Journalism Cook was a freelance
sub-editor with several national newspapers from 1994 until 1996. He was a staff journalist at
The Guardian and
The Observer between 1996 and 2001. Until 2007, he wrote columns for
The Guardian. In 2011, Cook received the
Martha Gellhorn special award for journalism, "for his work on the Middle East". The award citation said Cook's work on Palestine and Israel made him "one of the reliable truth-tellers in the Middle East". In 2013, Cook questioned that the
Ghouta chemical attack was perpetrated by the
Syrian government, presenting a "counter-narrative" that the Syrian rebels may have committed the attack. In 2018, after the
Douma chemical attack, Cook said that the testimonies of 17 Russian-produced witnesses at the
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed a report by
Robert Fisk that said victims' breathing problem was due to dust and lack of oxygen rather than gas.
Books Cook has written three books. In
Blood and Religion (2006), published by
Pluto Press, the central thesis is that, "Israel is beginning a long, slow process of ethnic cleansing both of
Palestinian non-citizens from parts of the
occupied territories that it has long coveted for its expanded
Jewish state, and of
Palestinian citizens from inside its internationally recognized borders." Cook links this strategy to the Israeli perception of two threats: the physical threat of terrorism and the
demographic threat of a Palestinian majority potentialised by high Palestinian birth rates and the continued demand for a
Palestinian right of return.
Rami George Khouri describes the short book as, "important but disturbing". In 2008, Cook published
Israel and the Clash of Civilizations: Iraq, Iran and the plan to remake the Middle East, published by Pluto Press. Of the book,
Antony Loewenstein wrote that, "Cook bravely skewers the mainstream narrative of a Jewish state constantly striving for peace with the Palestinians." According to Lowenstein, Cook argues that Israel "pursues policies that lead to civil war and partition," and that this idea of dissolving many of the nations of the Middle East, shared by the
neocons and the
Bush administration, was developed by Israel's security establishment in the 1980s. Cook discusses an essay authored by Oded Yinon and published by the
World Zionist Organization in 1982 which advocated for Israel's transformation into a regional imperial power via the fragmentation of the
Arab world, "into a mosaic of ethnic and confessional groupings that could be more easily manipulated" (p. 107). A review of the book in
The Jordan Times called it "well-researched and very readable." ''Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair
was published in 2008 by Zed Books. Helena Cobban in the Boston Review'' says Cook argues that to encourage voluntary emigration, Israel has made life unbearable for Palestinians, primarily via "the ever more sophisticated systems of curfews, checkpoints, walls, permits and land grabs." ==Selected works==