Yesterday, my friend M, from Bosnia, left an irate message on my facebook wall:
I see no reactions to the slaughter in Gaza? Are you guys watching TV? I mean proper TV, not Fox news and the like?
Sigh. I responded:
M, I have been following it, mostly on relief sites and through the UN agencies. It’s awful, and I haven’t commented mostly because I don’t know what else I could add. There are no peace rallies or other events in my area (I live in an economically depressed place, where people care mostly about not having their electricity turned off, so it’s not the most politically active place.) As you know, Palestine is a very different issue here in the US than in Europe, so my ability to “act locally” on this is limited.
Honestly, I really don’t know what I could add to the discourse. I feel terrible about the civilian suffering, but I also understand US policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is driven by political elites and the media. Jon Stewart did a bold thing with this segment.
It’s sad that a comic had to point that out that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the US news media is “the mobius strip of issues –there’s only one side!”
Transitionland 