SIDESHOW

One of the most interesting books of the seventies was William Shawcross’ Sideshow, a stunning account of the overlooked Cambodian war as directed by Henry Kissinger. Upstaged by the Vietnam conflict, this massive destruction of Cambodian society set in motion the genocidal regime of Pol Pot, wrecked havoc on Cambodia’s people long after the Vietnam War next door ceased.

I see many parallels between the Vietnam/Cambodian wars and today’s Israeli-Palestinian war and the mid east world that lies just beyond them. Overlooked until recently are defining conflicts brewing throughout the mid-east and beyond that are of greater global significance than what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza.

In the last two weeks suicide bombers have slaughtered hundreds. Innocents have been targeted with ghastly, calculated cruelty, not on buses in Tel-Aviv or Jerusalem, or at falafel stands in Afula, but in Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, and Algeria. The ultimate articulation of Muslim religious and political hate once reserved for the Zionists is now routinely and lethally used against fellow co-religionists. Last week we also saw two huge geo-political events - the Russian invasion of Georgia and the Iranian invasion of Tunbs Island - that dwarfed media interest in West Bank land grabs and separation wall construction. I won’t even dwell on the ongoing genocidal crisis of Islamic Sudan, or the Egyptian economic, population, and political crisis, nor will I tarry on the Lebanese Sunni-Shia civil war, quiet for a nano-second but bound to explode at Iran’s choosing.

"Algeria, not Afula"
What is finally emerging is a new media focus on the larger, more important issues. If the world’s news bureaus had a policy of proportionally assigning correspondents, photographers and video producers to geopolitical or economic events based on importance in the Islamic world, the nightly news might not even mention Israel or Palestine.

The intentional distraction provided by the Palestinian issue has run its course. You can see it in photographs of the contorted rage-filled face of the Pakistani man in the street protesting the Musharraf regime. For decades that Pakistani face was enraged at the injustice suffered by the Palestinians. He felt it personally. It was, and there are polls to back this up, the number one issue on his mind. The Pakistani establishment savored this focus, using it as a smokescreen to build and fertilize the unjust, inefficient and corrupt society that is now coming apart at the seams.

Ditto, Lebanon and Egypt. Under cover of the nakba obsession, these countries failed to modernize either politically or economically. They failed to join the linked- in world in a way that even Uruguay did. Now, they are rended by internal strife and unhappy citizens. Violence routinely breaks out, and the suppression of destabilizing homegrown extremists consumes their political and military rulers’ days.

"Pakistan, not Tel-Aviv"
The European leftists have a new occupation (both figuratively and literally) to worry about in Georgia. A peaceful indigenous people, with long ties to their land, have been brutally invaded by tank driving occupiers. The Russians lie about the treaties they just signed to end this barbarity. If the European intellectual doesn’t have a moral dilemma between choosing whether to worry about the occupation of Tibet, Georgia or the West Bank, then they are not being honest. In the first two cases, the victim and the victor are clearer than in the Palestinian case, where UN resolution 181 of 1947 resulted in an Arab invasion of a newly chartered state.

Thus, this is actually a good time to settle the Israeli/Palestine dispute. If the Palestinians and Israelis start thinking in politic terms, they will realize the massive global upheavals in the Islamic world are going to receive far more attention than what is happening in Ramallah. Without the long standing Arab world’s emotional support, the Palestinians will find themselves back where they were under the Ottomans, a small agrarian crossroads of little strategic or economic importance. Left on their own, the West Bankers should realize they cannot prevail against the military and intelligence services of their co-inhabitant Levantines.

For the Israelis, wouldn’t it be nice to see the patio of the American Colony Hotel full of tourists and “journalist freier”? Wouldn’t it be nice to have the country off the front page of Dar-Al Hayat and not the lead video in Al Jazzera’s nightly broadcast? Wouldn’t it be nice to read Ma’ariv articles about troubles elsewhere?

Sometimes the best performances are given when the theater is half full. Can the Israelis and Palestinians rise to their potential roles as peacemakers?