Guardian columnist feigns concern for two peoples 'fated to share the same land'. But yet again he finds excuses to keep one of those people penned into a prison
Jonathan Freedland is still at it. I just read his latest column, dated April 27, 2024, in which he puts words into the mouths of American student protesters in an effort to discredit the growing movement on campuses that is calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and justice for Palestinians. A poisonous pen writes with ill intent.
I appreciate your well-informed viewpoint on Israel / Palestine issues and would like to hear your views, and evidence, on the inevitable "conspiracy theory" that will emerge: 10/7Truth. Just as 9/11Truthers believe that the World Trade Center and related attacks were part of a conspiracy by American government actors to create, encourage, or allow those events for purposes of enabling greater American intervention in the Mideast, so it will be alleged - with or without evidence - that the same is true of Israeli military and intelligence, i.e. that they had at least advance knowledge of, if not involvement in, the attacks and chose to allow them to go forward in order to accelerate the killing or removal of Palestinians, the "Shoah" you have referred to. If, as you say, IDF was willing to sacrifice Israeli captives of Hamas within Israel to prevent them from becoming bargaining chips as hostages, why not countenance a greater sacrifice so long as deniability was preserved? Please understand that I have no particular knowledge or evidence here, and am not claiming this is true, but speculating about what I see as an inevitable position, given that it would serve certain interests, whether political or remunerative. Finally, I must congratulate you on being perhaps the ONLY Brit (or Canadian) who does not mispronounce the word "often".
May i ask a question please, Jonathan Cook - or anyone else who may have an answer. It is one i am frequently asked by Israeli apologists and i am baffled as to how to answer honestly. 'Does Israel have the right to exist?' I am not suggesting that they do not - but it is a rhyzomatically incendiary question in the context of why Palestine has not been afforded that same right.
That has been answered by others. Not in its present form. All israelis have the right to exist, just as any people in any other country. The Israeli government's apartheid rule and the oppression of others are the aspects of Israel that should cease to exist. The reparations of wrongs can also go a long way towards mutual tolerance.
Are you ,JC, suggesting that were Hamas to continue governing Gaza and take over the West Bank from the PA, that Jews and Palestinians could live together peacefully in one state? Would it be a democratic state? If so, what's the bases for such thinking? If this is not what you are suggesting, what are you suggesting should occur, what kind of a state would be created with Jews and Palestinians living in it (or perhaps there would be no Jews)?
thank you, sir stiver. my unalloyed pleasure to have you zeroing in on on the same raster scan and taking the time to absorb and address the comments here.
tnx for your edifying elucubrations, robert. according to prof walid khalidi's 1984 publication by the harvard univ. press, arabs owned, cultivated, or were in stewardship of 96% of the brits' palestinian territory in 1947/'48, when the european jews arrived on that turf. the ottomans' defeat in 1917 by the brits at the battle of megiddo terminated ottoman suzerainty over palestine.
The Groan is essentially the North London Jewish/Zionist Chronicle nowadays... Has been for a while since it was spooked after the Assange story and Gates bought in... Viner continues the rot.
Excellent, Mr. Cook...pure observational and journalistic excellence. Thank you for being you.
Curiously (or not?), we in Zionist-Occupied America have our own Freedland, and the names have an ominous similarity: the NYTimes' Thomas Friedman. Freedland and Friedman evoke to me an image of "identical evil twins" on the ZioMSM scene on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Each, "all the way, at the end of every day for decades encompassing at least 70 genocide-abuilding years," is a Zionist *colonial* snake in the grass...er, in the poisoned/toxic Gazan (and West Bank) soil.
Viva Palestine! Resist *colonial* Zionism, all the way until justice, dignity, accountability et al have been realized!
I am arguing that, to stop the bombing, we need an urgent debate about Hamas. I believe that there is a direct parallel with Northern Ireland, where the UK Government never stopped working with Sinn Fein, even whilst their military wing, the IRA, were bombing Britain.
Thank you Jonathan (Cook) for another wise analysis.
Many years ago - when I used to read The Guardian - I was struck by Freedland’s enduring vindictive victimhood, which I thought then drove him, whether consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or not, to promote feelings of guilt in readers, and, most probably, with the purpose of helping to silence criticism/condemnation of the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinian population of Palestine-Israel. In this current piece of Freedland’s, which you so ably analyse Jonathan, he, Freedland, could be understood as being quite dangerously provocative by 1) invoking images of football terraces, and a reminder of emotion - potentially - running high in those scenarios and 2) by reducing thought, and contributions that reveal sympathy for the Palestinian people in that land, to what he has decided is ‘binary’, tit-for-tat thinking.
Furthermore, he pretends to assert - then, seemingly, withdraws this ‘assertion’ - that the thinking of people like us, (-who express horror at, and the wrongness of, what the population of Gaza is being made to suffer by the Israeli government,-) can be shrugged off as merely revealing ‘the moral failing of the distant spectator’…but he actually makes sure that he includes that labelling of us anyway! I conclude that he really believes, (and definitely wants us to know what he believes), that we do have a position of ‘moral failing’ on this issue.
Freedland’s framing of his labelling of us is chicanery.
Well, Robert Lindsay, that is how most Palestinians must feel now, too. When Palestine was chosen to be a homeland for Jewish people after WW2 it was not empty land. Palestinians had access to use nearly all of that land then; also, there were some Jewish people living there also at that time, but not nearly as many as now.. CF maps of land occupation in Palestine when the apportionment was made in the late 1940s through to now. There are plenty of maps showing settlement encroachment to be found on the internet. Jewish settlers have gradually settled in and taken over control of more and more of that land since the late 1940s. I am not Jewish or Palestinian; I do not live in Palestine-Israel. I do not know which solution - a one-state or two state - will eventually be agreed, but it is fairly obvious that whatever is agreed should be as equitable in terms of status, conditions and opportunities for Palestinians as it is for Jewish people in Palestine-Israel.
Robert Lindsay, what is your point please? I do not know what you are trying to point out/prove.
Take a look at the maps of the apportionment of Palestine land in the late 1940s when Palestine was chosen to be a homeland for Jewish people if they chose to go there, compare these with the maps showing distribution of the populations now.
I am not supporting a one-state or a two-state solution here - ultimately that is for the people of Palestine-Israel to decide.
However, separately, but linked:
Today Israeli forces have entered Gaza. People are being killed in Gaza by invading Israeli forces - this is on Palestinian land. Thousands of people have died already from Israeli bombings of Gaza, some in the south of Gaza as well as the north. Where do the people of Gaza escape to? The Israeli claim is that they are aiming to destroy Hamas, at least according to mainstream media news in the UK. Unfortunately, bombs don’t discriminate finely. Many children have been killed in Gaza - more than three thousand of them - since this outbreak of violence earlier this month. I’ve heard claims that the invading Israeli army is aiming to destroy the tunnels in Gaza where they believe Hamas hides, and stores weapons. I do not know the truth of that assertion, I do not know if there are many tunnels, but I am prepared to say that it is very possibly the case that some people, who are nothing to do with Hamas, hide in tunnels in Gaza if they are able to reach any in order to avoid being killed by Israeli bombs and invading forces. A hospital in Gaza has also been threatened by invading Israeli forces whose leaders claim that Hamas is using this hospital as a hideout - the staff at the hospital deny this - I have just heard a Swedish doctor who works at this threatened hospital deny this. He says that Israelis have asserted this before now, too. It is, however, the case that more patients are at the hospital because of injury from Israeli bombing. Palestinian residents have been told to leave their homes by the invading Israeli forces. I repeat, where can they go to be safe?
How many Palestinians have to die to avenge each single death of an Israeli that was killed when Hamas attacked Israelis earlier this month? Already many thousands of people have been killed in Gaza - - many times more than were killed when Hamas killed Israelis earlier this month. Does the Israeli government know that it must stop this killing that it has ordered on Palestinian land? A Palestinian life has the same value as a Jewish life.
A ceasefire is essential, and soon. It might also be sensible for the UN to send peace-keeping forces to the area.
Jonathan Freedland is still at it. I just read his latest column, dated April 27, 2024, in which he puts words into the mouths of American student protesters in an effort to discredit the growing movement on campuses that is calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and justice for Palestinians. A poisonous pen writes with ill intent.
I appreciate your well-informed viewpoint on Israel / Palestine issues and would like to hear your views, and evidence, on the inevitable "conspiracy theory" that will emerge: 10/7Truth. Just as 9/11Truthers believe that the World Trade Center and related attacks were part of a conspiracy by American government actors to create, encourage, or allow those events for purposes of enabling greater American intervention in the Mideast, so it will be alleged - with or without evidence - that the same is true of Israeli military and intelligence, i.e. that they had at least advance knowledge of, if not involvement in, the attacks and chose to allow them to go forward in order to accelerate the killing or removal of Palestinians, the "Shoah" you have referred to. If, as you say, IDF was willing to sacrifice Israeli captives of Hamas within Israel to prevent them from becoming bargaining chips as hostages, why not countenance a greater sacrifice so long as deniability was preserved? Please understand that I have no particular knowledge or evidence here, and am not claiming this is true, but speculating about what I see as an inevitable position, given that it would serve certain interests, whether political or remunerative. Finally, I must congratulate you on being perhaps the ONLY Brit (or Canadian) who does not mispronounce the word "often".
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appreciative regards, karim, for your approbatory designation
May i ask a question please, Jonathan Cook - or anyone else who may have an answer. It is one i am frequently asked by Israeli apologists and i am baffled as to how to answer honestly. 'Does Israel have the right to exist?' I am not suggesting that they do not - but it is a rhyzomatically incendiary question in the context of why Palestine has not been afforded that same right.
That has been answered by others. Not in its present form. All israelis have the right to exist, just as any people in any other country. The Israeli government's apartheid rule and the oppression of others are the aspects of Israel that should cease to exist. The reparations of wrongs can also go a long way towards mutual tolerance.
Are you ,JC, suggesting that were Hamas to continue governing Gaza and take over the West Bank from the PA, that Jews and Palestinians could live together peacefully in one state? Would it be a democratic state? If so, what's the bases for such thinking? If this is not what you are suggesting, what are you suggesting should occur, what kind of a state would be created with Jews and Palestinians living in it (or perhaps there would be no Jews)?
parlous appreciation for your 'ben trovato' approbatory consideration, robert lindsey. any plaudits should be aimed at the inestimable jonathan cook.
thank you, sir stiver. my unalloyed pleasure to have you zeroing in on on the same raster scan and taking the time to absorb and address the comments here.
appreciative regards for your approbatory responses, robert stiver.
tnx for your edifying elucubrations, robert. according to prof walid khalidi's 1984 publication by the harvard univ. press, arabs owned, cultivated, or were in stewardship of 96% of the brits' palestinian territory in 1947/'48, when the european jews arrived on that turf. the ottomans' defeat in 1917 by the brits at the battle of megiddo terminated ottoman suzerainty over palestine.
The Groan is essentially the North London Jewish/Zionist Chronicle nowadays... Has been for a while since it was spooked after the Assange story and Gates bought in... Viner continues the rot.
Excellent, Mr. Cook...pure observational and journalistic excellence. Thank you for being you.
Curiously (or not?), we in Zionist-Occupied America have our own Freedland, and the names have an ominous similarity: the NYTimes' Thomas Friedman. Freedland and Friedman evoke to me an image of "identical evil twins" on the ZioMSM scene on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Each, "all the way, at the end of every day for decades encompassing at least 70 genocide-abuilding years," is a Zionist *colonial* snake in the grass...er, in the poisoned/toxic Gazan (and West Bank) soil.
Viva Palestine! Resist *colonial* Zionism, all the way until justice, dignity, accountability et al have been realized!
I am arguing that, to stop the bombing, we need an urgent debate about Hamas. I believe that there is a direct parallel with Northern Ireland, where the UK Government never stopped working with Sinn Fein, even whilst their military wing, the IRA, were bombing Britain.
I have set up an open letter to the UK Home Secretary. Please sign and share https://www.gopetition.com/petitions/call-for-removal-of-hamas-political-wing-from-the-uks-proscribed-list-of-terrorist-bodies.html
my unalloyed gratitude for your conciliatory approbation, donna R.
Freedland is just one reason I gave up reading the Guardian.Him and the way Julian Assange was treated.
Me too, Frankie Douglas, plus a couple of other reasons too.
Thank you Jonathan (Cook) for another wise analysis.
Many years ago - when I used to read The Guardian - I was struck by Freedland’s enduring vindictive victimhood, which I thought then drove him, whether consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or not, to promote feelings of guilt in readers, and, most probably, with the purpose of helping to silence criticism/condemnation of the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinian population of Palestine-Israel. In this current piece of Freedland’s, which you so ably analyse Jonathan, he, Freedland, could be understood as being quite dangerously provocative by 1) invoking images of football terraces, and a reminder of emotion - potentially - running high in those scenarios and 2) by reducing thought, and contributions that reveal sympathy for the Palestinian people in that land, to what he has decided is ‘binary’, tit-for-tat thinking.
Furthermore, he pretends to assert - then, seemingly, withdraws this ‘assertion’ - that the thinking of people like us, (-who express horror at, and the wrongness of, what the population of Gaza is being made to suffer by the Israeli government,-) can be shrugged off as merely revealing ‘the moral failing of the distant spectator’…but he actually makes sure that he includes that labelling of us anyway! I conclude that he really believes, (and definitely wants us to know what he believes), that we do have a position of ‘moral failing’ on this issue.
Freedland’s framing of his labelling of us is chicanery.
The point is that ALL the inhabitants, Jewish or Palestinian, of Palestine-Israel have a the need to feel safe, and to have equality in all rights too
Well, Robert Lindsay, that is how most Palestinians must feel now, too. When Palestine was chosen to be a homeland for Jewish people after WW2 it was not empty land. Palestinians had access to use nearly all of that land then; also, there were some Jewish people living there also at that time, but not nearly as many as now.. CF maps of land occupation in Palestine when the apportionment was made in the late 1940s through to now. There are plenty of maps showing settlement encroachment to be found on the internet. Jewish settlers have gradually settled in and taken over control of more and more of that land since the late 1940s. I am not Jewish or Palestinian; I do not live in Palestine-Israel. I do not know which solution - a one-state or two state - will eventually be agreed, but it is fairly obvious that whatever is agreed should be as equitable in terms of status, conditions and opportunities for Palestinians as it is for Jewish people in Palestine-Israel.
Robert Lindsay, what is your point please? I do not know what you are trying to point out/prove.
Take a look at the maps of the apportionment of Palestine land in the late 1940s when Palestine was chosen to be a homeland for Jewish people if they chose to go there, compare these with the maps showing distribution of the populations now.
I am not supporting a one-state or a two-state solution here - ultimately that is for the people of Palestine-Israel to decide.
However, separately, but linked:
Today Israeli forces have entered Gaza. People are being killed in Gaza by invading Israeli forces - this is on Palestinian land. Thousands of people have died already from Israeli bombings of Gaza, some in the south of Gaza as well as the north. Where do the people of Gaza escape to? The Israeli claim is that they are aiming to destroy Hamas, at least according to mainstream media news in the UK. Unfortunately, bombs don’t discriminate finely. Many children have been killed in Gaza - more than three thousand of them - since this outbreak of violence earlier this month. I’ve heard claims that the invading Israeli army is aiming to destroy the tunnels in Gaza where they believe Hamas hides, and stores weapons. I do not know the truth of that assertion, I do not know if there are many tunnels, but I am prepared to say that it is very possibly the case that some people, who are nothing to do with Hamas, hide in tunnels in Gaza if they are able to reach any in order to avoid being killed by Israeli bombs and invading forces. A hospital in Gaza has also been threatened by invading Israeli forces whose leaders claim that Hamas is using this hospital as a hideout - the staff at the hospital deny this - I have just heard a Swedish doctor who works at this threatened hospital deny this. He says that Israelis have asserted this before now, too. It is, however, the case that more patients are at the hospital because of injury from Israeli bombing. Palestinian residents have been told to leave their homes by the invading Israeli forces. I repeat, where can they go to be safe?
How many Palestinians have to die to avenge each single death of an Israeli that was killed when Hamas attacked Israelis earlier this month? Already many thousands of people have been killed in Gaza - - many times more than were killed when Hamas killed Israelis earlier this month. Does the Israeli government know that it must stop this killing that it has ordered on Palestinian land? A Palestinian life has the same value as a Jewish life.
A ceasefire is essential, and soon. It might also be sensible for the UN to send peace-keeping forces to the area.
.