The Myth of Disengagement

As the Annapolis meeting draws near NPR has unloaded a barrage of nonsense about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It goes without saying, that NPR continues the portrayal of the systematic, violent Israeli destruction of Palestinian life, culture, and society as some kind of balanced conflict between two adversaries. I now have an idea of how NPR would have covered the 19th century wars of genocide waged by the US against the American Indians. There would have been talk of peace conferences and "compromise," Indian terrorism, "legal" and "illegal" settlers, militants and moderates, and nothing of the massacres, broken treaties, brazen land thefts and ethnic cleansing.

But what has stuck out as particularly absurd this time around is the repeated notion that the Bush Administration has been "disengaged" from the Israel-Palestine conflict. Here are some comments from the past several days:

• Wednesday M.E. Brian Naylor says "as his administration turns its attention to the issue in a way that it has not in the past seven years."
• Friday M.E. former US ambassador to Israel, Indyk says, "It was a mistake to walk away and watch from the sidelines while the Israelis and Palestinians had at it."
• On Friday ATC, Robert Pelletreau, former assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs states that "this conference takes place after seven years of virtually no peace negotiations, of US disengagement from Arab Israeli affairs."

Funny how funding Israel to the tune of about 3 billion dollars a year is disengagement. One wonders if Colin Powell's 2002 eight day meander to Israel and the West Bank while the IDF destroyed Jenin, followed quickly by Bush calling Sharon a "man of peace" counts as disengagement. In fact the US was very engaged after Hamas won parliamentary elections and later formed a unity government in Palestine. Likewise the US was quite engaged in training Fatah forces and trying to organize a coup in Gaza against Hamas.

All of which is to say that this "disengagement" farce fits nicely into the longstanding media lie that also portrays the US as an "honest broker" in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Only this time the poor, helpless US has just been "on the sidelines." Unbelievable.

(graphic is an Eakins painting posted on the ExplorePAhistory site)