Product Description

What is Israel hoping to achieve with its recent pull-out from Gaza? Journalist Jonathan Cook, who spent five years reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, presents a lucid account of the motivations and implications behind the Gaza withdrawal and the building of Israel's 700km fence-cum-wall around the West Bank. At the heart of the issue, he argues, is demography. The wars of 1948 and 1967 brought hundreds of thousands of Palestinians under Israeli rule. The biggest obstacle to a two-state solution comes not from Palestinians living under occupation, but from Israel's own Palestinian citizens - one in five of the population. Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada, they have been campaigning for democratic reforms to transform Israel from a Jewish state into "a state of all its citizens". This book charts Israel's increasingly desperate responses to its demographic predicament over the course of the Intifada: its lethal military repression of Palestinian dissent on both sides; its claims that Palestinian citizens and the Palestinian Authority have been secretly conspiring to subvert the Jewish state from within; its banning of marriages between Palestinian citizens and Palestinians living under occupation to prevent a right of return "through the back door"; its plans to redraw the Green Line to exclude the heartlands of its Palestinian citizens from Israel; and the nascent alliance between Israel's secular leadership and its zealous settlers against the country's Palestinian minority. The path of unilateral separation will lead to more and greater abuses of the rights of Israel's Palestinian citizens. And ultimately, argues the author, it will lead to a third, far deadlier Intifada.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #259823 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Review
"Timely and important... by far the most penetrating and comprehensive [book] on the subject to date.... This work should be required reading." Dr Nur Masalha, Senior Lecturer and Director of Holy Land Studies, University of Surrey. Author of "A Land Without a People" (1997) and "The Politics of Denial" (2003)"

Ilan Pappe, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Haifa University, and author of A Modern History of Palestine (2004)
'An original and powerful book.'

Salim Tamari, Director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies
'Very impressive ... Some of his findings will astound even the knowledgeable reader.'

Customer Reviews

Review of Israeli policies from a non-jewish, non-arap journalist
Jonathan is a British freelance writer who lives in Nazareth and chooses to stay independent in order not to be constrained in his reporting content and by biased approach of the mainstream media towards Israel-Palestine conflict. I found that refreshing and unique!

This book talks in detail about the life of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the occupied territories mainly after the second intifada, which started after the former Prime Minister Sharon visited the Temple Mount. In order to describe the roots of the problems, Jonathan goes back in history and reminds us the origins of the conflict. Jonathan has a couple of arguments that form the basis of this book.

The first argument is that Israel was formed as and is still a democratic state for Jewish citizens but a non-democratic state for non-Jewish citizens. The laws differ for Jews and non-Jews in the areas of citizenship, marriage, tax breaks, asset ownership, military service, public service, and state-citizen relationship. As all of us know, inequality between citizens has created everything but peace in many countries. If this argument is true, I find the approach of Israeli government racist!

The second argument is that the conflict is rooted in Israel's non-ending efforts for capturing more land and water sources as well as in winning the fight of numbers (demography). If this argument is true, I find the approach of Israeli government imperialistic!

The third argument is that the mainstream media, mainly in the US, positions the roots of the conflict as a religious fight between the Jews and the Muslims hence Israel's need for extreme security measures. Although these security measures are not the usual arguments in Israeli internal politics and although they usually end up with a land capture by Israel or displacement of Palestinian civilians, mainstream media conveniently continues to report that Israel's moves are due to the need for security. If this argument is true, I find the media's role in distorting the facts very disturbing!

The fourth argument is related to third argument and is that the Israeli-Palestine conflict can not be discussed in a complete free environment in Europe and the US due to the possibility of being labelled as anti-Semitic. Usually, the debates are poisoned with distorted data and end up with trivial conclusions. The Israel lobby globally, uses the threat of "anti-Semitism label" (sometimes rightly but mostly abusively) as a means to silence the liberal minds. If this argument is true, I find that approach of Israeli lobby unfair and limiting for the public's right to a meaningful debate!

The book ends up with an analysis of Israeli politics. Jonathan argues that Israel, according to strategic reasons, will work towards the creation of a Palestinian state in a unilateral way and the final borders of Palestine will look like the Norwegians fjords due to illegal Israeli settlements. He says that the reason for Israel's unilateralism is the faster population increase of Israeli Arabs and of Palestinians between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan Valley. If, in the future, non-Jewish population becomes more than the Jewish population, Israel's character as a Zionist state will become harder to defend. Jonathan argues that this reality was a wake up call for politicians like Ariel Sharon and hence the sudden change of policies among the right wingers.

Jonathan is definitely pro-Palestinian and his book reflects the same attitude. However, I did not get the feeling that his analysis and conclusions are one-sided and are poisoned with fanaticism. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the Middle Eastern politics.

ISRAEL A DEMOCRACY FOR JEWS ONLY
It is always a pleasure and a refreshing experience to read Jonathan Cook's eloquent and balanced articles,compared to the nauseating distortions and lies of the so called mainstream media coverage of what is going in the Middle East and on the never ending turmoil in the Holy Lands. What are glaringly missing are the working/living conditions and plight of the Palestinians confronting Israel's sadistic occupation with its high tech and deadly weaponry supplied with US taxpayers money.

In this book Nazareth based Cook uncovers the myth about Israel's so called democracy for Jews only since non Jews are blatantly discriminated against in so many wicked ways particularly the Palestinians living under Israel's brutal occupation scores of whom are regularly killed, their civilian infrastructure and their livelihoods destroyed and their elected representatives arbitrarily arrested with no recourse to any democratic civilian justice system.


The truly civilized world needs more talented and principled writers like Jonathan Cook who promote dialogue and peace and who are not afraid of speaking truth to power and taking considerable risks to uphold the rule of law and condemn Israel's relentless human rights abuses and war crimes against entire non Jewish populations in the Occupied Territories.

Blood and Religion is a breath of fresh air in the midst of nauseating pro-Israeli narrative in media coverage of Israel and Palestine and is recommended for reading by anyone interested in understanding the root problem at the heart of the Israeli Palestinian conflict: an illegal and brutal occupation.

Blood & Religion
Well written, well researched [from Israeli sources]. Chronicles Eretz Israel's abuse of its Palestian/Arab citizens. Leaves one wondering how the rest of us let them get away with it.