Buck Valor here, reporting from the armchair of absolute exhaustion. In the latest chapter of humanity’s ongoing commitment to making the English language entirely obsolete, we find Benjamin Netanyahu—a man whose primary contribution to urban design involves the rapid conversion of vertical structures into horizontal dust—accepting a seat on a U.S.-sponsored ‘Board of Peace.’ It is a title so dripping with irony that it could corrode the hull of a battleship, yet the world’s diplomatic press corps reports it with the straight-faced earnestness of a child explaining why they ate the wallpaper. While the ink was likely still drying on the invitation to this prestigious committee of semantic nonsense, the Israeli military was busy conducting its own version of a board meeting in Gaza, using gunships and artillery as the primary points of order. It is a stunning display of multi-tasking: one hand signs a memo about regional stability, while the other pulls the lanyard on a 155mm howitzer. It’s the kind of high-concept performance art that would make a Dadaist weep, if they weren't already dead from the sheer exhaustion of trying to out-absurd reality.

The Gaza Strip is currently undergoing what we might cynically call a ‘spatial reorganization.’ Artillery fire, gunship attacks, and systematic demolitions are the tools of the trade, yet the diplomatic narrative insists on treating Netanyahu’s new role as a ‘pivot.’ It is not a pivot; it is a pirouette on a landmine. The Biden administration, ever the purveyor of diplomatic Febreze, continues to spray flowery terminology over the persistent stench of burning concrete. They’ve invited Netanyahu to the ‘Board of Peace,’ which sounds like a Montessori school committee tasked with resolving a sandbox dispute but functions more like a witness protection program for political reputations. It is a classic American export: the delusion that if you just give a catastrophic crisis a corporate-sounding name and a shiny lanyard, the blood stops being red and starts being ‘synergistic fluid.’ The Americans believe in the Power of the Board. If a problem exists, appoint a committee. If the committee fails, create a board. If the board is bombed into rubble, simply issue a press release about the board’s ‘unwavering commitment to dialogue.’ It is a circle of futility that provides endless employment for people in suits while the people in the dirt continue to provide the necessary background noise of explosions.

Let’s look at the ‘board’ itself. What exactly does one do on a Peace Board while artillery is firing? Perhaps they discuss the trajectory of shells in terms of ‘community outreach.’ Perhaps the gunship attacks are re-branded as ‘aggressive meditation sessions’ or ‘percussive diplomacy.’ The cognitive dissonance required to hold these two truths—the active bombardment of a densely populated ruin and the acceptance of a ‘peace’ appointment—is enough to give a normal person a stroke. But our leaders are not normal; they are professional survivors in the swamp of their own making. Netanyahu knows that ‘peace’ is a currency used to buy time, and the U.S. knows that ‘boards’ are where accountability goes to die. They are the perfect partners in this dance of death, moving in sync to the rhythm of falling masonry. The Right-wing in Israel views this as a necessary theater to keep the munitions flowing, while the ‘humanitarian’ Left in the West views it as a ‘step in the right direction,’ as if a single step towards a cliff is better than a sprint. Both sides are equally intoxicated by the theater of it all, ignoring the physical reality that you cannot build a board of peace out of the timber of demolished homes.

The history of the Middle East is a graveyard of boards, committees, and roadmaps, all of which have one thing in common: they are written in the same ink as the casualty lists. This latest iteration is merely the most transparently cynical. To launch a fresh wave of strikes while joining a peace board is a flex of such monumental proportions that it borders on the divine—if God were a bored bureaucrat with a penchant for high explosives. The world watches this choreography with the slack-jawed stupidity of a dog watching a magic trick it’s seen a thousand times. We know the card is up the sleeve, we know the rabbit is dead in the hat, but we bark at the screen anyway, hoping that this time, the ‘board’ will actually do something other than provide a tax-deductible travel budget for the architects of the abyss. It is a grift of global proportions, a performance of ‘process’ designed to mask the absence of progress. In the end, the only thing being manufactured is cynicism—and business is booming.