When someone with a history like that of George W. Bush convenes a peace conference, it should inspire little more than joyless laughter. The fact that the focus is the middle east makes it doubly ludicrous. Dubya wants peace in the middle east? How simple is that? Just stop bombing the place, there’s a good chap. If peace is so bloody important to the bugger, why doesn’t he pull the troops out of Iraq and leave Iran the fuck alone? Simple answer – George Bush doesn’t care about black people, or brown people, or pretty much anybody outside of his circle of millionaire cronies. So, why hold a mid east peace conference now? Well, I’m inclined to agree with Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery (see his recent column here). You have three leaders who are politically on the ropes. Bush’s stock is pretty much in the toilet. Olmert is dangling by a thread, merely keeping the prime minister’s chair warm for someone worse (i.e. Netanyahu). Abbas, at best an invented leader, is now president of Eric the Half-a-Rump State. There’s practically no where to go but up for any of them.

This conference is what Avnery might call a not-so-funny joke. It has nothing to do with solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – it’s just a way of playing the “peace” card while continuing to press your war hand. It’s public relations, pure and simple. We’ve heard this not-funny joke before. In the early 90s, when the Oslo agreement was being implemented, Israel went right on building settlements on the West Bank, just like they had during the previous 25 years. Through Labor, Likud, and the current coalition administrations alike, they have continued to expand the colonization of the occupied territories regardless of the state of play between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships. Step by step, block by block, Israel has systematically dismantled the economic and cultural infrastructure upon which the livelihood of every Palestinian depends, cutting their portions of the West Bank into isolated cantons, ripping up fruit groves, and erecting insurmountable barriers to nationhood in the form of separation walls, Israeli-only highways, and heavily fortified settlements… not to mention monopolization of water resources.

The demographic impact of this ongoing process has been devastating. A recent issue of Counterpunch includes some sobering evidence drawn from recent studies by UN agencies and others. But does this ever enter into “peace” negotiations? Is Palestinian suffering, both in the territories and in the diaspora, ever a factor? Right now the U.S. and Israel (along with a pusillanimous European Union) are strangling Gaza’s 1 million residents to death as punishment for last year’s election of Hamas and their failure to support the subsequent U.S.-supported coup against that parliamentary majority. In the midst of this gross violation of international law (see “collective punishment“), we are hosting a sham negotiation between Israel and a Palestinian president hand-picked by the Israeli government and dependent on Israel and the U.S. for his very survival. How can Abbas be considered a co-equal partner in any such negotiation? How can he be seen as representing the interests of the Palestinians when he has acted as an enforcer for the power that is grinding them down, day by day?

Make no mistake – the Palestinians voted for Hamas not because they are Islamists, but because they are independent of the Israelis. Hamas and the Palestinian people will accept an equitable two-state solution – it is the Israeli and U.S. governments that will not allow it. That’s why this “peace” conference is just more talk.

luv u,

jp

The holidays are upon us, and the news outlets are obsessing about “Black Friday” – good thing? bad thing? – to the point where no other news really seems to matter. It was a lead story on NBC and PBS evening news, I’m certain, and my morning newspaper is chock full of nuts waiting in long lines at 6:00 a.m. for the doors to swing open on the cultural utopia that is Best Buy. Just doing their patriotic duty, as defined by our commander-in-chief. It’s not really just about fighting and dying… They also serve who borrow and spend, right? Float the economy for Dubya. Fight a short, sweet, victorious war for Dubya. (Hurry up… only 14 months to go.) Still the pavlovian networks pump out the pabulum, and if you don’t listen too closely it can almost seem like things are just as right as they need to be. War is over (if you want it), NPR – just don’t report on the sucker and it will go away.

Fact is, it’s really more about how the story is reported on. Following it like a sports story (as they typically do) ensures that those responsible for the killing of thousands and the destruction of a society will not be held accountable. Violence is down? That means the score is up for the home team. Meanwhile, the other side is boiled down to “Al Qaeda” in northern and central Iraq and Iran elsewhere. (Though today I heard a story that brought both together in one handy package.) Then when (and if) we finally leave Iraq, they can report on the shithole we leave behind without ever mentioning our part in creating it. (Hell, they’ve already dropped any mention of our involvement in Iraq prior to 2003, so this should be easy.) There are precedents. Just the other day, I heard two stories back to back that illustrate the mainstream media’s capacity for encouraging collective denial about our consistently interventionist foreign policy over the past sixty years. Both stories were on NPR Morning Edition. The first was about a former Khmer Rouge official being brought up before the Cambodia tribunal. Not one word about what we did to Cambodia – not one. They talked to Sydney Schanberg about how Cambodians still burst into tears – understandably so – when you bring up the Khmer Rouge years. I wonder what happens when you mention the preceding five years, when we fomented a military coup and dropped more ordinance on that tiny country than the allies used in all theaters during World War II? Short answer: it doesn’t get mentioned. No tribunal for Henry Kissinger, I guess.

Then there was a story about refugees in Somalia and the appalling conditions they’re living under. Now, I wouldn’t expect the reporter to talk about the nearly $1 billion in aid we gave to the murderous Siad Barre regime in the 1980s that tore the country apart, nor would I expect them to talk about how our 1992-3 “humanitarian” intervention mostly managed to get a bunch of Somalis killed. But they could have brought up what happened earlier this year, when we supported Ethiopia’s invasion both diplomatically and militarily (mostly with air power). Yet another mess we’ve gotten someone into, and yet even this very recent involvement was not worthy of a single reference on NPR’s radio broadcast (though, to be fair, there is a brief review of history on their Web posting, for those who bother to check). This should be encouraging to those in the White House and Congress who supported the Iraq war. So long as we perpetuate this fantasy that we are all about helping people – Iraqis, Somalis, Cambodians – we will continue to become embroiled in these endless conflicts that bleed both invader and invaded dry, and benefit only war profiteers and geostrategic power players.

Just remember … when they claim to be helping, they’re only helping themselves.

luv u,

jp