Jonathan Cook

Benny Gantz, the former Israeli general turned party leader, agreed late last week to join his rival Benjamin Netanyahu in an “emergency government” to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. Two weeks ago he had won a wafer-thin majority vote in the parliament that gave him first shot at trying to put together a coalition government. … Continue reading “Netanyahu Uses Coronavirus To Lure Rival Gantz Into ‘Emergency’ Government”

After lengthy delays, the United Nations finally published a database last week of businesses that have been profiting from Israel’s illegal settlement activity in the West Bank. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, announced that 112 major companies had been identified as operating in Israeli settlements in ways that violate human rights. … Continue reading “UN List of Firms Aiding Israel’s Settlements Was Dead on Arrival”

Maybe something good will come out of the Trump plan, after all. By pushing the Middle East peace process to its logical conclusion, Donald Trump has made crystal clear something that was supposed to have been obscured: that no US administration has ever really seen peace as the objective of its “peacemaking”. The current White … Continue reading “Jared Kushner Reveals Trump’s Plan Won’t Create a Palestinian State”

Much of Donald Trump’s long-trailed “deal of the century” came as no surprise. Over the past 18 months, Israeli officials had leaked many of its details. The so-called “Vision for Peace” unveiled on Tuesday simply confirmed that the US government has publicly adopted the long-running consensus in Israel: that it is entitled to keep permanently … Continue reading “Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ Won’t Bring Peace – That Was the Plan”

Chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has not only misrepresented the known facts about Labour and its supposed antisemitism crisis. He has not only interfered in an overtly, politically partisan manner in the December 12 election campaign by suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn – against all evidence – is an antisemite. By speaking out as the voice of … Continue reading “Britain’s Chief Rabbi Is Helping To Stoke Antisemitism”

The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis. There is no legal precedent for a sitting prime minister facing a trial – in Netanyahu’s case, for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Former … Continue reading “Is Netanyahu Ready To Inflame War To Escape His Legal Troubles?”

It has been a week of appalling abuses committed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank – little different from the other 2,670 weeks endured by Palestinians since the occupation began in 1967. The difference this past week was that several entirely unexceptional human rights violations that had been caught on film went viral on … Continue reading “Israel Is Silencing the Last Voices Trying To Stop Abuses Against Palestinians”

The United Nations’ independent expert on human rights in the Palestinian territories issued a damning verdict last week on what he termed “the longest belligerent occupation in the modern world”. Michael Lynk, a Canadian law professor, told the UN’s human rights council that only urgent international action could prevent Israel’s 52-year occupation of the West … Continue reading “Israel’s New Moves To Airbrush the Occupation”

There is something profoundly deceitful in the way the Democratic Party and the corporate media are framing Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria. One does not need to defend Trump’s actions or ignore the dangers posed to the Kurds, at least in the short term, by the departure of US forces from … Continue reading “Democrats Helped Cultivate the Barbarism of ISIS”

The decades-long struggle by tens of thousands of Israelis against being uprooted from their homes – some for the second or third time – should be proof enough that Israel is not the western-style liberal democracy it claims to be. Last week 36,000 Bedouin – all of them Israeli citizens – discovered that their state … Continue reading “Israel Prepares To Turn Bedouin Citizens Into Refugees in Their Own Country”