Jonathan Cook
@Jonathan_K_Cook • 177,740 subscribers
Writer, journalist, self-appointed media critic. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism
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Israel has blown up 10,000s of homes in south Lebanon, erasing dozens of villages. It has ethnically cleansed some 14% of Lebanese territory. It has destroyed bridges, cutting civilians off from help. For how much longer are media and human rights groups going to suggest these "could be" war crimes? Such terminology makes them utterly complicit in Israel's atrocities.
Jonathan Cook209,937 views • 26 days ago
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Human rights group B'Tselem releases shocking video of Palestinian journalist Awdah Hathaleen filming his own murder at the hands of Israeli settler Yinon Levi. As is usual in Israel, a judge quickly released Levi, even though the footage shows he shot Hathaleen in cold blood.
Jonathan Cook1,445,554 views • 10 months ago
When it comes to Israel, the BBC is too frightened to accurately report the news – even when we can all see what happened with our own eyes. Israeli soldiers were caught on CCTV executing two Palestinian men in the West Bank, shooting them in the back after they had surrendered and their arms were in the air. Israel's Haaretz newspaper straightforwardly reports the Israeli army "fatally shooting" the pair "after they had surrendered". The BBC, by contrast, dares not report what we can all see for ourselves. Its reporter says instead that the Palestinian men "appear to be surrendering" and that "the Israeli soldiers appear to open fire and shoot them dead at point-blank range". "Appear" used twice – for no reason other than to cast doubt on what is self-evident. Israel's national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, has lauded the soldiers for killing the two men. No matter – the BBC is so desperate not to upset Israel it reflexively throws doubt on its crimes, even when Israel itself isn't denying what took place.
Jonathan Cook454,945 views • 6 months ago
Panellists on Question Time spent half an hour competing in their calls for even more severe curbs on the right to protest against Israel's genocide, claiming it was the only way to stop attacks on Jews like the one in Golders Green. Finally, when the Green party's deputy leader made a limp attempt to suggest linking the two was wrong, Fiona Bruce immediately shut her down. We are now far, far down the road to authoritarian Britain.
Jonathan Cook84,294 views • 1 month ago
The BBC still furiously peddling the fiction that Trump "railroaded" Netanyahu into a peace deal. No, the US could have secured a deal any time over the past two years by ending the shipments of bombs. Washington *chose* to keep the genocide going till Gaza was levelled.
Jonathan Cook431,382 views • 8 months ago
The BBC barely reported the fact that the US opened its war on Iran with a strike on a primary school, killing more than 160 Iranians, most of them children aged between 7 and 12. Had there been an equivalent strike from Iran on an Israeli school, it would have been on front pages for weeks. Instead the media have downplayed the story, treating as credible an obvious US lie that the massacre was caused by a faulty Iranian missile. Now that inconvertible evidence of a US Tomahawk strike on the area has emerged, BBC Verify is reporting the massacre but only to give it functional coverage as a fact-check story. Notice this too. BBC Verify refers to the dead from the strike simply as faceless "people". The vast majority were young children. The BBC is still doing its best to avoid humanising them.
Jonathan Cook138,522 views • 3 months ago
The BBC's Lucy Williamson, embedded with the Israeli army in Gaza, thinks the most pressing question isn't "How is Israel getting away with ethnically cleansing 1 million Palestinians?" No, it's whether two new "aid sites" will "be enough to persuade people to come?"
Jonathan Cook313,173 views • 9 months ago
In this short clip from 1970, Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani schools a western journalist on why 'peace talks' between the neck and the sword are never really about peace. Israel murdered him two years later. Still as relevant today as it was 54 years ago.
Jonathan Cook517,716 views • 1 year ago
C'mon BBC, get your story straight. Security correspondent Frank Gardner says it's impossible for Israel to strike Qatar without US clearance, given the massive US military base there. Washington correspondent Sarah Smith says Trump's furious that Israel went behind his back.
Jonathan Cook252,937 views • 9 months ago
Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, enthuses about the crimes against humanity being perpetrated in Gaza by what he calls “our heroic soldiers” – yes, if you or I conflated the Jewish people with Israel, we’d be called antisemites. He then reveals that his son, Danny, is among the soldiers in Gaza. He says he is “immensely proud” of what these soldiers are doing in Gaza – so far they have killed 23,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children. He concludes: “What Israel is doing is the most outstanding possible thing that a decent, responsible country can do for its citizens.” Is Mirvis not giving his religious blessing to genocide here?
Jonathan Cook694,011 views • 2 years ago
Edward Snowden blew the whistle on illegal mass surveillance by US authorities of their own population – and had to flee into permanent exile. Julian Assange published details of the US military's war crimes – and spent years locked up in a high-security jail, denied his most basic rights. Francesca Albanese has documented US government and corporate complicity in Israel's genocide in Gaza – and now, thanks to US sanctions, cannot have a bank account. As she explains here, anyone who deals with her faces up to 20 years in a US jail. Notice a pattern? The US is the ultimate rogue state, destroying anyone who tries to hold it to account. It is utterly lawless. Its methods are those of the gangster, ruling a world where there are no police who can bring it to heel. Trump is different only in that he no longer bothers to hide the fact.
Jonathan Cook153,419 views • 5 months ago
Once again, Jeremy Bowen is misleading the British public about Gaza: Yet again the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen is misrepresenting a key issue in Gaza – and as always, he is doing so in a way that places Israel in the most flattering light possible. The BBC’s international editor notes two reasons why Hamas will not wish to disarm, as stipulated by Israeli and US officials: a) Because having weapons is “deep in their ideological DNA”. b) Because Hamas are worried that, if they are not armed, “there are plenty of people out there in Gaza who would like to take revenge on them and will come after them”. Notice two things here: First, both of these claims are rooted in Israeli rationales for why Hamas needs disarming. Inadvertently or not, Bowen is subtly suggesting that the group is inherently bloodthirsty, and that it does not properly represent the people of Gaza (more on that in a moment). Second, Bowen ignores the main reason why Hamas wants to keep its weapons, one so obvious that it is simply astounding that he forgot to mention it. Hamas believes that, if it is not armed, Israel will have an even freer hand to carry out its genocidal policies in Gaza, to continue its decades-long, illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and to intensify its siege of the enclave. Hamas believes Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people should not be cost-free. Whether or not one approves of Hamas’ approach – and to do so would be a violation of the UK’s Terrorism Act and could lead to a 14-year jail sentence – Bowen is required to report what the group actually thinks. Otherwise he is not a journalist, he is just another western propagandist. Instead, he is actively misleading the British public both about Hamas’ worldview and about a core issue – Hamas’ disarmament – that could soon give Israel the excuse it seeks to trash the ceasefire agreement. Like the rest of the BBC’s coverage, Bowen’s reporting refuses to address the elephant in the room: that Palestinians are caught in a trap crafted for them by the West. If they try to resist their illegal occupation by Israel, they are slaughtered and damned as terrorists. But if they don’t, they must live as permanent prisoners of an illegal, dehumanising occupation. A further point: Bowen says Hamas are using their weapons to take on “armed clans who have weapons themselves – to reassert their power, to send a message to Gazans, ‘Don’t mess with us’.” Bowen, of course, carefully ignores the part Israel has played in arming these criminal clans and letting them steal food aid. The clans sold that aid at inflated prices to a small section of Gaza’s population who could still afford to pay, while everyone else starved. One doesn’t need to be a genius, or Hamas sympathiser, to imagine – contrary to Bowen’s suggestion that Hamas is widely feared by the population – that most people there may be relieved to see Hamas back and taking on the criminal gangs that extorted them and were central to the implementation of Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign.
Jonathan Cook178,391 views • 7 months ago
The BBC channels the spirit of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels while discussing why the West Midlands police chief had to go. Reporter Daniel Sandford asks two questions that turn reality on its head: "What was it about the fans from the Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv that was so bad that they had to be banned rather than just being policed in the normal way? "And how much influence did noisy, local anti-Israel campaigners and politicians have on that decision?" Let's consider your first question, Daniel. Oh, I don't know, maybe it was because many of the "ultras" who travel to away games are Israeli soldiers who have been committing mass slaughter in Gaza – in what most human rights groups, legal experts and scholars conclude is a genocide. Or maybe it's the fact that the Israeli fans love a good genocidal chant at away games, like "Why are the schools closed in Gaza? Because there are no children left", and "Death to the Arabs!" Or it could have been because these fans have a tendency to go around attacking anyone who looks like an Arab or Muslim. That could have proved quite threatening, I guess, in a multicultural city like Birmingham. And then there's the fact that the Israeli branch of the anti-racism organisation Kick It Out found Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were the most aggressively racist of all the Israeli premier clubs – in a very crowded field. As for your second question, Daniel, who are these "noisy anti-Israel campaigners" you're referring to? Do you mean the millions of Britons who have peacefully opposed Israel's genocide? Is being anti-genocide the same as being anti-Israel? And if so, does that mean you're saying Israel is an inherently genocidal state? Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe it's not complicated. Maybe you just see your job as unthinkingly reciting whatever those in power tell you is true.
Jonathan Cook101,827 views • 4 months ago
The ICC prosecutor says Netanyahu and Gallant are criminally responsible for seeking to exterminate the people of Gaza, including by cutting off food and water. Time then to arrest western leaders like Biden and Sunak who've actively helped Israel carry out these crimes against humanity.
Jonathan Cook364,988 views • 2 years ago
There's a lot of disinformation about the forests going up in smoke around Jerusalem. Here is a short clip from a talk I gave at one of the forests planted by Israel over the 500-plus Palestinian villages it destroyed in 1948 during the Nakba to stop the inhabitants returning.
Jonathan Cook206,345 views • 1 year ago