Good Or Shit: Israel/Palestine

I've been thinking about something Tom Waits said in an interview several years ago after the release of Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers And Bastards. In reference to his 'equitable' summation of the Israel/Palestine conflict on the track On The Road To Peace, Waits told the interviewer - “I don't really know what a song like that can achieve, but I was compelled to write it. I don't know if any genuine meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.”

I am absolutely flogged with despair to see that so much of the Western world has forgotten that this conflict started because people wanted to keep their homes. It has developed into so much more, forgotten the expulsion of the Palestinians, and become something so much uglier. And I'm not really referring to the violence meted out by both sides. I'm referring to the inequitable discourse that has been created in the world in order to justify the fact that, put simply – a really shitty un-humanitarian thing happened to a people and they went on to do a really shitty un-humanitarian thing to another people.

It is this discourse that has turned resistance against an aggressive military occupation into “terrorism” and I wish Waits had paid more attention to it when he'd penned his 'equitable' song.

Over time the discourse has evolved from lazy Palestinians letting the land rot beneath them (as my high school modern history teacher taught me) to Palestinians as crazed unreasonable terrorists hell bent on war and destruction who don't want peace. Which is ridiculous. If you go to the Palestinian Territories you'll just find people who, much like the rest of us, want work, education, and the occasional bloody holiday. Of course they want peace. But they don't want it at any more of their own expense and humiliation. They want it to be fair. Nothing they've been offered so far has been fair.

This discourse is proving to be one of the most difficult to undo. I mean harder than getting Howard to admit to a Stolen Generation despite the thousands of Aboriginal people who state they were stolen. It would probably be easier to get Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to admit that he knows full well the Holocaust happened than it would be to get Barack Obama or David Cameron or Julia Gillard to say “Palestine has a right to exist and the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves”.  

So how do you fight the creators of a discourse – politicians, media outlets, entertainment industries? Perhaps it is time our musicians drop the peanuts and started throwing a few stones at the gorillas.

Last year the OneWorld collective released a compilation track called Freedom For Palestine. Personally, melodically, the song didn't do that much for me. Coldplay (amongst others) endorsed it, posted the link on their Facebook page where it lasted a few days before Facebook removed it because, according to a statement from the OneWorld collective “thousands of people reported it as abusive”. Oh how audibly this makes me sigh. Singing about refugees, occupation, and human rights is abusive. To whom exactly? To the discourse.

Billy Bragg wrote a song called The Lonesome Death Of Rachel Corrie about the young American activist who stood in front of an Israeli Defence Force bulldozer that was about to bulldoze the home of a Palestinian pharmacist. She was killed when the driver ran over her. Did the soldier see her? Did he not see her? For the official answer – check the discourse.

Roger Waters and numerous underground hip hop artists have written songs about Palestine or referenced it in their lyrics. None of them have sonically pleased me all that much. None of them have the spine tingling, fire driving power of the John Lennon's or the Bob Dylan's or Rage Against The goddamn Machine.

Remember when big name famous musicians cared? Remember when they had guts? When they stood for something? Are they going the same way as our politicians? Where they spend millions of dollars jetting around with fans and journos promoting themselves and saying whatever crap will sell an album or a concert ticket?

For the few out there doing it you have my immense respect. You're on the right track. In fact, you're on the road to peace. And it's a hard road to stand on, it takes courage to stand on it, because you will be pummelled with verbal rubber coated bullets declaring you have been brain-washed or you're anti-semitic. And that's part of the discourse. You have to fight it.