure by the Israeli Lobby, so I will instead point you to a pair of rebuttals on the HRW website, the first to general detractors and the second to Mr. Cook himself.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/09/22/lebano14262.htm
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/30/isrlpa14094.htm

As for his notions concerning tying recent Israeli actions such as Gaza and the Fence, to a universal fear of a demographic shift; well, it suffers from the same type of stereotyping as the ideas which view the Palestinians as uniformly organized against Israel. His thesis is rather cheap and shallow in that it ignores quite a bit of facts concerning the very divisional and seemingly illogical nature of internal Israeli society for both Jews and non-Jews. I also wave off for similar reasons those who try and lump Palestinians into a single entity

L-

On Edit: extra phrase I accidentally left in while writing the response.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

12. Kick. Excellent interview.