Talk:Jonathan Cook

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[edit] Image

I await your responce here. --Striver 21:22, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


Please feel free to go ahead and use the picture. JonathanCook 01:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Cool. I e-mailed Jonathan Cook the same time i wrote the above message. As it is clear, it is only possible for the receipiant of the e-mail to know that it contained a request to use the pictures, hence i am convinced that the above comment is from a person reading Jonathan Cook's e-mail, presumably Jonathan Cook himself. A socpupet test can prove that we do not share an ip-range, specialy since we presumably are not even on the same continets. Nice to hear from you Jonathan! Peace. --Striver 12:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

By the way Mr Cook, did you try to email me? I am under the impresion that my e-mail account can not receive e-mail from certain people. Just as a test, could you try to e-mail me anything and write a line here on this page to confirm that you tried? Thanks. --Striver 12:33, 1 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Views ascribed to me I have never expressed etc

As the subject of this page, I assume I have the right to express my opinion of PoV comments being ascribed to me, especially when they have no obvious basis in reality. I notice that two final sentences have been inserted:

However, many have criticised Cook for being overly apologetic towards and misrepresenting the history of the Palestinian terrorism.[1] In his journalism and writings he takes a predominantly far-leftist perspective viewing Israel as a colonial enterprise, and as a client state of the U.S.

I have a number of observations about these additions:

1. A couple of Zionist organisations, namely Camera and the ADL, have accused me of misrepresenting Palestinian terrorism. Then again, they would, wouldn't they. But by any normal understanding of the word, that hardly constitutes "many". I assume the writer of this line chose "many" because it implies near-universal agreement. I hardly think two Zionist pressure groups qualify as near-universal agreement.

2. As far as I remember i have never referred to Israel as a colonial enterprise. If ever I have in the past, I certainly wouldn't say that was my position today. Shouldn't a recent citation be required to substantiate this claim?

3. As a matter of fact, I do not subscribe to the view that Israel is a client state of the US. I don't take the opposite view either. In recent radio interviews, such as one with George Kenney on his site Electric Politics, I have taken a distinctively different position: I argue that pro-Israel elements in Washington, the neo-cons, have so enmeshed themselves with US power elites that it is almost impossible to disentangle whose policy dominates, or whether there is anything on which they disagree.

4. Who says that the two opinions ascribed to me (wrongly) are "far-leftist"? Far-leftist by whose standards? Your average Zionist's? Your average American's? I have not openly subscribed to any political view apart from my trenchant criticism of Israel and my warnings about the West's credulous acceptance of the "clash of civilisations". So how does the writer know I am a far-leftist. This is just pure (parochial) PoV, presumably inserted by a Zionist American.JonathanCook 00:05, 14 October 2006 (UTC)Jonathan Cook

i've removed "predominantly far-leftist perspective" since that's a rather vague term and doesn't seem to be the main aim of the person who added the claims about Israel as a colonial enterprise and as a US client state. For the moment, i'm just putting {{citation needed}} on those two claims to see how it looks. Back soon... Boud 00:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
  • "israel as a colonial enterprise" - i'm not sure if this is necessarily meant to be a direct quotation, it could be someone trying to sum up your general work. i guess we should see if anyone provides a citation.
  • "israel as a US client state" - i'm just trying to think of process issues. It's clear that here you say you have quite a different point of view, neither US nor Israel is a client of the other, but rather they are so deeply enmeshed, that you can't separate them (my rewording, your original is above). i guess the wikipedia no original research guidelines would ask whether or not the information is externally verifiable. Given that your website has your email address and wikipedians could email that address to verify if you (the jonathon cook editing this talk page) and the externally verifiable (by email) jonathon cook are the same person - and i personally (as one wikipedian) am satisfied that you are the same person, my feeling is that this is reasonably verifiable. So my suggestion is that we add something like Cook himself denies having ever stated that Israel is a colonial enterprise and says that he does not view Israel as a US client state, but in fact believes that "pro-Israel elements in Washington, the neo-cons, have so enmeshed themselves with US power elites that it is almost impossible to disentangle whose policy dominates, or whether there is anything on which they disagree." On the other hand, if nobody comes up with citations, then it might be better to delete the sentence. In any case, i suggest let's leave it some time and see what others think and whether anyone brings along citations. Boud 01:03, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
It's better but the problem now is that as far as I know no one has claimed either of those things about me. I am sure lots of people think it but that hardly counts. Most of my critics don't engage with my arguments, they just slur me. If you are looking for dirt on me, there's not much:
I was the runner-up in Honest Reporting's Dishonest Reporting Awards 2004
I have been called an anti-Semite (in public and in print) by Steven Plaut (and by lots of other people in emails)
As for me denying that Israel is a colonial enterprise, I've only done that here in the talk section. It's not something I've expressed a view on so why would it be in my wiki entry. Similarly for the client state bit unless you external link to the George Kenny interview
—Preceding unsigned comment added by JonathanCook (talk • contribs) 01:13, 14 October 2006

[edit] colonial enterprise/client state claims

IMHO there are now sufficient referenced criticisms of Jonathan, that we can shift the "colonial enterprise/client state" claims here to the talk page (rather than removing them totally). If someone can come up with some external references or discuss sensibly what an WP:NPOV summary of these claims would be, then that could be returned to the article.

What i removed:

It has been claimed that in his journalism and writings, Cook takes a view of Israel as a colonial enterprise,[citation needed] and as a client state of the U.S.[citation needed].

Please also see Jonathan's comments above. If there are criticisms against Jonathan which are serious enough to have been made verifiably, externally to the wikipedia, then Jonathan will presumably also respond to those claims in an appropriate way externally to the wikipedia (if he wishes to), and then that could be referenced in the wikipedia article.

Boud 20:09, 14 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] My reply to Camera

As this page seems (over)excited by the criticisms of Camera, it might be fair to include my responses to their criticisms. regarding the complaints about my territorial views, my letter of defence was published in the electronic intifada:

http://electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/7/1865


i also had a letter published in the IHT on sept 8 2004 in response to camera's criticisms of my non-violence article. unfortunately it is no longer available on the net but here are the contents that were published in the paper:


Writer response

I note with dismay the correspondence provoked by my commentary last week ("Nonviolent protest offers little hope for Palestinians," Views, Aug. 31). My critics fall into two camps. The first accuses me of excusing or justifying violent Palestinian attacks on Israelis. This is a gross misrepresentation. I simply explained why Arun Gandhi's message of nonviolence is likely to fall on stony ground in the occupied territories. Sadly, the suicide bombing in Beersheba on the day my commentary was published appears to confirm my point.

Let me restate my core argument for those who missed it: A peaceful solution to this conflict will emerge only when the Israeli left shows true solidarity with ordinary Palestinians. That will require that Israeli peace activists take the same risks as nonviolent Palestinians in facing down their own country's tanks and armed soldiers.

The second camp accuses me of ignoring the violence repeatedly used by the PLO leadership during their long exile in Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia. I should have made my meaning clearer. When I wrote that the Palestinians were nonviolent "for most of the 37 years of Israel's occupation," I was referring only to those Palestinians who were living under occupation. I was making a historical assessment of the value of nonviolence as a tool for ending the occupation by those Palestinians who actually lived under Israeli rule. My point was that Israel responded, not by recognizing the moral rights of the occupied Palestinian people, but by entrenching its hold on the territories. In contrast, though I did not mention it in the original article, the exiled PLO leadership, which did use violence, was allowed to return by Israel in the 1990s and set up shop in the occupied territories in the new guise of the Palestinian Authority. Again, sadly, the lesson to be learned is that, in the realpolitik of this conflict, violence does work.

Jonathan Cook, Jerusalem

—Preceding unsigned comment added by JonathanCook (talk • contribs)