Thursday, July 22, 2010

Monkey see, Monkey do

Gorillaz performed at a sold out concert at Byblos Festival last night. One might question why rock stars would forgo many of the rock star perks by hiding behind animated characters, but all in all I would say they're faring well.

Gorillaz were also one of many artists to cancel shows in apartheid Israel. They did it in the wake of the flotilla massacre committed by the Israeli military. While that Israeli crime got plenty of deserved attention, what has gone forgotten is that the flotilla was carrying aid supplies and headed to still besieged Gaza.

Israeli killings did not stop on the aid flotilla, neither have their raids.

On moral grounds, a complete boycott of Apartheid Israel has a strong case.

On the "cool thing to do" front however, a comprehensive boycott movement has yet to find solid grounds. Even in places where Israeli aggression has continually wreaked terror and claimed lives, you find some self proclaimed activists having a hard time skipping on a 20 ounce mug of ripoffino in order to send a Boycott Apartheid message.

I use boycotting a coffee shop as an example since it is one of the easiest things to do in Beirut. Boycott one coffee shop and still have about 7000 other places where you can overpay for coffee. Heck I boycott cafes because I don't like the hand rest on one of their chairs and I never run out of a caffeine fix.

How do you turn a moral cause into the cool thing to do?

Maybe if more Gorillaz do it, the monkeys will follow.

3 comments:

N. said...

well-said.

Anonymous said...

boycotts tend to only go mainstream after they get their rabies shots.

as long as you let crazies with other agendas hijack BDS and use it to target entities that really don't have anything to do with israel and palestine, you'll never get regular people on board.

Myriam said...

So true.

Now if just the rest of the 99% of the population agreed.

we need some Leb Celeb to endorse the idea.


Myriam