Needed: Info on Jonathan Cook

Can anyone confirm this information I received?

Jonathan Cook persistently avoids the subject of persecution of Christians in the Middle East, despite his being married (in 2003 in the Anglican church in Nazareth) to Sally Azzam - a Maronite Christian whose family came to the Galilee in the 18th century from Lebanon.

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Cook avoids regular Arab/Muslim appropriation of Jewish holy sites [Temple Mount, Tomb of the Patriarchs] and desecration of some of them [Joseph's Tomb in Sh'khem]. Indeed he denies that the Temple Mount is where the Jewish temples were. All that is merely a Jewish claim, he says.

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Oh, Cook published this in Al-Akhbar:

Israeli Eradication of History: Disappearing Mosques

The discovery of a rare aerial photo of Jerusalem in the 1930s, taken by a Zeppelin, has provided the long-sought after proof that when Israel occupied the Old City in 1967 it secretly destroyed an important mosque that dated from the time of Saladin close to the al-Aqsa mosque.  The destruction of the Sheikh Eid mosque – in an area widely considered to be the most sensitive site in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – revives questions about Israel’s continuing abuse of Islamic holy places under its control.

...Israel’s Antiquities Authority, its chief archaeological institution, dug up the mosque’s remaining foundations and disinterred a human skeleton, believed to be Sheikh Eid himself.

The site of the mosque is next to the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), a raised compound of Islamic holy places that includes the al-Aqsa mosque and is flanked on one side by the Western Wall, a major Jewish prayer site.

...Benjamin Kedar, vice-president of Israel’s National Academy of Sciences, who discovered the old photo after searching archives in Germany, called the treatment of Sheikh Eid mosque “an archaeological crime.”
Under cover of dark, Israel sent in bulldozers to clear the area, forcing nearly 1,000 Palestinian residents out so that a wide prayer plaza could be created in front of the Western Wall. The mosque, which originally served as an Islamic school, built by Malik al-Afdil, one of Saladin’s sons, is said to have been one of only three such buildings remaining in Jerusalem from that period.

...Restrictions on Muslims’ freedom of worship seem likely to intensify in the months and years ahead. Late last year Netanyahu gave his backing to a law that would ban mosques from using loudspeakers to call residents to prayer...Restrictions on Muslims’ freedom of worship seem likely to intensify in the months and years ahead. Late last year Netanyahu gave his backing to a law that would ban mosques from using loudspeakers to call residents to prayer.

Observing that there had been many complaints about noise, Netanyahu observed: “The same problem exists in all European countries, and they know how to deal with it. It’s legitimate in Belgium; it’s legitimate in France. Why isn’t it legitimate here? We don’t need to be more liberal than Europe.”

Netanyahu had apparently forgotten that he was not in Europe and that the Muslims he was talking about are not immigrants but the native population.

Oh, did the Waqf dump tons of First and Second Temple period earth in a massive destructive act of identity from within the Temple Mount?  And restrict Jewish religious freedom?

What is he cooking in this piece?

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