Blood and Religion

"Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" is a 2006 book by Jonathan Cook, a British writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. The author argues that Israel's recent treatment of its own Palestinian citizens, a group also known as Israeli Arabs, has exposed the contradiction between the state's Jewish and democratic claims. In particular he focuses on Israel's response to a campaign for "a state of all its citizens" begun in the late 1990s. Israel claimed that this demand proved the Israeli Arabs were a fifth column and were conspiring with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority to overthrow the Jewish state, says Cook. He further argues that demographic pressures on the Jewish state posed by the combined higher birth rate of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and inside Israel led the Israeli government to consider drastic policy changes, including the Gaza Disengagement and the building of the West Bank barrier.

References

*Cook, Jonathan (2006). "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State". Pluto Press. ISBN 0-7453-2555-6
*Hardcover: ISBN 0-7453-2556-4