The UK's unelected head of state congratulated President Trump in person following his annihilation of 168 elementary school children. Rather worrying don't you think?
For too long most of the supposed organisations of the Left and individual politicians (except Zarah Sultanah) have acquiesced in the weaponisation of anti-Semitism. They should move from defence to outright criticism. Criticise Israel and the fascist belief, Zionism, which is destroying human rights and democracy in this country. Criticise the power of corporations that mostly support Zionism to profit from expanding surveillance, weapon manufacturing and obtaining public money at the expense of our public services. This outright criticism should run tangentially with massive public protest and civil disobedience. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the trade unions to help in this. Their leadership, unlike that of Italian trade unions, is an utter betrayal of the working class.
This is just so good. So depressing too. I like the word 'insurgent'. What can those of us who are ordinary people, citizens, do that can effectively fight and stop the rot? Is the ghastly Musk right when he says a civil war is inevitable? Are he and the class he represents fomenting one? In the last few days I've wondered if Polanski will be forced out as Green leader, as Jonathan wonders here. Reports (if you can believe MSM here) suggest some older Green members dislike Zack's turn (allegedly) from environmental to socialist concerns. If true that faction could be pushed more and more by media and rightwing political forces. I can't help feeling, even more depressingly, that the mess we're in has to work itself out, far-right neofascist government and all with its neo-Nazi racism, concentration camps and maybe worse, until an exhausted ruined nation comes to its senses and realises the damage it did to itself during the Brexit battles and the war on Corbynism. And by then will the world even be salvageable? But don't listen to me, I'm far too pessimistic. Instead, tell me where to find the message of hope? And inspiration.
Anyone who considers themselves 'green', while continuing to fear 'socialism' is in all liklihood, a virtue signaller..........too comfortable to have to learn to think well. We can't have trillionaires on a finite planet, and shut down the fossil fuels/fools that are tanking the natural ecospheres.
Green is not a symbolic colour. It's the colour of the light eaters (see the book of that title, its amazing), but casino capitalism just sees lumber, not old growth forests, agri business not sustainable mixed farms, jet setting to poor people's beaches, not the jet stream.
Socialism means we CARE for all our people, educate all our children, and learn to grow something, give something back, build together for all of us.............not destroy the commons for the few............or hand our friends other people's lands, so we can go to war over it for the next century.
To conclude: You can have a liveable future or you can have unregulated capitalism now.
You can't have your cake and eat it too.....a green world and the greenback dollar.
Thank you Jonathan, sadly you are spot on with the state of UK politics. As you say Polanski and the Greens need to find the chink in the right wing's armour and make truth count. The ending doesn't bear thinking about otherwise.
Unless the left, the greens the socialists and unions don’t get together and stop bickering, the door will be left wide open for farage. Who is stirring up trouble and discontent in the left, that leaves us all arguing while war and violence and destruction of our civil rights and the planet carry on. BDSbarb I’m fed up with antisemitism, how do the other groups feel? Islamaphobia, racism etc etc. but no it’s always the special case of the Jews not feeling safe
Partly historical reasons and as someone once said (not sure I agree), "It's Sunday School". It's European history, far, far more than it's anything in the Middle Eastern world. Zionism was a European thing, as historian Avi Shlaim pointed out recently -- Arab Jews and non-Jews got on well, spoke the same language, ate the same food, etc. And the reason that Zionism was European is that antisemitism was European. So yes, large numbers of my fellow-Jews have so to speak forgotten how not to be victims, or at least not learned how to resist the vulnerability to rising fear even in cases where it's just "the boy crying wolf" when there's no real wolf. I don't get, in your words, fed up with antisemitism but I do get totally fed up with the way it's exploited, as Jonathan has so often explained. Tho by the way I do get 'fed up', dismayed, angry, wearied, when UK Jewish leaders such as the chief rabbi (leader of just one of the several UK & Commonwealth Jewish communities) talks of "our" army when he means that of a foreign state, or says in an essay on his website, "I am a Zionist because I am a Jew". And personally, as an individual, I hate and resist the political attempts to turn me into an object, a "thingified nothing-but" useful commodified casualty of bogus antisemitism wars. I wish they'd just give over.
THE ATTEMPTED MURDER by arson of more than 1,000 in a UK gay club happened in the small hours of April 26.
NO OUTPOUR OF OUTRAGE in the House of Commons. No tour of constituency party meetings and tv/radio stations by STARMER pledging a universal campaign against the instigators of such violent hatred that would lead to such an outrage.
NO RALLY OF THE RIGHTEOUS outside Downing Street in solidarity with the targeted community under increasing threats of and suffering actual attacks (some lethal).
DELIBERATELY (gleefully) stoked hatred led someone to try to BURN MORE THAN 1,000 PEOPLE TO DEATH in a club near Milton Keynes in April.
AND NOTHING. FORGOTTEN. DROPPED FROM THE NEWS CYCLE. UNMENTIONED BY THE POLITICIANS.
How do you think the LGBTQ+ community feels about that?
Do your anti-genocide "Jewish friends," also oppose the concept, of the genocidal zionist project in occupied Palestine 🇵🇸?
Ae anti-Semitic christian zionist zealots outnumber, anti-Semitic "jewish" zionists, by many many millions, but both cults, support "a man-made homeland for the jews."
'...Three court of appeal judges found that the trial judge, Mr Justice Johnson, “had no jurisdiction” to refer the case against Menon for a closing argument to the High Court.
'Johnson could potentially still refer the contempt allegations to the attorney general or another High Court judge sitting in the Crown Court...'
That's worth a small cheer in current circumstances.
"Polanski is the country’s only Jewish party leader. But he spent much of the local election campaign defending himself and his party from the constant accusation that the Greens were institutionally antisemitic."
One would think that by now that the smears of "He's antisemitic!" or "That group is full of antisemites!" would have lost their effectiveness, and Labour and Reform wouldn't go near them. But obviously, these smears affect some voters deep down and make them cringe and despise the smeared ones enough to make them worth the negativity and repetitiveness. That doesn't say much for humanity on the whole, does it?
The philosopher Brian Klug once wrote, "Israel is about much more than itself." Borrowing that, I often think antisemitism is also about much more than itself. It began as a religious thing (we didn't accept the Christ and so were ostracised) but it changed over the centuries. If I haven't misunderstood, Christians weren't allowed to lend money on interest (I believe it's similar for Muslims), so Jews were permitted to (coerced?) get their hands grubby with money and that became the next peg for antisemitism (see Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice). Then the "Court Jew" in eg historic Russia did the Tsar's tax collecting, another cause for hatred. No wonder Herzl thought of European antisemitism as an incurable "disease" from which Jews would never be safe, but the early Zionists never managed to convince world Jewry of the necessity of "a Jewish state" until after WW2 and the Judeocide but more especially until after the 1967 Middle East war, which (I gather) convinced the US that the little country at the eastern end of the Med would be a great unsinkable "aircraft carrier" (so to speak) for western (aka American) hegemony amongst all that flowing black gold energy. And then ethnic cleansing, violent, torturing, genocidal Israel, speaking (self-proclaimedly) and acting on behalf of all Jews on the planet, turned itself into the latest cause of the very antisemitism it was supposedly set up to put an end to. I heard someone once trying to defend Israel against condemnation and I remember thinking, wait -- he's actually making the case for its condemnation. He said, "It's existential -- other states do bad things but for Israel's critics, Israel *is* bad." I think that argument defeats itself. Maybe Israel didn't start out bad (itself a highly controversial thing to say) and maybe -- maybe? -- it "had" to become bad to survive the obloquy and efforts at its elimination? But there is possibly a case for concluding (sadly) that all the evidence points to the truth of what that speaker called an "existential" depiction of the so-called Jewish state. It's bad. I do hate actually writing that but there are many things in the world that are true and which we can find it hateful to have to call out.
Once again, as in all of his articles, Jonathan Cook gives us an article where the word 'Zionist' does not appear. Instead Cook blames everything on ' billionaires', who are out to get the supporters of Palestine, just like they previously destroyed Corbyn, who also supported Palestine. Cook uses the word 'billionaire' dozens of time in this article, but fails to even name any of the evil billionaires.
All you have to do is read the article again, but this time substitute the word 'Zionists' every time the word 'billionaire' is used. Then you will understand what is really going on.
Is Mr Cook himself a Jew? Is that why he is so eager to redirect the blame for the war on free speech in the UK, away from those who are actually responsible?
I see the reasoning here. If a country is going to trade it's right to free speech in exchange for Israel being able to steal all of Palestine, I would think that all Jews might not want to have that catastrophe sticking to them. Better to blame it on the 'billionaires'.
1. I assume you're new to my work. I've written hundreds of article about Zionism, plus two books that dedicated whole chapters to the subject. I even wrote a few months ago an article making a similar argument to yours about the need to deradicalise the West of its Zionism: https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/genocide-two-years-on-it-is-the-west
2. Making "Zionism" and "billionaires" synonyms doesn't make the picture of what's going on clearer. It just makes both terms hazier. Hazy thinking is the last thing we need right now.
Yes ... when it comes to articles about the war on Palestine you do discuss Zionism. But, when it comes to articles about the war on Corbyn and his pro Palestine supporters in the UK, and the war on free speech, you carefully blame 'billionares' as being behind it. Not one mention of Zionists. So, there is a major distinction here.
For example, In your recent article about 'Starmer and the dark forces that brought him to power', when discussing Mandelson, you fail to mention the fact that Peter Mandelson is a fanatical Zionist Jew?
Was this omission intentional? So as to make Mandelson and his establishment billionaires fit into your theory as to how Starmer came to power and Corbyn was sabotaged?
The network that Mandelson created is a Zionists network, not a corporate billionaire network. And, that is why the Mandelson wing of Labour and and British (Zionists) establishment, and the media they control, were so determined to stop Corbyn.
Instead, you went out of your way to give us an article that blames corporate billionaires that wanted to hold onto their power, claiming Corbyn ..... "was the only major British politician who had not been captured" by them.
As to your larger point: I want to raise consciousness in the West about who is destroying our chances for survival as a species. That project is far bigger than Israel and Zionism. Zionism is the ideological template for western military control. But it is the billionaire class and its interests that make Zionism the model. That's why anyone who makes it to power – who services the billionaires – is a Zionist, or pretends to be one. It's the entry qualification. It's the ideological acid test of whether you are ready and willing to maintain the current system.
The problem with attributing this whole project to Zionism rather than the billionaire class is that it obscures whose interests have primacy. It makes the task of revolution seem simpler than it is. It encourages people to imagine that defeating Israel ensures we have a better world. It's just not going to be that easy.
On the one hand, you admit that support for Zionism is the "entry qualification" to power and wealth, something we both agree on. But then you refuse to blame Zionism itself because it might "obscure" the real billionaire power brokers role in their control of society, and thus make a "revolution", or a better world harder to achieve with some form of relief from the billionaire's control. Sounds like the Democratic Socialists argument.
Even if I could make sense of this, it appears that you are doing the "obscuring".
If in fact it is the Zionists that create this one "entry qualification" rule to power (support for Israel), then aren't they the real people in charge, the ones whose "interest have primacy", rather than the billionaire class that you are claiming to have primacy? After all, we have no rules against criticism of billionaires.
If it is the Zionists that make the rules, for example the rule against criticism of Israel (conflating that with antisemitism), then aren't Zionists the real power brokers, those whose "interest have primacy"?
Lets turn the tables. What if the proletariat held power in society? And the same Zionist had the same "entry qualification" to power and rule making, ... total subservience to a foreign genocidal state. Would it still be unwise to blame Zionists for the assault on free speech against those people who speak against the genocide? To "ensure a better world", of course!
As far as to why you are on this path of deflecting blame for the assault on Corbyn and free speech? I am not sure. Could it be that you are of the Jewish persuasion, like Rachel Maddow who desperately tried to deflect blame for the Iraq war away from Zionist Jews years ago, with a ridiculous one hour propaganda documentary? Or more recently when she blamed the Iran war on the Gulf States. People do strange things when inner beliefs are challenged.
If a country is going to trade it's right to free speech in exchange for Israel being able to steal all of Palestine, I would think that all those responsible, or even associated in some remote way, might not want to have that catastrophe sticking to their fellowship for all of eternity. Better to blame it on the 'billionaires', or obfuscate the matter, to "ensure a better world", of course.
Or, maybe it is just some misguided politics, like I suggested above. I don't know the answer.
No RamboDave, Jonathan is not obscuring- and what he says makes absolute eloquent sense. Yes, Zionism is entry level for the tiny % of overwhelmingly male, white, nominally christian billionaires who currently orchestrate the western media and who have politically captured much of it.
It’s important to note that destroying Israel and Zionism would not make that much difference. Israel is indeed a proxy, just like Ukraine, and may well be destroyed.
The bigger picture is these US based interests need to maintain dominance, having been brought up in the white western patriarchy and based their whole identities on mastery of the globe. They don’t seek to destroy humanity, but that is what their actions are going to end up doing.
I differ from Jonathan and Caitlin Johnstone in their thinking that revolution is the answer. It would be catastrophic.
The answer is personal awakening and ceasing to buy into the products of these billionaires to disempower them. We must break our addictions to fossil fuels, animal and junk foods, pharma, narcotics, tobacco, entertainment, news, AI and Amazon and we must support local health care, banks and food growing.
By the way, out of curiosity, I'd love to know what you (and a few others) imagine is my interest in "intentionally" "protecting" Zionism from criticism. A cushy job in the media (a job I specifically sabotaged long ago by trying to write about Israel and Zionism for the Guardian)? Do you think I'm secretly in Israel's pay? What, in your view, is my reason for acting "intentionally" in the way you suggest?
From what I can tell, Labour=Democratic Party, Tories=Traditional Republicans, Reform=MAGA/Trump Republicans. In the US, there is no real difference between either of the two main parties. I very much hope the success of the Greens in the UK will ignite the same in the US (though it's much harder for any third party to gain power in the US, so hard that it's almost impossible). Though at minimum I'd only be happy with full-on socialism, the Greens seem clearly better than the Democratic-Republic (or Labour-Conservative-Reform triopoly (if that's a word 😂)).
You set me thinking of the NHS, not as it is now poor thing, but as it was until the Thatcherites began the rot. It set a paradigm for what all the other public services might have been. We paid our taxes even when we didn't need medical treatment because others did, and they paid when they could for when we in turn needed it. It was a wonderful idea, almost a kind "ground of our being" there in the background for our safety in an uncertain world. But it never suited the right wing for whom transaction was be-all and end-all, money always had to change hands, and with profit. And it really was "socialism in one sector" and gave a sense of how good life could be if everything worked that way. But I'm uneasily aware that attempts in many different parts of the world to bring about socialist economies haven't worked - why not? Glorious as the idea is, is there something wrong with it? Is it, as the late EO Wilson argued, not right for humans in the way it's very much right for the social insects, where the colony is everything, the individual nothing (Wilson found the difference in our radically different ways of reproducing ourselves -- you *could* make humans socialist but you'd have force conditions on their society). But how do we get rid of the billionaire class?
Socialism has indeed worked to varying degrees--one of the main reasons it hasn't long-term is subterfuge by capitalists. Look at Cuba: how much more successful it'd be if the US hasn't been waging economic war against it for the last 66 years! Same with Venezuela since the Bolivarian Revolution.
BBC NEWS ONLINE report posted yesterday (Tuesday May 12) on the home page now:
'HAMAS 'WEAPONISED' SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN 7 OCTOBER ATTACKS, ISRAELI INVESTIGATION SAYS
'An independent, Israeli investigation has published harrowing details of "systematic, widespread" sexual violence by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups during the attacks on 7 October 2023, and against hostages.
'The 300-page report concludes that rapes, sexual assault and sexual torture were intended "to maximize pain and suffering".
'While the UN and others have published reports on sexual violence during the attacks – in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage – this is the most comprehensive...
'...Witnesses quoted in the Civil Commission report, external describe hearing and seeing violent gang rapes at the Nova dance festival, where more than 370 people were killed in one of the deadliest attacks. A male survivor also gives an account of being used like a "sex doll" by assailants. Many of those raped or apparently assaulted were shot in the head...
'...The report includes many shocking new claims including that two young relatives were forced by their captors to perform sex acts on each other. That case is part of what the report says was "a distinct pattern of violence targeting family members and exploiting familial relationships as instruments of terror"...
'...In the immediate aftermath of the assault, some initial accounts of terrible violence shared by Israeli officials turned out to be false. Some important forensic evidence was also destroyed by first responders rushing to the crime scenes.
'In interviews the report authors say this led them to be extra careful when it came to cross-referencing and fact-checking evidence they included. No evidence has been taken from Israeli interrogations of detained suspects to ensure the independence of the work...'
INTERESTING TIMING, the release of this report right now.
SHOCKING and absolutely new revelations of depraved acts of sexual violence THAT NOBODY AT ALL HAS DISCOVERED BEFORE.
How fortunate that this report is produced by an INDEPENDENT ISRAELI CIVIL COMMISSION.
And that our state media is so assiduous and swift in broadcasting it to a troubled Britain overwhelmed by anti-Semitic hatred instigated by HAMAS APOLOGISTS BLEATING ABOUT GENOCIDE!
I have a question rather than a comment. The question is what limits, if any, are there on political donations in the UK? Those of us in Canada don't know as much as we should about UK politics.
There are limits in the UK (regulations enforceable by law) but they are frequently worked around/ignored and no effective sanctions are imposed for it.
So a further question here in Britain (as elsewhere) is: what use are limits/laws/regulations if they are not enforced?
(See 'Reasons why the British people have turned in the duplicitous main-chancer SIR KEIR STARMER and backing band THE STARMER CABAL')
My late father always said Starmer was a state asset. It's no surprise in the slightest he is doing all he can to ensure the growing and inevitable reaction to the wealth-extraction economy the ruling class has put in place is funneled into the faux-revolutionaries of Reform and safely away from the Greens.
The real problem the Green Party has is that every indication is that ZACK POLANSKI is as much a charlatan and main-chancer as STARMER (no more a 'green' tribune than the Prime Minister is a socialist).
The media 'rat-pack' have targeted him not because of that (that's not a problem) but because he's a spanner in the regime change operation (to get FARAGE into No10).
The UK's unelected head of state congratulated President Trump in person following his annihilation of 168 elementary school children. Rather worrying don't you think?
For too long most of the supposed organisations of the Left and individual politicians (except Zarah Sultanah) have acquiesced in the weaponisation of anti-Semitism. They should move from defence to outright criticism. Criticise Israel and the fascist belief, Zionism, which is destroying human rights and democracy in this country. Criticise the power of corporations that mostly support Zionism to profit from expanding surveillance, weapon manufacturing and obtaining public money at the expense of our public services. This outright criticism should run tangentially with massive public protest and civil disobedience. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the trade unions to help in this. Their leadership, unlike that of Italian trade unions, is an utter betrayal of the working class.
Absolutely my thinking as well, thank you, Jonathan. No doubt about it battles are coming
This is just so good. So depressing too. I like the word 'insurgent'. What can those of us who are ordinary people, citizens, do that can effectively fight and stop the rot? Is the ghastly Musk right when he says a civil war is inevitable? Are he and the class he represents fomenting one? In the last few days I've wondered if Polanski will be forced out as Green leader, as Jonathan wonders here. Reports (if you can believe MSM here) suggest some older Green members dislike Zack's turn (allegedly) from environmental to socialist concerns. If true that faction could be pushed more and more by media and rightwing political forces. I can't help feeling, even more depressingly, that the mess we're in has to work itself out, far-right neofascist government and all with its neo-Nazi racism, concentration camps and maybe worse, until an exhausted ruined nation comes to its senses and realises the damage it did to itself during the Brexit battles and the war on Corbynism. And by then will the world even be salvageable? But don't listen to me, I'm far too pessimistic. Instead, tell me where to find the message of hope? And inspiration.
Anyone who considers themselves 'green', while continuing to fear 'socialism' is in all liklihood, a virtue signaller..........too comfortable to have to learn to think well. We can't have trillionaires on a finite planet, and shut down the fossil fuels/fools that are tanking the natural ecospheres.
Green is not a symbolic colour. It's the colour of the light eaters (see the book of that title, its amazing), but casino capitalism just sees lumber, not old growth forests, agri business not sustainable mixed farms, jet setting to poor people's beaches, not the jet stream.
Socialism means we CARE for all our people, educate all our children, and learn to grow something, give something back, build together for all of us.............not destroy the commons for the few............or hand our friends other people's lands, so we can go to war over it for the next century.
To conclude: You can have a liveable future or you can have unregulated capitalism now.
You can't have your cake and eat it too.....a green world and the greenback dollar.
Thank you Jonathan, sadly you are spot on with the state of UK politics. As you say Polanski and the Greens need to find the chink in the right wing's armour and make truth count. The ending doesn't bear thinking about otherwise.
Brilliant article, thank you!
Unless the left, the greens the socialists and unions don’t get together and stop bickering, the door will be left wide open for farage. Who is stirring up trouble and discontent in the left, that leaves us all arguing while war and violence and destruction of our civil rights and the planet carry on. BDSbarb I’m fed up with antisemitism, how do the other groups feel? Islamaphobia, racism etc etc. but no it’s always the special case of the Jews not feeling safe
Partly historical reasons and as someone once said (not sure I agree), "It's Sunday School". It's European history, far, far more than it's anything in the Middle Eastern world. Zionism was a European thing, as historian Avi Shlaim pointed out recently -- Arab Jews and non-Jews got on well, spoke the same language, ate the same food, etc. And the reason that Zionism was European is that antisemitism was European. So yes, large numbers of my fellow-Jews have so to speak forgotten how not to be victims, or at least not learned how to resist the vulnerability to rising fear even in cases where it's just "the boy crying wolf" when there's no real wolf. I don't get, in your words, fed up with antisemitism but I do get totally fed up with the way it's exploited, as Jonathan has so often explained. Tho by the way I do get 'fed up', dismayed, angry, wearied, when UK Jewish leaders such as the chief rabbi (leader of just one of the several UK & Commonwealth Jewish communities) talks of "our" army when he means that of a foreign state, or says in an essay on his website, "I am a Zionist because I am a Jew". And personally, as an individual, I hate and resist the political attempts to turn me into an object, a "thingified nothing-but" useful commodified casualty of bogus antisemitism wars. I wish they'd just give over.
THE ATTEMPTED MURDER by arson of more than 1,000 in a UK gay club happened in the small hours of April 26.
NO OUTPOUR OF OUTRAGE in the House of Commons. No tour of constituency party meetings and tv/radio stations by STARMER pledging a universal campaign against the instigators of such violent hatred that would lead to such an outrage.
NO RALLY OF THE RIGHTEOUS outside Downing Street in solidarity with the targeted community under increasing threats of and suffering actual attacks (some lethal).
DELIBERATELY (gleefully) stoked hatred led someone to try to BURN MORE THAN 1,000 PEOPLE TO DEATH in a club near Milton Keynes in April.
AND NOTHING. FORGOTTEN. DROPPED FROM THE NEWS CYCLE. UNMENTIONED BY THE POLITICIANS.
How do you think the LGBTQ+ community feels about that?
Do your anti-genocide "Jewish friends," also oppose the concept, of the genocidal zionist project in occupied Palestine 🇵🇸?
Ae anti-Semitic christian zionist zealots outnumber, anti-Semitic "jewish" zionists, by many many millions, but both cults, support "a man-made homeland for the jews."
RAJIV MENON KC, defence counsel in the PALESTINE ACTION activists' trial yesterday (Tuesday May 12) WON HIS APPEAL AGAINST A CONTEMPT OF COURT CHARGE.
A report by DIANA AKKAD at DECLASSIFIED UK (declassifieduk.org) and carried by CONSORTIUM NEWS (consortiumnews.com) states:
'...Three court of appeal judges found that the trial judge, Mr Justice Johnson, “had no jurisdiction” to refer the case against Menon for a closing argument to the High Court.
'Johnson could potentially still refer the contempt allegations to the attorney general or another High Court judge sitting in the Crown Court...'
That's worth a small cheer in current circumstances.
"Polanski is the country’s only Jewish party leader. But he spent much of the local election campaign defending himself and his party from the constant accusation that the Greens were institutionally antisemitic."
One would think that by now that the smears of "He's antisemitic!" or "That group is full of antisemites!" would have lost their effectiveness, and Labour and Reform wouldn't go near them. But obviously, these smears affect some voters deep down and make them cringe and despise the smeared ones enough to make them worth the negativity and repetitiveness. That doesn't say much for humanity on the whole, does it?
The philosopher Brian Klug once wrote, "Israel is about much more than itself." Borrowing that, I often think antisemitism is also about much more than itself. It began as a religious thing (we didn't accept the Christ and so were ostracised) but it changed over the centuries. If I haven't misunderstood, Christians weren't allowed to lend money on interest (I believe it's similar for Muslims), so Jews were permitted to (coerced?) get their hands grubby with money and that became the next peg for antisemitism (see Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice). Then the "Court Jew" in eg historic Russia did the Tsar's tax collecting, another cause for hatred. No wonder Herzl thought of European antisemitism as an incurable "disease" from which Jews would never be safe, but the early Zionists never managed to convince world Jewry of the necessity of "a Jewish state" until after WW2 and the Judeocide but more especially until after the 1967 Middle East war, which (I gather) convinced the US that the little country at the eastern end of the Med would be a great unsinkable "aircraft carrier" (so to speak) for western (aka American) hegemony amongst all that flowing black gold energy. And then ethnic cleansing, violent, torturing, genocidal Israel, speaking (self-proclaimedly) and acting on behalf of all Jews on the planet, turned itself into the latest cause of the very antisemitism it was supposedly set up to put an end to. I heard someone once trying to defend Israel against condemnation and I remember thinking, wait -- he's actually making the case for its condemnation. He said, "It's existential -- other states do bad things but for Israel's critics, Israel *is* bad." I think that argument defeats itself. Maybe Israel didn't start out bad (itself a highly controversial thing to say) and maybe -- maybe? -- it "had" to become bad to survive the obloquy and efforts at its elimination? But there is possibly a case for concluding (sadly) that all the evidence points to the truth of what that speaker called an "existential" depiction of the so-called Jewish state. It's bad. I do hate actually writing that but there are many things in the world that are true and which we can find it hateful to have to call out.
In other words, FREE PALESTINE!!
Once again, as in all of his articles, Jonathan Cook gives us an article where the word 'Zionist' does not appear. Instead Cook blames everything on ' billionaires', who are out to get the supporters of Palestine, just like they previously destroyed Corbyn, who also supported Palestine. Cook uses the word 'billionaire' dozens of time in this article, but fails to even name any of the evil billionaires.
All you have to do is read the article again, but this time substitute the word 'Zionists' every time the word 'billionaire' is used. Then you will understand what is really going on.
Is Mr Cook himself a Jew? Is that why he is so eager to redirect the blame for the war on free speech in the UK, away from those who are actually responsible?
I see the reasoning here. If a country is going to trade it's right to free speech in exchange for Israel being able to steal all of Palestine, I would think that all Jews might not want to have that catastrophe sticking to them. Better to blame it on the 'billionaires'.
1. I assume you're new to my work. I've written hundreds of article about Zionism, plus two books that dedicated whole chapters to the subject. I even wrote a few months ago an article making a similar argument to yours about the need to deradicalise the West of its Zionism: https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/genocide-two-years-on-it-is-the-west
2. Making "Zionism" and "billionaires" synonyms doesn't make the picture of what's going on clearer. It just makes both terms hazier. Hazy thinking is the last thing we need right now.
Yes ... when it comes to articles about the war on Palestine you do discuss Zionism. But, when it comes to articles about the war on Corbyn and his pro Palestine supporters in the UK, and the war on free speech, you carefully blame 'billionares' as being behind it. Not one mention of Zionists. So, there is a major distinction here.
For example, In your recent article about 'Starmer and the dark forces that brought him to power', when discussing Mandelson, you fail to mention the fact that Peter Mandelson is a fanatical Zionist Jew?
https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/starmer-is-toast-but-the-dark-forces
Was this omission intentional? So as to make Mandelson and his establishment billionaires fit into your theory as to how Starmer came to power and Corbyn was sabotaged?
The network that Mandelson created is a Zionists network, not a corporate billionaire network. And, that is why the Mandelson wing of Labour and and British (Zionists) establishment, and the media they control, were so determined to stop Corbyn.
Instead, you went out of your way to give us an article that blames corporate billionaires that wanted to hold onto their power, claiming Corbyn ..... "was the only major British politician who had not been captured" by them.
Again, it's not true what you're saying. Plenty of my articles on Labour and Corbyn have mentioned Israel and Zionism. Here's just one: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2018-08-25/israel-hidden-hand-jeremy-corbyn/
As to your larger point: I want to raise consciousness in the West about who is destroying our chances for survival as a species. That project is far bigger than Israel and Zionism. Zionism is the ideological template for western military control. But it is the billionaire class and its interests that make Zionism the model. That's why anyone who makes it to power – who services the billionaires – is a Zionist, or pretends to be one. It's the entry qualification. It's the ideological acid test of whether you are ready and willing to maintain the current system.
The problem with attributing this whole project to Zionism rather than the billionaire class is that it obscures whose interests have primacy. It makes the task of revolution seem simpler than it is. It encourages people to imagine that defeating Israel ensures we have a better world. It's just not going to be that easy.
On the one hand, you admit that support for Zionism is the "entry qualification" to power and wealth, something we both agree on. But then you refuse to blame Zionism itself because it might "obscure" the real billionaire power brokers role in their control of society, and thus make a "revolution", or a better world harder to achieve with some form of relief from the billionaire's control. Sounds like the Democratic Socialists argument.
Even if I could make sense of this, it appears that you are doing the "obscuring".
If in fact it is the Zionists that create this one "entry qualification" rule to power (support for Israel), then aren't they the real people in charge, the ones whose "interest have primacy", rather than the billionaire class that you are claiming to have primacy? After all, we have no rules against criticism of billionaires.
If it is the Zionists that make the rules, for example the rule against criticism of Israel (conflating that with antisemitism), then aren't Zionists the real power brokers, those whose "interest have primacy"?
Lets turn the tables. What if the proletariat held power in society? And the same Zionist had the same "entry qualification" to power and rule making, ... total subservience to a foreign genocidal state. Would it still be unwise to blame Zionists for the assault on free speech against those people who speak against the genocide? To "ensure a better world", of course!
As far as to why you are on this path of deflecting blame for the assault on Corbyn and free speech? I am not sure. Could it be that you are of the Jewish persuasion, like Rachel Maddow who desperately tried to deflect blame for the Iraq war away from Zionist Jews years ago, with a ridiculous one hour propaganda documentary? Or more recently when she blamed the Iran war on the Gulf States. People do strange things when inner beliefs are challenged.
If a country is going to trade it's right to free speech in exchange for Israel being able to steal all of Palestine, I would think that all those responsible, or even associated in some remote way, might not want to have that catastrophe sticking to their fellowship for all of eternity. Better to blame it on the 'billionaires', or obfuscate the matter, to "ensure a better world", of course.
Or, maybe it is just some misguided politics, like I suggested above. I don't know the answer.
No RamboDave, Jonathan is not obscuring- and what he says makes absolute eloquent sense. Yes, Zionism is entry level for the tiny % of overwhelmingly male, white, nominally christian billionaires who currently orchestrate the western media and who have politically captured much of it.
It’s important to note that destroying Israel and Zionism would not make that much difference. Israel is indeed a proxy, just like Ukraine, and may well be destroyed.
The bigger picture is these US based interests need to maintain dominance, having been brought up in the white western patriarchy and based their whole identities on mastery of the globe. They don’t seek to destroy humanity, but that is what their actions are going to end up doing.
I differ from Jonathan and Caitlin Johnstone in their thinking that revolution is the answer. It would be catastrophic.
The answer is personal awakening and ceasing to buy into the products of these billionaires to disempower them. We must break our addictions to fossil fuels, animal and junk foods, pharma, narcotics, tobacco, entertainment, news, AI and Amazon and we must support local health care, banks and food growing.
By the way, out of curiosity, I'd love to know what you (and a few others) imagine is my interest in "intentionally" "protecting" Zionism from criticism. A cushy job in the media (a job I specifically sabotaged long ago by trying to write about Israel and Zionism for the Guardian)? Do you think I'm secretly in Israel's pay? What, in your view, is my reason for acting "intentionally" in the way you suggest?
From what I can tell, Labour=Democratic Party, Tories=Traditional Republicans, Reform=MAGA/Trump Republicans. In the US, there is no real difference between either of the two main parties. I very much hope the success of the Greens in the UK will ignite the same in the US (though it's much harder for any third party to gain power in the US, so hard that it's almost impossible). Though at minimum I'd only be happy with full-on socialism, the Greens seem clearly better than the Democratic-Republic (or Labour-Conservative-Reform triopoly (if that's a word 😂)).
You set me thinking of the NHS, not as it is now poor thing, but as it was until the Thatcherites began the rot. It set a paradigm for what all the other public services might have been. We paid our taxes even when we didn't need medical treatment because others did, and they paid when they could for when we in turn needed it. It was a wonderful idea, almost a kind "ground of our being" there in the background for our safety in an uncertain world. But it never suited the right wing for whom transaction was be-all and end-all, money always had to change hands, and with profit. And it really was "socialism in one sector" and gave a sense of how good life could be if everything worked that way. But I'm uneasily aware that attempts in many different parts of the world to bring about socialist economies haven't worked - why not? Glorious as the idea is, is there something wrong with it? Is it, as the late EO Wilson argued, not right for humans in the way it's very much right for the social insects, where the colony is everything, the individual nothing (Wilson found the difference in our radically different ways of reproducing ourselves -- you *could* make humans socialist but you'd have force conditions on their society). But how do we get rid of the billionaire class?
Socialism has indeed worked to varying degrees--one of the main reasons it hasn't long-term is subterfuge by capitalists. Look at Cuba: how much more successful it'd be if the US hasn't been waging economic war against it for the last 66 years! Same with Venezuela since the Bolivarian Revolution.
BBC NEWS ONLINE report posted yesterday (Tuesday May 12) on the home page now:
'HAMAS 'WEAPONISED' SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN 7 OCTOBER ATTACKS, ISRAELI INVESTIGATION SAYS
'An independent, Israeli investigation has published harrowing details of "systematic, widespread" sexual violence by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups during the attacks on 7 October 2023, and against hostages.
'The 300-page report concludes that rapes, sexual assault and sexual torture were intended "to maximize pain and suffering".
'While the UN and others have published reports on sexual violence during the attacks – in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage – this is the most comprehensive...
'...Witnesses quoted in the Civil Commission report, external describe hearing and seeing violent gang rapes at the Nova dance festival, where more than 370 people were killed in one of the deadliest attacks. A male survivor also gives an account of being used like a "sex doll" by assailants. Many of those raped or apparently assaulted were shot in the head...
'...The report includes many shocking new claims including that two young relatives were forced by their captors to perform sex acts on each other. That case is part of what the report says was "a distinct pattern of violence targeting family members and exploiting familial relationships as instruments of terror"...
'...In the immediate aftermath of the assault, some initial accounts of terrible violence shared by Israeli officials turned out to be false. Some important forensic evidence was also destroyed by first responders rushing to the crime scenes.
'In interviews the report authors say this led them to be extra careful when it came to cross-referencing and fact-checking evidence they included. No evidence has been taken from Israeli interrogations of detained suspects to ensure the independence of the work...'
INTERESTING TIMING, the release of this report right now.
SHOCKING and absolutely new revelations of depraved acts of sexual violence THAT NOBODY AT ALL HAS DISCOVERED BEFORE.
How fortunate that this report is produced by an INDEPENDENT ISRAELI CIVIL COMMISSION.
And that our state media is so assiduous and swift in broadcasting it to a troubled Britain overwhelmed by anti-Semitic hatred instigated by HAMAS APOLOGISTS BLEATING ABOUT GENOCIDE!
OH, AND how did the Eurovision Song Contest go? I missed it
I have a question rather than a comment. The question is what limits, if any, are there on political donations in the UK? Those of us in Canada don't know as much as we should about UK politics.
There are limits in the UK (regulations enforceable by law) but they are frequently worked around/ignored and no effective sanctions are imposed for it.
So a further question here in Britain (as elsewhere) is: what use are limits/laws/regulations if they are not enforced?
(See 'Reasons why the British people have turned in the duplicitous main-chancer SIR KEIR STARMER and backing band THE STARMER CABAL')
My late father always said Starmer was a state asset. It's no surprise in the slightest he is doing all he can to ensure the growing and inevitable reaction to the wealth-extraction economy the ruling class has put in place is funneled into the faux-revolutionaries of Reform and safely away from the Greens.
"I would like the Green Party better if," it would differentiate between zionism and Semitism, by defining itself as anti-zionist.
Deflect the conflation and take a stand!
The real problem the Green Party has is that every indication is that ZACK POLANSKI is as much a charlatan and main-chancer as STARMER (no more a 'green' tribune than the Prime Minister is a socialist).
The media 'rat-pack' have targeted him not because of that (that's not a problem) but because he's a spanner in the regime change operation (to get FARAGE into No10).