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 Zionistt 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.

This is an excellent contribution to the many volumes that are now appearing to explain what happened and what is happening in Israel/Palestine or should that be Palestine/Israel.

Should you believe as I do that there are:

No Palestinian peace partners that shall ever be acceptable to the Israeli leadership. Unless that partner supports the complete expulsion of the Palestinians west of the Jordan River

Israel shall never return to the green line as a border.

They shall never give up the aquifers that now exist on the Israeli side of the wall any more than they shall return the mega tons of topsoil that they removed from Lebanon during their occupation.

They fully intend to maintain and compress the Bantustans that have been created in the West Bank and the giant prison of Gaza.

They shall never allow a Palestinian state or even some form of Palestinian autonomy to viably exist anywhere in what was Palestine.

Etc. Etc.

As at May 2008, permits for another 100 or so new dwellings have been granted in the west bank.

This volume shall reinforce your beliefs, should you not believe the above this book shall effectively challenge your beliefs. Although it is unlikely you would read this volume as I believe those that do not believe the above are in their various forms of denial avoiding learning.

The author's use of quotations from prominent Israeli's to illustrate the point he is making is an excellent support of his arguments. They are presented logically and with common sense.

These quotations, probably better than the authors words clarify and explain the Israeli approach and philosophy.

For example heading Chapter 4

"Let us approach (the Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories) and say that we have no solutions, that you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wants to leave can-and we shall see were this leads. In five years we may have 200,000 less people-and that is a matter of enormous importance.
Moshe Dayan (1967)

"Live like dogs" sort of says it all.

It is a situation in that a group of western migrants or more specifically Europeans and East Europeans that follow a particular religious belief have colonized an area with the same zealotry of that of western nations two plus centuries earlier. But is this case behaving with incredible European arrogance they have somehow justified this repressive action buy believing their religious bent somehow gives them nationhood.

The result is that we have a so called Jewish democratic state, not the state of Israel, and Jonathon Cook's explanation of this and the identity card system is enlightening.

I do not see how an Identity card system that identifies people by race or religion can possibility operate in a state that claims to be democratic.

Read this book, add it to your collective knowledge, tell a friend and maybe some day soon the world will stay stop, you are behaving reprehensibility and put a stop to Israelis behaving badly.

As an aside I would like to offer 2 other quotations.

From Blood and Religion. Page 109

A quote from Moshe Ya'alon Israel's military chief of staffing in the early 2000's speaking about Israeli arabs.

"When you are attacked externally, you can see the attack, you are wounded. Cancer on the other hand, is something internal. Therefore I find it more disturbing, because here the diagnosis in critical."

And from The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Page 114

"As the Nazi doctor Fritz Klein claimed, "I want to preserve life. And out of respect for Human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased Body. The jew is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind.""

I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Go Well; Stay Well;
Stay True Blue

This is an excellent contribution to the many volumes that are now appearing to explain what happened and what is happening in Israel/Palestine or should that be Palestine/Israel.

Should you believe as I do that there are:

No Palestinian peace partners that shall ever be acceptable to the Israeli leadership. Unless that partner supports the complete expulsion of the Palestinians west of the Jordan River

Israel shall never return to the green line as a border.

They shall never give up the aquifers that now exist on the Israeli side of the wall any more than they shall return the mega tons of topsoil that they removed from Lebanon during their occupation.

They fully intend to maintain and compress the Bantustans that have been created in the West Bank and the giant prison of Gaza.

They shall never allow a Palestinian state or even some form of Palestinian autonomy to viably exist anywhere in what was Palestine.

Etc. Etc.

As at May 2008, permits for another 100 or so new dwellings have been granted in the west bank.

This volume shall reinforce your beliefs, should you not believe the above this book shall effectively challenge your beliefs. Although it is unlikely you would read this volume as I believe those that do not believe the above are in their various forms of denial avoiding learning.

The author's use of quotations from prominent Israeli's to illustrate the point he is making is an excellent support of his arguments. They are presented logically and with common sense.

These quotations, probably better than the authors words clarify and explain the Israeli approach and philosophy.

For example heading Chapter 4

"Let us approach (the Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories) and say that we have no solutions, that you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wants to leave can-and we shall see were this leads. In five years we may have 200,000 less people-and that is a matter of enormous importance.
Moshe Dayan (1967)

"Live like dogs" sort of says it all.

It is a situation in that a group of western migrants or more specifically Europeans and East Europeans that follow a particular religious belief have colonized an area with the same zealotry of that of western nations two plus centuries earlier. But is this case behaving with incredible European arrogance they have somehow justified this repressive action buy believing their religious bent somehow gives them nationhood.

The result is that we have a so called Jewish democratic state, not the state of Israel, and Jonathon Cook's explanation of this and the identity card system is enlightening.

I do not see how an Identity card system that identifies people by race or religion can possibility operate in a state that claims to be democratic.

Read this book, add it to your collective knowledge, tell a friend and maybe some day soon the world will stay stop, you are behaving reprehensibility and put a stop to Israelis behaving badly.

This is a book to be avoided at all costs. It is a vile and pernicious piece of lying garbage spewed forth from the pen of an arch antisemite.

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.

This is as biased a book covering the Israel-Palestine debate as one could ever have the misfortune of reading. If a man from Mars knowing nothing of the conflict arrived on Earth and read the book, he would gain the impression that the Palestinians desire to live peacefully side by side Israelis (whether in one state or two), while the wicked Israelis oppress them for absolutely no reason. The extreme security threats Israel faces - from both the Palestinians and the broader Arab world - are completely overlooked. It is difficult to take the author seriously given he wilfully overlooks the context in which Israel acts. This is more an exercise in Israel bashing than a genuine attempt to present the reader with information. Don't waste your money.

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."

Cook is well known for being extremely anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, to the point where his views bare no relationship to reality. Although he doesn't explicitly say so, it is clear he does not accept that Israel has a right to exist in any borders. Indeed, he appears to find it an outrage that the Jewish people have a country of their own. Cook seemingly reserves this right to followers of every other religion, with Judaism being the exception. Cook's central tenets are also contradictory. On the one hand, he states that a Jewish state can't be democratic. Leaving the absurdity of this notion aside, he asserts that Israel is concerned with Israel's changing demography, attributable to the Palestinians' higher birth rate. However, to the extent that Israel is concerned with demography, it can only be because Israel is in fact democratic, so that as the proportion of the population comprised by Palestinians increases, the Palestinians will gain more and more power, by being able to elect Arab politicians. Thus, Israel's supposed demographic concerns only take shape precisely because Israel is democratic. If you're a hardened Israel basher, definitely a must read. For everyone else, find something written by a slightly more objective author.

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.

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.

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.

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

It is important that books on Israel be biased because than they invariably must be 'required reading' at University. So goes this important volume that explores the very frequently explored 'myth' of the 'Jewish democracy' in Israel. The primary point here is that no democracy can also be Jewish. Secndarily the author shows that by withdrawing from the territories, fearing the 'demographic problem' Israel is becoming an apartheid state.

Lets understand this. Spain, Sweden, Ireland and many other deocracies enshrine the existene of a national church in their constitution, in these cases a Christian church, like the Anglican church is to England. But somehow the fact that Israel enshrines Judaism in its founding documents, as Iran and Saudi and Iraq and Egypt enshrine Islam, this leads to Israel being non-democratic. As goes Israel, apparently also England.

Then we must wonder how it is possible that since Israel has left Gaza, and wants to withraw from 90% of the west bank, in order to avoid a situation where non-Jews make up more than 50% of the land between the Jordan and the sea(Mandatory Palestine or post 1967 Israel), then this isnt aparthied, which was an attept by 17% of South Africas people to dominate the other 83%, rather it is the opposite, a radical attempt to avoid apartheid.

Lastly let us wonder what is really going on here. If we compare the rights alloted to minorities in Israel(Druze, Christians, Muslims, Arabs, Armenians, Circassians and Homosexuals) with the same rights alloted to Copts in Egypt or immigrants in France we invariably find that these people have more rights, to be sure not exactly equal.

This is the problem with a book like this. It is out of context, out of date and in fact blatently wrong. But it has to be, it is an important document showing the bias engendered by the current conflict in the Middle East and it shows how Europeans view states the formerly colonized in the post-colonial period, which is to say they still want to tell those states how they should govern themselves.

Seth J. Frantzman

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.

As near as I can tell, this book supports racist oppression of the more than five million Middle Eastern Jews. Five million people should not be dismissed out of hand, but that is what I think Jonathan Cook is doing.

Cook begins by saying that "Israel's apologists have succeeded in excising from the debate about the Jewish state the language of universal human rights and justice." Well, I certainly do not do that. Of course, I am no fan of Judaism, nor am I truly an "apologist" for Israel, but there are many supporters of Israel who focus on the language of universal human rights and justice, and they include me.

The author continues by saying that "whenever a critic of Israel makes his case by citing an incident or example, the apologist will provide a counter-example or counter-incident, no matter how irrelevant." This accusation of "tu quoque" is false. For example, I'm not really an apologist, although I think Cook would consider me to be one. In fact, I am primarily a defender of academia and scholarship against its opponents. In addition, I think Cook is guilty of just the sort of thing he accuses others of: this book is mostly a set of irrelevant (and often false) anecdotes which are used to oppose the simple case that everyone, even Jews, ought to have human rights. What Cook says about Muhammad al-Durra (accusing Israelis of killing him even though it is very unlikely that they did so) is a good example of a dishonest "tu quoque" of this sort.

The author wants Israel to have defined borders, but he fails to mention just how small and land-poor Israel is. In its 1966 borders, it is a mere 8000 square miles, over half of which is desert. Even with the Golan, Gaza, Eastern Jerusalem, and the West Bank, it would have only 11,000 square miles. Yes, Israel ought to have defined borders. When it does, I'm sure Cook won't like them.

Cook talks about dispossession of the Arabs. Um, what dispossession? It did not dispossess Arabs for Jews to buy land at high prices; in areas that Jews settled, Arab populations increased. This is crude and false propaganda on the author's part.

Israel is a Jewish state. It is the only Jewish state, just as Hungary is the only Hungarian state. Just as Israel belongs in some sense to all Jews, Hungary belongs in some sense to all Hungarians, Germany belongs in some sense to all Germans, and so on. But Cook would have us believe that Israel is unique and wicked in this respect!

Should Israel treat all its citizens fairly? Of course it should. In addition, citizens need to show some loyalty to their country, especially in wartime. Those who are disloyal are unlikely to be treated well. Cook ignores the fact that much of the "mistreatment" of Arabs is due to strong identification of many Arab residents with terrorist foes of Israel.

Arabs have 5,500,000 square miles, over 500 times what Israel does. Yet Cook has the nerve to say that Israel is unwilling to give Arabs another state, and he complains that even if it were to do so, that state would be "shrunken!" That is ridiculous, and his insistence on stealing land from the land-poor is disgusting.

There is much more nonsense in this book. We read about the Temple Mount, the holiest Jewish site, which is located in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem. The Temple Mount is important to Arabs in no small part because it is the holiest Jewish site. Still, both Arabs and Jews have a right to be on it, and Cook fails to admit this, regarding Jewish visits to it as somehow unfair. And he blames unprovoked Arab aggression against the Jews in the year 2000 as a seemingly reasonable response to a visit to this site by Ariel Sharon!

The author indicates that Israel wants to engage in gratuitous expansionist wars. It doesn't, if only because such wars would destroy it. He says that Israel is interested in expelling its Arabs. That is not true. There are plenty of Arabs in Israel; Israel's neighbors are the ones who can not abide having Jews reside in their nations. In any case, the Israeli concern is not about having Arabs in their nation but about having enemies in their country in wartime.

Much of the book is about the so-called demographic problem Israel faces: there are more Arabs than Jews in the world. What Cook does not discuss is that the Arabs also have over 500 times as much land! Unless the Arabs use violence to destroy Israel, Israel will have far more than enough Jews to dominate a nation of 8,000 or 11,000 square miles. And that will get rid of the issue of how a democracy can permit Jews to have human rights. Even if Israel were to have a non-Jewish majority, that would be a problem only if there were a genuine threat to get rid of human rights. Unfortunately, it is clear that these days, a non-Jewish majority would be a big threat to do just that.

Getting rid of Israel won't help anyone. Moreover, aggression against Israel is a bad precedent. 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. I think Cook is doing us all a disservice to give implicit support to such a strategy.

As near as I can tell, this book supports racist oppression of the more than five million Middle Eastern Jews. Five million people should not be dismissed out of hand, but that is what I think Jonathan Cook is doing.

Cook begins by saying that "Israel's apologists have succeeded in excising from the debate about the Jewish state the language of universal human rights and justice." Well, I certainly do not do that. Of course, I am no fan of Judaism, nor am I truly an "apologist" for Israel, but there are many supporters of Israel who focus on the language of universal human rights and justice, and they include me.

The author continues by saying that "whenever a critic of Israel makes his case by citing an incident or example, the apologist will provide a counter-example or counter-incident, no matter how irrelevant." This accusation of "tu quoque" is false. For example, I'm not really an apologist, although I think Cook would consider me to be one. In fact, I am primarily a defender of academia and scholarship against its opponents. In addition, I think Cook is guilty of just the sort of thing he accuses others of: this book is mostly a set of irrelevant (and often false) anecdotes which are used to oppose the simple case that everyone, even Jews, ought to have human rights. What Cook says about Muhammad al-Durra (accusing Israelis of killing him even though it is very unlikely that they did so) is a good example of a dishonest "tu quoque" of this sort.

The author wants Israel to have defined borders, but he fails to mention just how small and land-poor Israel is. In its 1966 borders, it is a mere 8000 square miles, over half of which is desert. Even with the Golan, Gaza, Eastern Jerusalem, and the West Bank, it would have only 11,000 square miles. Yes, Israel ought to have defined borders. When it does, I'm sure Cook won't like them.

Cook talks about dispossession of the Arabs. Um, what dispossession? It did not dispossess Arabs for Jews to buy land at high prices; in areas that Jews settled, Arab populations increased. This is crude and false propaganda on the author's part.

Israel is a Jewish state. It is the only Jewish state, just as Hungary is the only Hungarian state. Just as Israel belongs in some sense to all Jews, Hungary belongs in some sense to all Hungarians, Germany belongs in some sense to all Germans, and so on. But Cook would have us believe that Israel is unique and wicked in this respect!

Should Israel treat all its citizens fairly? Of course it should. In addition, citizens need to show some loyalty to their country, especially in wartime. Those who are disloyal are unlikely to be treated well. Cook ignores the fact that much of the "mistreatment" of Arabs is due to strong identification of many Arab residents with terrorist foes of Israel.

Arabs have 5,500,000 square miles, over 500 times what Israel does. Yet Cook has the nerve to say that Israel is unwilling to give Arabs another state, and he complains that even if it were to do so, that state would be "shrunken!" That is ridiculous, and his insistence on stealing land from the land-poor is disgusting.

There is much more nonsense in this book. We read about the Temple Mount, the holiest Jewish site, which is located in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem. The Temple Mount is important to Arabs mostly because it is the holiest Jewish site. Still, both Arabs and Jews have a right to be on it, and Cook fails to admit this, regarding Jewish visits to it as somehow unfair. And he blames unprovoked Arab aggression against the Jews in 2000 as a seemingly reasonable response to a visit to this site by Ariel Sharon!

The author indicates that Israel wants to engage in gratuitous expansionist wars. It doesn't, if only because such wars would destroy it. He says that Israel is interested in expelling its Arabs. That is not true. There are plenty of Arabs in Israel; Israel's neighbors are the ones who can not abide having Jews reside in their nations. In any case, the Israeli concern is not about having Arabs in their nation but about having enemies in their country in wartime.

Much of the book is about the so-called demographic problem Israel faces: there are more Arabs than Jews in the world. What Cook does not discuss is that the Arabs also have over 500 times as much land! Unless the Arabs use violence to destroy Israel, Israel will have far more than enough Jews to dominate a nation of 8,000 or 11,000 square miles. And that will get rid of the issue of how a democracy can permit Jews to have human rights. Even if Israel were to have a non-Jewish majority, that would be a problem only if there were a genuine threat to get rid of human rights. Unfortunately, it is clear that these days, a non-Jewish majority would be a big threat to do just that.

Getting rid of Israel won't help anyone. Moreover, aggression against Israel is a bad precedent. 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. I think Cook is doing us all a disservice to give implicit support to such a strategy.

Jonathan Cooke is an idiot: the 'Blood and Religion' to which he refers are, of course, identity by Jewish descent and the practice of Judaism, unsurprisingly important in the largest Jewish community in the world, the Jewish state of Israel.

Pluto Press paid him a not inconsiderable sum to make this discovery. More fool they.

Unfortunately he couldn't even get his basic research about either correct, with the result his book is an obsessive rant based on his own masturbatory ramblings.

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.

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. Israel IS NOT, and no country for that matter, a democracy. It is a racist state which holds those of the Jewish faith in esteem and those of the Christian, Druze and Muslim faiths in distain. Cook shows you how and why Israel discriminates against non-Jewish people, in violation of its agreement with the international community through the UN agreement granting it statehood in 1947. If you believe that no person is better than another. If you believe, that faith or color does not determine your worth as a human being. If you follow Christ, rather than Darby. If you believe the Torah does not segregate...this book will give you the tools you need to combat the racism that is Zionism and the apostasy of Christianity known as the 'Christian Right'. If you believe all people, regardless of color, faith or origin are equal, you need to read this book. It contains the examples you need to fight the racism that is Zionism and the apostasy that is Dispensationalism. Thank you Cook! You are a Godsend...