The Author

Jonathan Cook has chosen to position himself in the region in two ways – one professional, the
other geographical - that distinguishes him from his colleagues. This approach gives him greater
freedom to reflect on the true nature of the conflict and provides him with fresh insight into its root
causes.
Professionally, he is one of the few journalists regularly writing about the region and works as an independent freelancer. He is not tied to the mainstream agenda, which gives disproportionate
coverage to the concerns of the powerful, in this case the Israeli and American positions
in the US media.Geographically, he is the first foreign correspondent to be based in the Israeli Arab city of Nazareth, in the Galilee. Most reporters covering the conflict live in Jerusalem or
Tel Aviv, with a handful of specialists based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The range of stories readily available to reporters in these locations reinforces the assumption among editors back home that the conflict can only be understood in terms of the events that followed the West Bank and Gaza’s occupation in 1967. This has encouraged the media to give far too much weight to Israeli concerns about ‘security’ -  a catch-all that offers Israel special
dispensation to ignore its duties to the Palestinians under international law.
Many topics central to the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, including the plight of the
refugees and the continuing dispossession of Palestinians living as Israeli citizens, do not register
on most reporters’ radars.
From Nazareth, the capital of the Palestinian minority in Israel, things look very different.
There are striking, and disturbing, similarities between the experiences of Palestinians inside
Israel and those inside the West Bank and Gaza. All have faced Zionism's appetite for territory
and domination, as well as repeated attempts at ethnic cleansing. These unifying themes suggest
that the conflict is less about the specific circumstances thrown up by the 1967 war and more
about the central tenets of Zionism as expressed in the war of 1948 that founded Israel and
the war of 1967 that breathed new life into its settler colonial agenda.