Jonathan Cook has long been an invaluable writer on Palestine but on Syria he’s been completely lost for a while. He doesn’t write often about Syria but his sources are always regrettable, Assadist, & exhibit little exploration of an issue that profoundly impacts the fate of Palestinians. Because of his cogency & clarity on the Palestinian struggle, many keep hoping he’ll start to show some investigative integrity about Syria. Hope is fading fast. So is Cook’s credibility.

Unfortunately he’s now joined the Assadist cry baby chorus doing the “Wah-wah-wah, we’re maligned for supporting Assad & portraying the revolution against Assad’s dictatorship as Wahhabi/Salafi head choppers. We’re being blacklisted & smeared & we can’t take it any more.” In the inimitable words of William Shakespeare: cry us a river.

In a March 7th, 2017 blog entry titled “Is the BBC still lying over Syria footage?” Cook championed the work of Robert Stuart who has spent four years trying to prove footage at an Aleppo hospital of victims of a Syrian incendiary chemical attack on a school is staged. That attack was in August 2013 & while tenacity at getting to the truth is admirable & necessary, what’s stopping Cook from investigating allegations of Syrian & Russian carpet bombing of civilians in several Syrian cities with thermobaric, barrel, cluster, smart bombs & missiles?

No one is expected to know everything in a world of such complexity & deceits. But the fate of Palestinians is dialectically related to the fate of the Syrian revolution against dictatorship & if Cook doesn’t get that or stands on the wrong side crying up a storm that’s he’s maligned, maybe he should consider taking up tiddlywinks.