I hate to pile on Macklemore, the rapper recently yanked from Ed Sheeran’s tour, further muddying his reputation by association. But I kinda like him, primarily for his song “Starting Over,” an explicit look at sobriety and relapse. I did smile at first listen, because he presents himself as “some wise monk” and a big famous celebrity, since I’d both never heard of him before and — to me anyway — there is something limp and ersatz about white rappers, though Eminem seems to do OK.
I paused before using the present tense, “I like him” in the opening paragraph. I still like Macklemore, based entirely on that song, despite the controversy over his remarks related to Palestinians. Then again, I have an oddball view on this subject, one perhaps unique to myself — I see it as a highly emotional issue, where people of goodwill believe deeply across the spectrum. So I don’t feel the need to flutter my fingers at my sternum and gasp whenever someone says something I disagree with. I certainly don’t see how stifling anybody helps. I would no sooner want to see Macklemore silenced than I would want to be silenced myself.
I also thought before I used “related to Palestinians” rather than “pro-Palestinian” because I don’t quite understand how shouting “Free Palestine” in various circumstances, whether from a concert stage, or at random Jews going about their business in the street, is actually helpful to Palestinians. I wouldn’t shout “Down with Trump!” at someone wearing a cross because evangelicals tend to back the president. Macklemore-like outbursts certainly don’t relieve an iota of suffering in Gaza, or get any closer to a solution to this intractable problem. Maybe it helps the person shouting, giving themselves a big wet kiss of virtue signaling.
And yes, I know that beside his “Free Palestine” remarks, Macklemore also once went onstage wearing a false Jewish hooked nose and beard. I wear something similar myself, permanently affixed to my face, everywhere I go, so heck, the more the merrier. Mel Brooks once dressed as Hitler and performed a rap song — that isn’t an endorsement.
We are allowed to tune him out. I deleted both Instagram and Facebook off my phone because I was tired of the endless “Punch & Judy Show” on this subject. Everybody’s talking, nobody’s listening. If I could inject a thought into the slipstream — and I guess I can, through the vehicle of a newspaper column, which isn’t quite writing a broadsheet with a quill pen and pasting it to the post office wall, but close — I would point out, to Jews, that the true peril is not from tertiary musicians making earnest speeches, but the U.S. government using your cause to squash free expression. I care about Israel, but care 10 times more about this country, and since there is a risk of Jews being eventually seen as the folks who hurrahed Donald Trump while he ravaged the Constitution, I want to add an emphatic: Not In Our Name.
As to Palestinians and their supporters, well, I would point out that being the darlings of Hollywood and college sophomores did not help Tibetans, still under the heel of China last time I looked. If your point is that Israel should never have been created in 1948, I can understand that. But it’s still there, your feelings notwithstanding. The relevant question is: What happens next?
Why not consider both talking and listening? Because this killing people strategy is not working, despite its popularity. Nor does yelling.
What happens next? A phrase I like to toss out. Both sides immediately start recounting the past, toting up wrongs — “Waving the bloody shirt” I call it. They seem to think if they tally enough suffering points, they win. My reply: “No, let’s stipulate that the past indeed happened: What now?”
Both sides raise equally impossible scenarios. The best I can grasp the loudest view on the Palestinian future, there is a magic reset: an empty Palestine circa 1948 rises from the mist, like Brigadoon, and they return to their former homes. Good luck with that.
The Israelis, quite committed to sticking around, seem fixated on their own pipe dream of compressing the Palestinians into an ever smaller space, lately by hammering Gaza into a fine powder. Though they would say they’re blasting at Hamas cells hiding behind schoolchildren. That argument curdled a long time ago.
Meanwhile, nothing ever really changes — the definition of tragedy. It will, eventually. But it can’t until both sides start listening to each other. Yes, they did that before, in the past. But remember, we’re in the present now, looking toward the future. Talking is crucial, because wishing the situation away, and demonizing and killing each other, is not working.