I don't agree at all with this article, i will explain further why.
I was out all day but here is a little introduction before going to bed.
The third goal, however, had not seen before. It tied the rise of a new anti-Semitism with the increase of Islamic fundamentalism in the West, implying that Muslim extremists were asserting an ideological control over Western thinking. It chimed well with the post 9-11 atmosphere.
Jonathan Cook used to do better thinking in the past. I think it is too simple to classify and point out the fingers on Israel or in the West for the rebirth of "Islamic fundamentalism" without defining what Islamic fundamentalism is, otherwise people are going to be confused. It cannot be described in 2 lines. There are many variants inside "islamic fundamentalism". I've been thinking alot about this term in the past, and there are different historical periods to understand the global changes that are linked to variants of "islamic fundamentalism". Each period in the Middle-East has had its own issues, nevertheless the Middle-East and its people, because of the invasion in Afghanistan, because of the invasion in Iraq, because of the attacks on Lebanon, and because of the attacks on Palestinians gave a new geopolitical dimension inside and outside the Middle-East. I call it the new world disorder because strategic alliances prior to WWII changed rapidly since the war in Iraq and it is going to be very hard to come back to the post WWII situation either with the UN or with the traditional alliances (Europe + USA + NATO) because of this interpretation of "islamic fundamentalism". Unlike what Jonathan Cook wrote, it is not the control over "islamic fundamentalist" from Israel that plays in her favor for this state, it is our views on islamic fundamentalism that are the causes of differences in opinions inside the West. Until this day the Human Being never found a better way to control geopolitical goals without the help of their respective God, because God is the common element for the masses and because freedom is different from one God to another one.
So what is islamic fundamentalism? First of all it is not all about religion, and not all about politics, it is about theopolitics, and it is a common base from some people in the Middle-East and in the West with a difference though: some people from Islam use their God for political aim because they are dominated, and a part of the West uses their politics for the oil and to reward later on their God in history books (dominators). For the case of Israel, this problem is internal with Palestine and its occupation, and external with Iran. Palestine, Iran, and now Lebanon are aligned against Israel. For the case of the West, theopolitics are associated with terrorism exclusively inside their governmental authority representing their reason and their laws, for the US they associate it with moral authority/responsibility to justify invasions in the Middle-East. This is why Islamic fundamentalism should not be associat
This is why Islamic fundamentalism should not be associated with terrorism stricto senso inside the essence of its religious interpretation. Rather than that it is the synergy of the political impact through the legitimate interpretation of different societies for their own survivals that enters in conflict with the legal frame pillars (usually secularism but other things too) and is therefore considered dangerous inside the definition of another cultural national entity. "islamic fundamentalism" was not born like that out of the blue from one day to the next but it represents a right of existence, it depends only on what people want to do with this right of existence. Declaring a war on "islamic fundamentalism" won't change the bottom of the problem, it is partially linked with the western invasions as well. I don't think people are aware of that; I reached this conclusion after reading and studying some cases. That said each cases are different from each other:
So here is a practical example with the Hamas: people do not join the Hamas, it is the Hamas that usually recruits people and not the other way around, and we can say there is a recruiting profile inside the Hamas. One of the reasons why the sons join the Hamas comes from the fact that their father had been beaten by Israelis. It is humiliation that draws people to violence. Hamas represents to some of these people the role model of protecting their wives and children because they were unable to do that as they were young: God is their father and it cannot be humiliated, because it is thought that God cannot be defeated. This is what makes it dangerous in the eyes of Israel. Inside the original founders of the Hamas, there are different points of view though. There is the trend from the Muslim Brotherhood whose idea emerged in Palestine because they wanted to create a movement against Israel (it is the idea from Khaled Mashal). There is also this theory where people feel deeply committed with Islam (Al-Zahar). There is also this idea that without Israel occupation in 1967, then Hamas would have never been born, and Hamas plays the role as a blowback against Israel occupation. It is later on that some Palestinians from the Hamas thought about spreading Islam without or with the sword. Hamas is therefore not homogeneous with their views, although their views aim at Israel for this case only.
The problem between the Hamas and Israel is very hard to be solved because it is all about occupation; but the ideology of the Hamas would have never been born without the occupation of Israel on Palestine territories at the beginning, and killings made their ideology worse to the new generation of Palestinians.
PS: that is only my opinion and my own opinion. I understand that people do have other opinion different than mine 
Steven Rix,
The point Cook is making is that Israel is taking advantage of the post 9/11 anti-Islam hysteria and somehow conflating Islamic resistance to occupation and Empire with anti-Semitism. In that, Cook is right.
Hence, Iran's attempt of gaining strategic parity is distorted as an attempt to annihilate the Jewish people and as a new holocaust.
Islamic resistance in Palestine is distorted from its reality of being a national liberation struggle to an attempt to "destroy the Jewish state."
Thank you for these clarifications Tony.
Commenting by HaloScan
