CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Trump’s “Board of Peace”: Aggrandizing Theater and the Impunity of Genocide

Image by Mohammed al Bardawil.

More than 75,000 Palestinians have been murdered in Gaza, with tens of thousands more still missing beneath the rubble. They did not die to “build a home” or privatize their beaches. They had homes and free beaches. Gaza was a living city—albeit under decades of Israeli siege—before it was leveled by the most advanced global terror machine on earth, armed, financed, and diplomatically shielded by successive U.S. administrations.

This reality was nowhere to be found at the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington. Sold as a diplomatic initiative, the gathering functioned instead as a spectacle condoning Israeli war crimes, disciplining resistance, and rebranding occupation as peace. The symbolism was everywhere. Donald Trump opened the meeting by recognizing FIFA president Gianni Infantino, as if the gathering were a global sports gala, before he introduced the world’s political leaders. The staging spoke louder than words. The meeting was a performance, where hierarchy trumps humanity and optics replaces accountability.

Trump used the moment as expected. He generously lavished praise on himself and recycled the same familiar hogwash by condemning Palestinian resistance while remaining silent on Israel’s systematic violations of the ceasefire. In perhaps one of the worst troubling moments of his speech, Trump claimed that the war in Gaza was over, but for “little flames.”

The “little flames” were the lives of more than 600 Palestinians murdered by Israel since the start of the ceasefire. Six hundred human beings were extinguished while........

© CounterPunch