There are moments in politics when language becomes so detached from reality that it tips from cynicism into a farce. Appointing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” for Gaza is one such moment.
Netanyahu is not a neutral stakeholder. He is not a reluctant participant dragged into a tragic conflict. He is the leader who has overseen the systematic destruction of Gaza: tens of thousands of civilians killed, entire neighbourhoods erased, hospitals flattened, universities bombed, and a population deliberately deprived of food, water, shelter, and hope. He is also the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
That Israel has rejected those charges or dismissed them as political is beside the point. Courts exist precisely because perpetrators rarely accept responsibility for their own actions. The question is not whether Netanyahu agrees with the accusations – it is whether the facts on the ground support them.
They do.
International law defines genocide not by slogans or historical analogies, but by actions and intent. Killing members of a protected group. Causing serious bodily or mental harm. Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group’s destruction, in whole or in part. Gaza today bears the unmistakable imprint of each of these elements.
Add to this the repeated, dehumanising rhetoric from senior Israeli officials – Palestinians described as “human animals”, Gaza spoken of as something to be “flattened”, “erased”, or emptied – and the claim that this is merely an unfortunate but lawful military campaign collapses under its own weight.
Legal processes move slowly. They always do. Genocide is almost never recognised as such while it is unfolding. Rwanda was denied until the machetes were put down. Srebrenica was minimised until the mass graves were opened. History shows that moral clarity arrives long before judicial finality.
Which is precisely why Netanyahu’s elevation to a “Board of Peace” is so grotesque. Peace is not brokered by those actively prosecuting a war of annihilation. Reconstruction is not overseen by those who created the ruins. And justice is not served by rehabilitating leaders while the bodies are still being pulled from the rubble.
Trump’s board is not a peace initiative. It is a branding exercise – one that launders responsibility, flattens moral distinctions, and asks the world to accept Orwellian doublespeak as diplomacy.
Calling this arrangement a farce is not rhetorical excess. It is an accurate description. When an alleged war criminal is recast as a peacemaker, language itself has been bombed into submission.
And Gaza, once again, is expected to pay the price.
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The whole ”Board of Peace” is a TACO Trumpery scam to steal the land from Indigenous Palestinian landholders for the benefit of the international carpet-baggers after the post GAZA GENOCIDE conducted by the amoral IDF with the authorisation of the Israeli Knesset as a Hannibal Directive. The foreign interlopers are the only beneficiaries.
The unknown question is, ”How large is the carve out for Trumpery entities seeking foreshore options for building hotels?”
Meanwhile the ZIONAZIS continue the oppression of the Indigenous Palestinians who inconveniently ”own” the real estate desired by the carpet-baggers, by deliberately inhibiting the supply of relief products, insuring the continued death toll of young Palestinian kids and persons injured by the ammunition supplied by US armaments manufacturers.
Is it any wonder that some individuals react inappropriately to this deliberate oppression in which the Australian LABOR government is complicit by allowing the export of components for military vehicles assembled in Israel?
Well said, NEC. 💯
Board of Peace.., with that proposed personnel..,Orwell would heave with no “ho”. Imperium means the “legal” power to enforce the law, and some grab legality by lies, force, slave and worker and peasant states. Servile labour is essential. Zionism, as with imperialism at large, is a policy of murder, theft, slavery, exploitation, extermination, suppression of women, ravenous attitudes, Trumpery, Hitlerisms, power to command, domination…
Yes, it beggars belief. No word from Albanese about his $1 billion invitation? Could he stoop so low?
Excellent article by Michael.
In today’s Guardian it is reported that David Shoebridge has pointed out that under this new law, it may become illegal that any legitimate criticism of the murderer Netanyahu and his fellow murderers, in their wanton destruction of a whole nation- its people and culture, could soon become a criminal offence in Australia. The rights of legitimate protest in any form are being eroded already as they are in the UK and elsewhere yet people like Pauline Hanson and Nigel Farage continue their own particular brand of hatred, division and “branding” which is apparently acceptable even-in Parliament.
I see that overnight the IDF killed eleven Palestinians including a young boy scavenging for firewood and three journalists using a drone for film recording of the devastation.
How can we possibly take a Board of Peace seriously with Netanyahu associated with it?
‘Board of Peace’ even the title is meaningless mumbo jumbo. The concept behind it is the mindless twittering of a brain-dead cretin with not a skerrick of insight into the ludicrousness of the proposal, not to mention the lack of credibility the so-called board would have with Netanyahu being invited. It is hard to fathom the complete insensitivity of this proposal or indeed the depravity of it. Inclusion of the word peace is a travesty within a travesty.
Has Albo accepted yet?
Albanese must call this out as a mockery of justice. If he does not then he lacks the moral compass required to be leader of our nation. If Albanese accepts any fragment of engagement with this Trump – Netanyahu duopoly real estate grab then I expect and hope that there will be the biggest and loudest civilian protest that the Sydney Harbour Bridge has ever seen. And that also applies to Melbourne’s St Kilda Road – Princess Bridge, Brisbane’s Storey Bridge and what ever is appropriate in Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and Hobart. This is totally unacceptable and the people must say so.
Albo, no, he has rejected the offer.
Ironies abound here, when we see a billion dollar entry fee to join the board, an investment no doubt, looking for returns on capital as the new tourist hot spot is developed, no doubt giving (some) Palestinians service jobs, baristas, cleaners etc,
Another irony when in the urgent recall of parliament to vote on the hate speech bills, a speaker, I cannot recall who, spoke of how antisemitism ‘dehumanises’, thank you Michael for pointing out that that charge can be directed at Israelis when they discuss the Palestinian problem….. but let’s not make too much of an issue there.
American commentator Thom Hartmann (220126) asserts that “Donald Trump[is] Trying to Crown Himself ”King of the World” by creating a self-serving ”Board of Peace” (BoP) with billion dollar tribute payments to related Trump entity bank accounts, and a hereditary succession to replace the UN with a Trump dynasty.
The BoP is an entirely new, private non-government ”treaty based international organisation” with its own legal entity THAT IS NOT A STANDARD NGO/NON-PROFIT CORPORATION.
THE BoP MAKES TRUMP THE CHAIRMAN WITH ABSOLUTE POWER OVER EVERYTHING ….. AND SUPPORTS HIS RANTING THAT “I’m a dictator, sometimes you need a dictator”.
Board of Peace.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Greed is Good, etc
― George Orwell, 2026
Board of Peace my arse….
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/01/19/the-disconnected-present-neoliberal-fascism-and-the-politics-of-erasure/