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

by Jonathan Cook

'Timely and important . . . by far the most penetrating and comprehensive [book] on the subject to date. . . . This work should be required reading.' Nur Masalha, Director of Holy Land Studies, St Mary's College, University of Surrey, and author of The Politics of Denial (2003) 'An original and powerful book.' Ilan Pappe, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Haifa University, and author of A Modern History of Palestine (2004) 'Very impressive . . . Some of his findings will astound even the knowledgeable reader.' Salim Tamari, Director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies What does Israel hope to achieve with its recent withdrawal from Gaza and the building of a 700km wall around the West Bank? Jonathan Cook, who has reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the Second Intifada, presents a lucid account of the Jewish state's motives. The heart of the issue, he argues, is demography. Israel fears the moment when the region's Palestinians - Israel's own Palestinian citizens and those in the Occupied Territories - become a majority. Inevitable comparisons with apartheid in South Africa will be drawn. The book charts Israel's increasingly desperate responses to its -- military repression of Palestinian dissent on both sides of the Green Line -- accusations that Israel's Palestinian citizens and the Palestinian Authority are secretly conspiring to subvert the Jewish state from within -- a ban on marriages between Israel's Palestinian population and Palestinians living under occupation to prevent a right of return 'through the back door' -- the redrawing of the Green Line to create an expanded, fortress state where only Jewish blood and Jewish religion count Ultimately, concludes the author, these abuses will lead to a third, far deadlier intifada.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion, Politics

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

There is more than one author with this name on Goodreads. See Jonathan Cook, Jonathan Cook, Jonathan Cook, Jonathan M. Cook, Jonathan A. Cook, Jonathan Chase Cook, Jonathan C. Cook.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.

He is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006)
Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008)
Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008)
He has also contributed chapters and essays to several edited volumes on Israel-Palestine.

In 2011 Jonathan was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. The judges’ citation reads: “Jonathan Cook’s work on Palestine and Israel, especially his de-coding of official propaganda and his outstanding analysis of events often obfuscated in the mainstream, has made him one of the reliable truth-tellers in the Middle East.”

The same year, Project Censored voted a report by Jonathan, “Israel brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank“, one of the most important stories censored in 2009-10.

Jonathan’s reports and commentaries have appeared in the Guardian, the Observer, the Times and the New Statesman (London); The International Herald Tribune and Le Monde diplomatique (Paris); Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo); The National (Abu Dhabi); The Daily Star (Beirut); The Middle East Report and Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Washington); and The Irish Times (Dublin). He has contributed to many online sites, such as CounterPunch, Israeli Occupation Archive, Al-Jazeera.com and Electronic Intifada.

He has been a senior consultant and lead writer on two major reports by the International Crisis Group, a leading think-tank based in Washington and Brussels dealing with conflict resolution.

Reviews

[ثائر أبو قيس · Rating 3 out of 5]

الكتاب يتحدث عن وضع عرب إسرائيل ومايعانوه من عنصرية وتعامل سيء ومحاولات حكومية لفصلهم وعزلهم خوفاً من التغيير الديموغرافي الذي تخشاه إسرائيل والذي سيقلب الموازين لصالح الفلسطينيين…كما استشهد بعدد من الإعتداءات عليهم والتعديات على أرواحهم وممتلكاتهم ومصادرتها وإقامة مسرحيات إعلامية تظهر للعالم كمحاكمات تظهر شفافية وموضوعية إسرائيل…يستعرض أيضاً الواقع المعاشي السيء لعرب إسرائيل والتمييز بينهم وبين اليهود في المزايا الحكومية من دعم وصحة وتعليم الخ…الكتاب يقدم مادة غنية لكل مهتم يريد الإطلاع على واقع العرب في إسرائيل..