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When it comes to Palestine and Israel, the US simply doesn't get it

The world of Robert Fisk is one of reality and experience of the Middle East - having lived in and reported from Beirut for over 30 years.

He is therefore well qualified to comment on events in troubled region. But Fisk isn't only confined to the Middle East. He travels to and speaks in the US on a regular basis. So, having watched the recent Biden-Palin "debate" in his weekly piece in The Independent, he comments on the missing elephant in the room:

"Palestinians ceased to exist in the United States on Thursday night. Both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin managed to avoid the use of that poisonous word. "Palestine" and "Palestinians" – that most cancerous, slippery, dangerous concept – simply did not exist in the vice-presidential debate. The phrase "Israeli occupation" was mercifully left unused. Neither the words "Jewish colony" nor "Jewish settlement" – not even that cowardly old get-out clause of American journalism, "Jewish neighbourhood" – got a look-in. Nope.

Those bold contenders of the US vice-presidency, so keen to prove their mettle when it comes to "defence", hid like rabbits from the epicentre of the Middle East earthquake: the existence of a Palestinian people. Sure, there was talk of a "two-state" solution, but it would have mystified anyone who didn't understand the region.

There was even a Biden jibe at George Bush for pressing on with "elections" – again, the adjective "Palestinian" went missing – that produced a Hamas victory. But Hamas appeared to exist in never-never land, a vast landscape that gradually encompassed all the vast and black deserts that stretch, in the imagination of US politicians, from the Mediterranean to Pakistan.

"Pakistan's (nuclear) missiles can already hit Israel," Biden thundered. But what was he talking about? Pakistan has not threatened Israel. It's supposed to be on our side. Both vice-presidential candidates seemed to think that our ally in the "war on terror" was now turning into an ally of the axis of evil. Even Islam didn't get a run for its money.

Indeed, one of the funniest reports of the week, yet another investigation of Obama's education, came from the Associated Press news agency. The would-be president, the Associated Press announced, had attended a Muslim school but hadn't "practised" Islam.

What on earth did this mean, I asked myself? Would AP have reported, for example, that McCain had attended a Christian school but hadn't "practised" Christianity? Then I got it. Obama had smoked Islam but he hadn't inhaled!"

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