Customer Reviews

Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State

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1 star:		(5)

 

 

As someone who has been covering the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for six years and comes up against the sheer racism and coordinated efforts of PR Zionism, this book is invaluable. The apartheid system that Israel embraces, the euphemisms and omissions clandestinely hidden in its claims of democracy which hide its overt racism, Cook documents to a T.

This book exposes the ugly side of Zionism and Israel, the racism and disregard for non-Jewish human life those of us who write on this issue have known about and often get labeled anti-Semitic for exposing. But far more chilling is the similarities to how America now operates.
The similarities to Homeland Security, the NSA and even our own police forces being used to spy upon our own citizens frighteningly obvious in this statement by Haifa University professor Ilan Pappe, found on page 79:
"My fear even before the outbreak of the intifada was that the Shin Bet, (CIA in Israel) was under-employed in the occupied territories because of the withdrawals agreed under the Oslo Accords. The security apparatus (in Israel) is huge, and a lot of people work for it--50 percent of academics for example, are employed in some capacity as advisers or counselors--so there's a lot of interest in keeping it going.
Because the service still had the same manpower and the same means at its disposal, it needed to change target--and to justify this change of target it had to come up with a new story; that there had been a fundamental change in the way the Palestinians inside Israel were behaving. The Shin Bet argument was that Israel needed to increase the involvement of the secret services inside Israel, that the police could not operate alone. They had to prove there was a sinister side to the activity of the Palestinian minority that could only be deciphered by the secret service and could only be confronted by the secret service." Emphasis in original

This 'sinister action' that Israeli Arabs were undertaking? They began protesting for equal rights, the same rights to property, employment, education, housing, opportunity, civil services and safety enjoyed by the Jewish citizens of the state. In short, using the tactics made famous by Martin Luther King and Gandhi, they lobbied through peaceful demonstrations for a state that recognized all its citizens, not just those of the Jewish faith. For doing so, often Israel's Arab citizens are maimed, beaten and killed.
To prevent peaceful demonstrations and the achievement of equal rights by a minority, the state of Israel turned on its own citizens and made them the enemy within. Now imagine what happens in the United States when Americans begin to realize our constitutional rights have been completely discarded and we begin to peacefully organize to get them back. Now we, those of us wanting rights become the enemy within because we become a threat to the status quo and state.
Blood and Religion enables Americans to dispel many myths about Israel and it provides the missing pieces as to why the conflict in that region, the root cause of unrest in the Middle East continues. But more importantly, the eerie similarities to the increased militarization of our own society and scapegoating of `others' whether liberal or conservative, legal or illegal, Arab or Jew, Hispanic or Black make this a must read for any American who cares about our republic, our rights and our morality. If we're not careful, we could become Israel and this is not in the best interests of our nation, people or the world. Let us learn from the mistakes and hatred of others thus saving ourselves from becoming as they.

I think that anyone who wants to understand the context for the current Occupaton of Palestine should read this important analysis. Most people are unaware of the pervasive discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel that is institutionalized in Israeli society. As an American Jew who has spent time in the West Bank and Israel as part of human rights delegatations, I have seen the impacts of the very structure of Israeli society that treats its Palestinian citizens as second class. Jonathan Cook explores the complex web of Israel's government by Ministry and Regulation, in the absence of a Constitution and under the all encompassing justification of security above all, regardless of the impact on the human rights of its non-jewish citizens. Give this book a chance and it will open your mind and provide a shocking perspective on what it really means to operate a "Jewish" State rather than a society dedicated to equality for all its citizens.

Jonathan Cook's Blood and Religion offers a different perspective on a problem if continuing import. Rather than focusing on the Israel/Palestinian problem as a dispute between two "states," Cook focuses on the internal problems in Israel regarding the disposition of Israeli Arabs and non-Jewish citizens and their contradictory role in Israeli society. Although officially "Israeli citizens," they are demographic "enemy's within," due to the legal mandate of Israel as a "Jewish State." As Israel is not a nation of its citizens, but a Jewish State, what if non-Jews became majority? What if they had political parties which could represent them effectively? What if they could change the nature of Israel from within using democratic means? According to Cook, this is the real threat that Israel faces with the issues of the "right to return," the extremist settler movement, and the decision to build a wall and limit the movement of Palestinians. Israel can't remain both Jewish and retain the cloak of democracy without tightly controlling the non-Jewish population in the area.

In some respects the situation is similar to the American South during the heyday of Jim Crow. The only way to keep a "white man's democracy" was through the systematic denial of rights to African Americans. Of course, there was no "black state" created in the US south (akin to Bantustans in South Africa), however, voter intimidation, violence, residential segregation and gerrymandering generated a similar result.

Overall, the book is interesting and well written and offers a different perspective on the problem. It is a little repetitive and some of the chapters could have been pared down, but overall it is a good read.

The hasbaristas and apologists for Israel make claims that are beyond ridiculous:

1- Being "land-poor" does not give you any special rights. There are many smaller countries who don't regularly bomb their neighbors.

2- Israel bought its land: Nonsense! At the time of the UN separation resolution of 1947, the Jewish Yeshuv and its allies owned an estimated 9-11% of mandatory Palestine; even much of that had been acquired by coercion and violence. What do you think the Palmach, Haganah and Stern gangs were doing to the Arabs, handing out candy ? Read the history of the atrocities of the Yeshuv and massacres of the 1947-49 war, not from Arabs but from Zionist authors like Benny Morris (although he excuses all the mass killings with "you cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs"!)

3- "there is a good chance that Israel will simply acquire more land, probably by purchase"!! From whom exactly? Was it trying to purchase land from Lebanon this past summer?

4- The repeat of "even if Israel had stolen land ..." is a subtle Freudian admission of guilt for what actually happened.

5- To compare Israel to Germany or France or Switzerland is bizarre. The US would be more apt: a colonial power occupying and settling a land by committing mass killings of the natives.

6- To excuse Israel treating its Arabs as sub-humans by saying some countries have official churches is a tragic farce. Do any of those countries have separate laws of marriage and land-ownership and movement for people who do not belong to those churches? And Israeli law does not treat "Jewishness" as a matter of faith; you have all the rights of a Jew, including aliya, even if you are an atheist Jew. It is treated as a race. That is why Israel's practices are aptly called racist, and apartheid. And how come when it comes to bigotry, suddenly Saudi Arabia becomes Israel's role model?

7- "Yes, Israel ought to have defined borders. When it does, I'm sure Cook won't like them" If that is not self-avowed expansionist hegemony, I don't know what is?

8- "He says that Israel is interested in expelling its Arabs. That is not true." I suggest you read some of the editorials in Israeli papers advocating "Arab transfer"; how Orwellian. Have you heard of Israeli cabinet minister Avigdor Lieberman?

9- "Arabs have plenty of land. They'll keep it unless they lose it. Those Arabs who favor violence as a means to change borders are risking millions of square miles." The preposterousness of this claim and the ensuing threat are obvious, so I will not comment.

I could go on, but any sane reader will follow the line.

To tackle just two of the pieces of nonsense in Jill's review.
1. "Israel is a land poor state" - so is Monaco. Just because a
nation is small it does not give them the right to steal land from their neighbours.
2. The idiocy about Israel being a state for Israelis like
Hungary is for Hungary or Germany is for Germans. Actually,
Isreal is different. Germans and Hungarians didn't
steal Germany or Hungary from Arabs (or anybody else).If you've ever been a victim of burglary or mugging you'll know the difference.

BLOOD AND RELIGION: THE UNMASKING OF THE JEWISH AND DEMOCRATIC STATE comes from a reporter on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and provides an argument tracing the Jewish state's motives - to avoid a Palestinian majority in the region. Any interested in the history and progress of Zionism will find BLOOD AND RELIGION a thought-provoking survey.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I had read a lot on Israel/Palestine before I read this. I had read all the classics by Chomsky, Finkelstein, Khalidi, Said, Masalha, Pappe, and Roy. I thought there wasn't much more that could be written Isreal/Palestine that would bring fresh intellectual excitement and understanding. Yet this book, by an author I had barely heard of, single handedly revitalized my interest in the issue, so much so that I booked a Global Exchange tour in Israel/Palestine. What makes this book so powerful? It goes into incredible detail about the extent of racism in the Jewish academic, political and military communities in Israel. Its subject is the Israeli establishment's demographic fears of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. He especially focuses on the view that the they are considered a fifth column trying to destroy the Zioninst state from within. Cook describes a world of paranoid Israeli policy makers where words like "transfer and "enforced removal" are spoken openly. Cook helps you understand how important a threat Israeli Palestinians are to the Zionist project. Even though this book came out in 2006 it is still very relevant today with the recent violence in the Israeli town of Acre, which once again exposed the widespread intolerance many Israeli Jews have for the Arabs who are citizens of a the Israeli state. Cook is a powerful writer. You will not be disappointed with this or any other of his books. For more on what Israel's Palestinian citizens have to deal with I highly recommend The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide.

In the 1980s, Israel's "new historians" challenged a Zionist narrative that had been publicly unquestioned in Israel and the United States. Among these historians and those of us who have followed their work, Israel could never again be viewed as an underdog David challenged by an Arab Goliath. Since then, much of the debate among those who are increasingly critical of Israel's actions has instead addressed the problem of whether this biblical metaphor should in fact be turned on its head. Although there has for decades been much evidence to support this argument, three recent, well-researched books have made it virtually uncontroversial to assert that the post-World War I Zionist movement, sponsored by superpowers Britain and the U.S. (and indeed by the Soviet Union immediately after World War II), should no more be seen as the underdog than we now see British or Spanish colonialists in relation to Native Americans. In turn, Palestinians can no more be sensibly called anti-Semitic than indigenous Americans can be called "anti-European."

These three books evoke the essence of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict with metaphors of confinement, separation, and exclusion: the "iron cage," the "iron wall," and the "glass wall." In The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Palestinian-American Professor Rashid Khalidi documents British support for a Jewish national movement in Palestine since World War I, and opposition to a Palestinian national movement, most violently during the revolt of 1936-39. The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, by which the British ruled from 1923-1948, endorsed a "national home" for the Jewish people while never citing the Palestinians by name. Thus, "the (90%) Arab majority was effectively ignored as a national and political entity."

This favoritism was reflected in the brutal suppression of the Palestinian revolt, which effectively decimated Palestinian leadership and resistance thereafter. It was also reflected in the passivity with which Britain responded after World War II both to Zionist terrorism against the British administration, and to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians which began well before the end of the mandate in May 1948. It has long been conventional Israeli wisdom that the Zionist movement had to confront both a British Goliath and an Arab Goliath, all in the wake of the Holocaust. It is clear that the Zionist David allied itself with the British Goliath, not only overwhelming a Palestinian national movement with profound internal problems, but violently "transferring" over 700,000 Palestinians with relatively little resistance.

In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has documented the violent expulsion of the Palestinians from the end of 1947 into 1949. It has long been established that the Palestinians fled not in response to "Arab broadcasts," but to violent intimidation by Jewish forces, including unprovoked massacres. Based on Pappé's meticulous research, it is now clear that this ethnic cleansing was premeditated, not retaliatory, and half completed before the feeble intervention of Arab armies in May of 1948. "Official Israeli historiography describes April 1948 as a turning point. . . . If there was a turning point in April, it was the shift from sporadic attacks and counter-attacks on the Palestinian civilian population toward the systematic mega-operation of ethnic cleansing that now followed." This ethnic cleansing was based on a belief among Israeli leaders that an "iron wall" would be required to separate a Jews from Palestinians, who were understood then as now to pose not a military but demographic threat to a Jewish state.

This demographic threat is addressed by Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in the Arab Israeli city of Nazareth, in Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. The 150,000 Palestinians who remained in Israel after 1948 are now over 1 million, over 20% of the population, a percentage that increases due to their high birthrate. This presents a problem for a Jewish state that has used a harshly and "legal" discriminatory "glass wall" between its Arab and Jewish citizens that is "needed to cloak the contradictions inherent in the concept of Israel as a `Jewish and democratic' state." These contradictions have been exposed recently by Israeli attacks on unarmed Palestinian civilians during the outbreak of the intifada in 2000, by increasing and unwarranted suspicion of the loyalty of historically quiescent Arab Israelis who demand social equality, and by increasing calls for expulsion by popular right-wing politicians. All of this has resulted in plans to re-draw borders in order to transfer as many as a quarter of Israel's Palestinian citizens to a future Palestinian state, an outcome in no way supported by those effected.

Metaphors of separation, confinement, and exclusion are made literally concrete by the separation wall that has been built inside the occupied West Bank. While largely invisible to Israelis, in areas where visible to Israelis it has been, according to Cook, "painted with murals on the Israeli side, reimagining the view that was now missing while making sure that it was empty of the Palestinian villages that could be seen before its construction." Pappé adds that also eliminated are "the people who live in them."

Written in clear and concise manner. The author hardly states his opinions, but rather presents various interviews, public statements made by Israeli politicians and top officials in the Israeli media. The notes / citations provided in this book are great. Jonathan Cook clearly states (and proves) that the majority of his sources are from the Israeli media. Arguments are well presented. The hypocrisy of the "only democratic state in the middle east" is neatly unfolded with facts and figures.

Excellent work !

Andrew Field, In a democracy you're entitled to one vote, like everyone else. Reluctantly, I am intervening to give my own book five stars to cancel out one of your two one-star reviews.