The surprise victory in the Democratic party's New York primaries by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – ousting the sitting Representative, who is a party grandee and great friend to Wall Street – is certainly cause for optimism.
The success of Ocasio-Cortez, a socialist and supporter of Bernie Sanders, is a sign that ordinary Democrats want a real progressive alternative to the hate politics of Donald Trump and the corporate-friendly politics of the Democratic party establishment....
Less noted in the coverage is that Ocasio-Cortez has been outspoken in her criticism of Israel. Midway through campaigning she even called the executions of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza a "massacre" – and it has done her no harm, even in New York. That serves as a positive indicator of the waning influence of the Israel lobby, and how quickly Israel could become for the first time a partisan issue in US politics.
In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters ought to take comfort from this success. They need to face down the Israel lobby and its bogus claims about an anti-semitism "crisis", and remain steadfast on justice for the Palestinians.
My latest: The humble kite has awakened Israel and the outside world to the cost of leaving two million human beings to rot. It has been transformed into a flaming emissary, bringing a new kind of reckoning to Israel when it lands on the other side of the fence encaging Gaza.
Media Lens on the astonishingly transparent role played by the corporate media – most especially the Guardian – in exploiting the World Cup as an opportunity to advance an official western *political* narrative against Russia.
Because the media almost always treats sport as a matter that transcends politics, the intention behind the Russia-bashing rhetoric is all the more glaring, the media's propaganda role all the more blatant, the stenography function of the sports commentators all the more unmissable.
My latest on how Israel is exploiting the delay in Trump's 'deal of the century' peace plan to get on with seizing large areas of Palestinian land has been translated into French.
The original in English can be found here: http://www.middleeasteye.net/…/us-donald-trump-deal-of-cent…
My latest: Israel isn't waiting for Trump to unveil his 'deal of the century' peace plan. It knows it has a nod from the US to seize Palestinian land - and is already getting on with it.
A worthy cause. A documentary crew are crowdfunding a film that follows two groups of runners – one Palestinian, the other from the UK – as they train for the Bethlehem and Edinburgh marathons. It is a film that will expose audiences to daily life under occupation for Palestinians and, more specifically, to the terrible movement restrictions they live under.
Good piece by Larry Derfner in the US Jewish paper Forward examining the patently ridiculous excuses dreamt up by Israel to justify massacring unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza. Sadly, it works with most Israeli Jews, and a section of US Jewish public opinion, if the comments below the article are anything to go by.
If you're looking for a quick guide to how a small group of plutocrats got to run the world and destroy the planet – and what we need to do to stop them – you've just found it. I won't even try to highlight sections of the text. Every word is fiercely important.
My latest blog on how to liberate ourselves from a world of dangerous but consoling illusions peddled by the corporate media has been translated into German.
The original in English can be found here: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/…/…/corporate-media-illusions/
My latest: As critics become more effective at exposing its deceptions, Israel is making ever more strenuous efforts to block out anything that might burst the bubble of illusions that preserved a sense of moral superiority.
My latest: When we fail to hold Israel to account, when we elevate the rights of a state over the rights of the Palestinians it victimises, we not only fuel the prejudices of the anti-semite but make his arguments appealing to others. The false logic of the Guardian in censoring Steve Bell's cartoon.
My latest blog post can be read here: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/…/2018…/guardian-anti-semites/
Israelis call it hasbara. Let's call it by its real name: lying.
Executed Palestinian medic Razan al-Najjar, who threw an Israeli gas canister away from the wounded, is accused by Israel of 'throwing a bomb'.
And an interview of her is manipulated to misrepresent a statement in which she said was serving as a 'human shield' for the injured into a statement that she was a 'human shield' for Hamas.
...If these easily provable lies are what Israel resorts to discredit a high-profile victim of its shoot-to-kill policy, what even more blatant lies is it telling to justify all the many other Palestinian deaths?
My latest: In censoring a cartoon of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Guardian transgressed not only against cartoonist Steve Bell and the cause of justice for the Palestinians, but also against Jews and their long-term safety.
The Guardian's main cartoonist, Steve Bell, has just run slam bang up against a problem I described in a blog post last week: the growing mystification of anti-semitism.
The paper pulled a cartoon critical of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and British counterpart Theresa May on the grounds that it employed "anti-semitic tropes".
Bell is understandably furious: not only at being the latest victim of the anti-semitism accusation but at the fact that the Guardian ha...s prioritised (again) the sensitivities of Israeli leaders over the suffering of Palestinians at Israel's hands – in this case, paramedic Razan al-Najjar, who was murdered by an Israeli sniper.
What cartoonist is not going to reach the conclusion from these repeated episodes that it is safer to avoid drawing cartoons critical of Israeli leaders? Netanyahu will be delighted.
Bell's spat with the Guardian is here: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/…/guardian-cartoonist-stev…
My article on the mystification of anti-semitism is here: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/…/naomi-wolf-and-anti-semiti…/
This article in the Electronic Intifada on Al Jazeera's decision to shelve its expose of the Israel lobby in the US (the follow-up to a similar expose of the inferior UK wing of the lobby) tells you much about how the media and geo-politics work.
MIchael Parenti once observed: “You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.”
In tackling the power of the Israel lobby in the US, Al-Jazeera just experienced the extent of its leash.
