Palestinians and Israelis, relax. You are about to be saved. Those countless years of negotiations, arbitrations and altercations, they were just a waste of time. You went about it the wrong way. You relied on presidents and prime ministers, diplomats and scholars. You went to Camp David and Wye and Sharm al-Sheik. You were talking to all the wrong people, looking in all the wrong paces.
Hollywood. That’s the answer. Where people live happily ever after.
Where they sing in the rain and where you never have to say you’re sorry. Actors. Those are the people who can solve the unsolvable in the Middle East.
Or so we are being made to think.
Does anyone really believe that a group of actors, albeit all well-intentioned card-carrying SAG members, have the ability to stop terror and solve the unsolvable problems of this world. Well … yes, if your name is Jason Alexander.
Jason, who? Alexander. No, he’s not Britney Spears’ newest tryst.
He’s George. You know, George, the nebbishy, put-upon, lovable sidekick to Jerry Seinfeld in the very, very popular program about “nothing.” George Costanza, that often pitiful, sometimes ironically profound, just average person we all have in our lives.
Jason, the real person, just spent a week of ping-ponging back and forth between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He came as the first representative of a diplomatic initiative created to poll Israelis and Palestinians, getting their views on a final-status agreement to end the terror-ridden stalemate that is the Middle East conflict. The initiative, endorsed by other actors, including Danny De Vito and Rhea Perlman, is called One Voice.
Is Alexander a graduate of Georgetown’s School of Diplomacy? Does he have some hitherto hidden expertise in the Middle East or even in conflict resolution? Has he ever researched and played a character involved in international negotiations? Did I perhaps miss his latest book on the intricacies of Palestinian politics?
I almost feel like I am watching a scene out of a movie. But this is real life, not celluloid or small screen.
He’s not alone, and he’s not the first, I know that. Actors have been capitalizing on their status to publicly speak their minds for a long time. Jane Fonda, one of the most notable voices of opposition to the war in Vietnam, is having a political resurrection along with John Kerry’s rise in popularity.
But what she and her fellow actors did more than 30-something years ago was different — they advocated an agenda. Martin Sheen turned TV president and political mouthpiece, and Susan Sarandon can hold rallies and sign letters and write op-eds and speak her mind in Hollywood. Woody Allen can do it in New York.
Alexander and company have no vision, no answer. They just want a consensus so as to end the conflict. As if that’s a plan.
Maybe Alexander consulted with a military figure before embarking on this initiative, maybe he spoke with a colonel. Colonel Sanders, that is of finger-licking, cholesterol and carbo-laden fame.
That’s where we see Jason cum George nowadays, on TV commercials hawking chicken parts.
A few weeks ago another politically out-spoken actor, Richard Dreyfus, took center stage as master of ceremonies at the Geneva accords. It was a media event co-sponsored by a group of Palestinians, sent over with the blessing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat but not directly representing him or any other Palestinian constituency, and a group of out-of-office, politically defunct, Israelis, not even representing the opposition party. There, in the presence of former President Carter, in prime time, they signed an accord advocating a cause and proposing a plan. Dreyfus and Carter on the same stage — and it wasn’t even a soundstage; it wasn’t Letterman or better yet, Leno.
That event has already been relegated to a historical asterisk.
As starstruck as they are, one could never, seriously, assume that Israelis and Palestinians might actually fall for this. What has worked for the clergy — the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Terry Waite, the envoy of the archbishop of Canterbury, were very influential negotiators and mediators — even in the Middle East, just doesn’t cut it with actors.
Is there a hope that Israelis and Palestinians might actually heed the mighty George and come back to the negotiation table because he appeared on their “stage” and helped them formulate their own thoughts? I doubt it. I also doubt that this initiative will even truly get off the ground. It is predicated on a “public negotiations platform,” polling Israeli and Palestinian voices through the Internet, mail and polling stations. Internet? How many Palestinians have access to the Internet? Surely, some students do, but they are by no means representative of the Palestinian mind.
In a statement heralding the impending arrival of Hollywood’s representative, the regional director of One Voice, Muhammad Darawshe, was quoted as saying: “Any public figure like George can encourage apathetic people to take their destiny into their own hands.” Was that a misspeak? A total misunderstanding of the role of an actor?
Or was it a sign of the reality to come?
I know that all the world’s a stage, but this is taking it too far.
Let diplomats do their thing. Send Jason/George back to reruns; he’s doing really nicely there.
Micah D. Halpern is a political and social commentator and author of “What You Need To Know About: Terror.”