Peace and Justice Post

Source: The Palestine Chronicle, October 26, 2007

The peace conference will provide the media with the opportunity to bombard public opinion with half-truths regarding those standing for peace and those considered an obstacle to peace.

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By Ramzy Baroud
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

The Middle East peace conference proposed by the Bush administration is clearly a smokescreen, aimed at concealing the true intentions of US foreign policy in the region. In the predictable process of rewarding ‘moderate’ allies and chastising ‘extremist’ foes, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will most likely receive the accolades befitting a peacemaker, while his protagonists in Hamas are reprimanded, demonized and further isolated. But the ultimate goal of this charade is not even so much to isolate Hamas, but rather to set in motion events that will further isolate Iran and Syria.

The significance of the anti-Iran campaign already underway in the US should not be missed in light of the conference next month. The media circus demonizing Iran was unleashed a few years ago, when leading neoconservatives, notwithstanding Richard Perle himself, went on accusing President Bush, some of his advisors and military generals of being ‘stupid’ for failing to recognize the threat posed by Iran. However, more recently, and most notably after the failure of the Israeli military adventure in South Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the war drums sounded by the media began to take on a new and deafening volume, reminiscent of that which preceded the US war on Iraq in March 2003. Those who appreciate the symbiotic relationship between the media and the state in the US can understand well that such a campaign is anything but genuine intellectual concern over the state of human rights in Iran, or the outcome of a sudden realization that Iran is impairing US war efforts in Iraq. Considering the level of determination in Washington and Tel Aviv to confront Iran militarily and the media’s decided role in gathering the public support for such a prospect, it is difficult to imagine a peaceful way out of the crisis.

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