Board of Peace, Machinery of War

We live in an attention economy, and it’s important to look at how ours is being squandered. Take Gaza: nothing screams caring for the people of Gaza like holding your meeting about their future in their holiest month, without them. And yet this is precisely the moment when Trump’s “Board of Peace” held its initial meeting. And it is precisely the moment when conscientious Americans must refuse to be distracted.

More than two million Palestinians, nearly all the residents of Gaza, are entering Ramadan for the third time, in tents, with starvation levels of food and water, missing loved-ones. According to a new study released by the Lancet medical journal, Israel’s assault caused far more violent deaths than previously reported — over 75,000 — more than half of them women, seniors and kids – in the 16 months after October 7, 2023, compared to 49,000 deaths previously reported by the Palestinian health ministry. 1

Hundreds more have died in Israeli assaults, with U.S. supplied weapons, since the leaders of those two countries declared a supposed ceasefire last October. 2

Now, while Palestinians continue to be bombed and starved, the president and his son-in-law are convening their Board of Peace. It’s packed with billionaires, toadies and autocrats; men like Britain’s Tony Blair, Hungary’s Victor Orban, and Marc Jeffrey Rowan, an American businessman (estimated net worth $7.3 billion3) who was one of the leaders of the donor shake-down of prestigious US universities alleging antisemitism.

Rowan, who runs one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is already salivating over the money to be made from “unlocking” Gaza’s land for private development. The coastline alone could be valued at $50 billion, he told a meeting in Davos. “The housing stock — more than $30 billion… The infrastructure — more than $30 billion.” Israel’s representative on the Board of Peace, billionaire Yakir Gabay, told the same meeting that he fancies developing the place as “as a new Mediterranean Riviera with 200 hotels and potential islands.”4 These are the men who will be in the room while Gaza’s actual residents pray and fast. No Palestinians sit on the Board of Pillage.

While Netanyahu and Trump declare the Gaza war over and peace to have begun, new arms deals are in the works, in direct violation of every shred of arms control legislation ever squeezed out of Congress. The Leahy Law bars U.S. security assistance to any foreign security force unit for which there is “credible information” that it has committed a gross violation of human rights. Under the Arms Export Control Act, the U.S. is supposed to monitor how exported weapons are stored and used, especially “non-defensive” ones. In fact, another package of F-35 “stealth” fighter jets went to Israel this January regardless of ceasefire violations – and the Pentagon admits that’s it’s failed to track where most of the weapons in Israel’s $13.4B package have ended up. It’s the fault of things like “staff shortages” a spokesperson told Defense Weekly.5

Now Netanyahu and Trump are stoking our fears again, and preparing the next arms bazaar – which is war with Iran. It’s all enough to exhaust even the most attentive observer. And that is what reminds me of the late great documentary maker, Frederick Wiseman, who died this February.

Wiseman spent his attention wisely: training it on the institutions of this country and how they operate in our name. He didn’t follow the politicians, he followed the activities of prisons, and hospitals and schools and town halls, hour after hour, day after day. He didn’t cut, he didn’t soften, he didn’t leave the room, and you can almost hear him telling us now, don’t scroll, stay. Keep your attention trained. Or maybe, train it.

In the modern media age, erasure works through distraction and noise. The relentless churn and flash delivers nothing to the people actually living — and dying — under the rubble. Conscientious Americans need Wiseman’s discipline and focus now. We are paying for this. Our tax dollars bought those bombs. Our government brokered that ceasefire and then kept the weapons flowing anyway. That is not a foreign policy abstraction. That is a morality crime with our names on it.

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