Jonathan Cook

Writer, journalist, self-appointed media critic. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

NAZA is not just about Israel and Gaza. It’s about the evil lurking in us all.

Read my latest here: https://t.co/cK4a407BmA

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

In the past few days, Israel has banned entry to five foreign journalists working for publications seen as critical of Israel.

What does that say about the rest? That Israel knows it can trust them to pull their punches. They'll be even more careful about what they say from now on.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

How Yemen, the Arab world's poorest state, took on Israel and the West's military-industrial complex – and won.

Watch here: https://t.co/uWSonKWC2u

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Aren't you doing exactly what you accuse me of: imposing your own framing? I can't legislate for how people "read" me, or how you read how you think some kinds of people (liberals) will read me. That's just a preposterous standard by which to write or to judge any writing.

This is feeling increasingly like a waste of everyone's political energies. It's not generating light, only more darkness. I'm bowing out.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

There was a deeper reason why the film NAZA left the entire audience speechless.

This film isn’t about the tangible, visible horror of Gaza. It was about something more hidden, something far closer to home.

This was about the horror lurking within each of us. What the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil”.

We were stunned, I think, by the realisation that the 24 Israelis up on the screen – each of whom admitted, often dispassionately, sometimes a little proudly, carrying out the most monstrous of crimes – could have been our son or daughter, our brother or sister.

The only reason to applaud, as happened at the Venice Film Festival, it seemed to me, was to drown out the still, small voice of one’s conscience asking, “Might I have done as they did? Might my children?”

NAZA is a gut punch not because it tells us anything we did not already know or suspect about Israel and Gaza.

The enclave’s Palestinian journalists showed us daily the evidence of the genocide, before each was picked off by Israel’s AI machinery – in the largest slaughter of media personnel ever recorded.

No, the film tells us something far more shaming. It tells us who we are. It tells us exactly what the pillars of our western “civilisation” stand on.

Today’s western privileges were built on a long history of naked, racist colonialism – of greed, of pillage, of slavery, of genocide – that we have never truly renounced or forsaken.

Israel continues that tradition for us, both in sharpening colonialism’s technical efficiency with endless, murderous experimentation on a captive Palestinian population and in obscuring our own complicity in this barbarity.

That is the reason why it was so effortless for our leaders to collude in Israel’s genocide: to supply the bombs, to pass on the intelligence, to provide the diplomatic cover, to excuse the “excesses”, to crush the protests.

NAZA silences us not because of the monstrosity of what Israel did but because it serves as irrefutable proof of our own monstrosity. Our societies watched it all and did nothing. We are all guilty.

This is an extract from my latest article NAZA is not just about Israel and Gaza. It’s about the evil lurking in us all. Find a link to the rest in the reply post below ⬇️

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

The Bell report on antisemitism in schools is just the latest example of manipulation of statistics to spread alarm and fear. The claim Jewish people are 9x more likely than Muslims to suffer hate crime is also untrue.

My latest for Double Down Newswatch.
https://t.co/4hff9S2OTg

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Basic education piece:

Not all Jewish people are Zionists.

Lots of Zionists aren't Jews.

The Board of Deputies largely self identity as Zionists.

The Media often report the Board of Deputies as the opinion of Jewish people.

Yet many Jewish people say #NotInOurName

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

It was clear you hadn't seen the film. If we talk about the film's "framing" it is this: It is made by Israelis, and it looks very much like it's made *for* Israelis too.

In watching the film, we become complicit spectators in that conversation – just as we mostly have been complicit spectators in the Gaza genocide. The review was about how we respond to being spectators, both in watching the conversation and in spectating a genocide. That response in myself and others – what seems a fairly universal response among viewers – interested me.

Some respond – though mostly those who haven't seen it – by saying Israelis are bad, and I am good.

The film, I think, makes that an untenable position to adopt. That is what makes it worth watching. As I have said elsewhere, if you want the *what* of Gaza you'll be disappointed. If you want the *why*, you should seek it out.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

The claim in Sir David Bell's report that 3 in 5 Jewish students have experienced antisemitism was based on just 29 people - and was untrue.

My latest for Double Down Newswatch.
https://t.co/Dhy7QRCvW9

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

It was a response to the poster's argument.

"We are all guilty" is a reference to the cultures we belong to that have spent 100s of years committing genocides in various forms. That is our legacy.

And of course, it's a truism. More importantly, it's a truism we invest a great deal of energy in obscuring, as the responses to my review have richly illustrated.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

@fleur_de_irk QED. No self-reflection from you.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Some people are responding to the headline of my latest article on the film NAZA with: "There's no evil lurking in me. It's just those Israeli soldiers."

There are two things that make any of us capable of committing evil acts:

1. Finding ourselves in circumstances that, we are persuaded, call for evil.

2. Lacking the capacity for deep self-reflection.

Those of us who have never found ourselves in the first situation have never really been tested on whether we have that second capacity.

If you're absolutely certain that you could never do what those Israeli soldiers did in Gaza, then you have either done a lot of self-reflection or none at all.

We have faced one test already: whether we protested the Gaza genocide with all our might or stayed quiet.

But that test is the lowest bar there is. Would we still keep our humanity if we were persuaded the stakes were personally much higher for us and our loved ones, as many Israelis were persuaded in relation to Gaza.

NAZA works, at least for western audiences, because on one level it makes us identify with the Israeli soldiers – they look and sound like our own children – while on another it shows the utter depravity of what they are rationalising to themselves and to us.

It pulls us in and repulses us at the same time. It causes huge cognitive dissonance in western audiences – the reason most people walk out in stunned silence.

That may lead to the kind of deeper self-reflection needed before western publics refuse to allow their leaders to collude in genocide.

But it may also lead some, those less able to self-reflect, to entrench in their connivance with evil.

We can't blame NAZA for that. The film offers us a chance to open our eyes. But each of us must decide whether we are willing to see or remain blind.

If you want to read beyond the headline, you can find a link to my article in the reply post below ⬇️

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

@tomcoady That's factor one: circumstance.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Why are western audiences stunned into silence by the new film NAZA? Because it shames us. It shows us who we are. It tells us exactly what the pillars of our western “civilisation” stand on.

Read my latest here: https://t.co/cK4a407BmA

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

I spent three years watching the horror of Gaza, three years writing about it, and three years protesting it.

NAZA does none of that. It's an updating of the famous Milgram experiment in social obedience. It's a foretaste of the terrifying dangers of the AI rollout. And it's a case study in the human capacity for evil.

If you want more of the *what* of Gaza, NAZA will disappoint. If you want the *why*, seek it out.

My full review in the reply post below ⬇️

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

@jongibson335 Which begs the question: What if it was you who had been brainwashed?

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

@irishjoe1234 Yes, they must stand trial. Because, despite us having a capacity for evil, each one of us can also choose to overcome it.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

@Nafeesmeah It doesn't diminish responsibility. It widens it. We are all capable of evil, and we are all capable of overcoming it.

It's a choice, and each one of us is responsible for the choice we make.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

@Joellewinte That's not what I am saying at all. No one is born evil. But the socialisation process invariably inculcates a capacity for evil.

Call it tribalism, if that is more palatable.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

@talkingwalk People struggle with the word "evil" because of its religious connotations. As I said to someone else, think of it as tribalism, if that is more palatable.

No, people are not born evil. But the socialisation process invariably inculcates a capacity for evil.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

No one speaks for everyone. We are different. But there is a capacity for doing dark things in everyone one us. Call it tribalism, not evil, if that makes it more palatable.

Few of us are severely tested. Of those who are, some recognise the weakness and overcome it. Others don't.

[RarePepeNews @rarepepenews]

The unsettling lesson of NAZA, and the writings of Arendt, Milgram and Browning, is not that we would all have become Nazis. It is that ordinary people are not immune to becoming perpetrators.

Through obedience, conformity and the surrender of moral judgement.

“I would never do that” is a comforting belief, not a safeguard.

The harder question is whether we would recognise the moment to refuse when our own leaders, institutions and peers insisted we were doing the right thing.

Circumstances do not erase responsibility.

They are where it is tested.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

@POSeaghdha Probably. But having seen the film, any applause seems inappropriate – and 25 minutes of it more like the audience were trying to salve their consciences.