Post by Fr David Neuhaus SJ | 12 January 2026
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the UK in 2021. He is one of the most astute observers of events in Palestine/Israel.
In a recent essay, he analyses what is happening in Venezuela, and makes the connections to what has unfolded in Palestine/Israel over the past two years. Playing to a western audience, Trump’s United States and Netanyahu’s Israel play the role of good cop in taking action against what they have defined as rogue regimes. As he looks ahead at 2026, Cook writes, “The central conceit of the good cop, bad cop narrative is that both the US and Israel are the ones upholding the law and fighting the criminals. Unlike the Hollywood version, neither of these real-world cops is in any way good. But there is a further difference: the spectacle is not intended for those the pair confront. After all, the Palestinians know only too well that they have been suffering for decades under the boot of a lawless, joint US-Israeli criminal enterprise. No, the intended audience are the onlookers: western publics.”