Deeply indoctrinated western religious belief pictures the debate like this; There are two sides, Israel and the Palestinians, the United States is an honest broker trying to bring them together and reach a solution. That’s real religious faith, the kind you rarely get in organized religion because the evidence is so vastly against it. It takes deep irrational commitment to power to even entertain that thought. If there were serious negotiations going on they would be run by a neutral party that has some international respect, like Brazil for example. And on one side would be Israel and the United States, on the other side would be the rest of the world. Asking the United States to mediate is like asking Iran to mediate in the Sunni, Shia conflicts in Iraq. We’d laugh, and we would laugh about this too if we weren’t so deeply indoctrinated. For 35 years the United States has been blocking the international consensus on a political settlement, how can it be a negotiator?
— Noam Chomsky (via theyoungradical)