Gaza-Los Angeles: The banality of evil

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

Well, a lot of people are talking about schadenfreude, or about karma, or whatever all else. The idea is that the fires came back to where they started from. This, however, is no time to laugh. The full effects of environmental factors is being felt in Los Angeles, oddly, so is climate denialism. Apparently, major networks are not even mentioning how climate change is a major factor of the fires. How all the decisions we, as humans, have made and which compounded into this disaster.

Of course, there is also Gaza, which is still being bombed - and this is not the time for Palestinian tragedies, is it? - by, well, what turned out to be American weapons which brings us back to schadenfreude and karma. 

But all of this is leading me to Hannah Arendt and her book "The banality of evil" (fun fact, the words "banality of evil" do not appear inside the book). We are, at this point sanitized. There is a fatigue, not just setting in, but one already set in long ago. With the coverage of all these international (and in our case national - because, "Lebanon") being non-stop, and yes, biased and unfair, there is little left in terms of sympathy in us. 

All evil becomes banal.

What was once deemed evil, is now filed under, "what else is on TV". I have not watched television since 2012 - yes, not even the times I appeared on television myself - but the result is the same. Just images upon images, of purely horrific acts, with little or no feelings from viewers.

The 2006 war in Lebanon was eclipsed by another news - a man confessing (wrongly) to being the killer of JonBenet Ramsey (you know the child beauty queen) as he was on his way to Thailand for a sex-change operation. Suddenly, everything happening in Lebanon was no longer worthy of news.

And by the way, the image above? Well that is a mix between Gaza and Los Angeles, but you wouldn't know, would you?

And make no mistake, as people will try to rebuild their lives in Los Angeles, or Gaza, well, that's old news.

Old evil.

Old banal evil. 

Aramex delivers a punchy one this Ramadan

So Aramex has spoken. And spoken eloquently indeed. What seemed a "package" sent by an elderly man ends up having a very different story indeed. Whereas we do not know what is in the package, we can - from the get-go feel it is something emotional. The journey the package undertakes - one immediately assumes it is a special gift for a grandchild, or a personal memento - ends up quite different indeed. After taking us through the machinations of how the package is treated, we eventually realize it was being stocked up in an chamber with other such packages. The reason? it is destined for Gaza. But since delivery there is sort of impossible, Aramex is proposing a message of peace (log on to deliverpeace.global and register your own "salam" (peace) message). Incredibly well-played from Aramex if you ask me! See the full ad here.

2023 was exceptionally triggering for me

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly from the series "Visit Palestines"

In case you are not aware, I am literally a war child. I was born 6 months before the beginning of the 1975-90 was in Lebanon. Growing up, I never knew anything that was not war. Mind you, one of the things people do not understand, is that your parents were experiencing war live with you - nothing prepared them for this. So basically, I also came from a family that was suffering from war. Sure these are things you understand as you grow older and you have no idea what they mean as they happen on day-to-day basis. I remember that my parents had to have Tranxene 5(mg) even before bread. And no, I am not digressing. 

The problem is that what happened in Palestine in 2023 was a major trigger for me. All the images which were coming from social media - and even though I just follow a few people on Instagram and have no Tiktok, the people I do follow are as opinionated as I am. Naturally, considering I read and analyze all day long, I kept seeing a flood of news about the region.

If you still cannot put two and two together, let me make it easier for you - all the war trauma went back to the surface as I saw and watched what was happening there. All those shelter days, and bombardment days, and explosions, and newsflashes, and everything else. All came back in a condensed package through my mind. Sure, I am tough, always have been (even if there were bouts of depression at times), but seeing all this made the past more visible, more naked, more urgent.

And believe you me, trauma does not leave you. It may hide, but it never leaves.

So whereas anyone who knows me expected me to be more vocal about what happened in Palestine, the issue was that I was dealing with the war backlog - in addition to the other problems and things that 2023 (which was not kind to many many people!) has presented me with.

So voila, there was just too much on my (mental) plate, all while knowing where I stood.

Gaza quicksand drowns Zara

Zara walks into the controversy open-eyed. In this sensitive, very sensitive time marketing-wise, where brands and celebrities are being scrutinized for what they said - or for what they did not say - Zara issued a new campaign titled "The Jacket". A better name would have been the straight-jacket because honestly not seeing the implications of this campaign - meaning no one from marketing, management, communication detected a hint of second-layer - is in itself insane.

Well, the image speaks for itself. Rubble? Check. Debris (in the shape of a certain country)? Check. Body wrapped in a (white) plastic covering (reminiscent of a certain burial color for a certain religion)? Check. Do I proceed? Does this remind you of - ahem - anything currently happening in the world? Of course, Gaza and the disaster hitting there. Well, if Balanciaga could not detect it, why should Zara.

But today boycott IS real. Starbucks, McDonald's, Coca-Cola are some of the brands suffering major backlash for supporting one camp again the other in the war happening in Palestine. I already spoke of how this dragged the local McDonald's franchisee in Lebanon (here and in extenso here as well). Boycott among other reasons had led Starbucks to start closing shop in many countries in the region, while their stocks dwindled 11% by the time this post is written.

Does Zara really want to join the list? It seems so. Right now words by their head of women's design Vanessa Perilman said in 2021 (while engaging with Palestinian model Qaher Harhash), which can be described as colorful (here), are doing the rounds online. So perhaps Zara is indeed set on being part of it. If that is the case, they are doing quite a good job.

Why is an ad about 2006 war leading me to the US department of State regarding Gaza?

So how does this get me this? (Here). 

The still above is from an ad that popped up as a I was browsing. It is about how devastating the 2006 war in Lebanon was. In numbers. Interestingly, when I pressed on the offered link I got the page of the US Department of State about "humanitarian assistance to Gaza". I am not going to say anything here (about supplying bombs to one side and humanitarian assistance on the other), but what I am trying to understand is: why is it that an ad about the effects of 2006 war and the tagline to "choose security" gets me to a link about Gaza and humanitarian assistance. Who is paying for this ad and why? Also about two days ago I got a message on my phone with a hashtag: #Lebanon_does_not_war. Well, mass messages on phones cost money - who paid for those?

All am asking is - what is the relation between the cause and the effect. And how come an ad about Lebanon ends up linking me to Gaza?

How can one seek stability when all goalposts keep on changing?

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly based on a vintage Rimal resort ad

Not even sure what I am saying here. Might be the product of frustration, or disillusion, or tiredness, or of personal circumstances, or of being Lebanese, or just being me, or a combination of any of the options that preceded. At a time when friends in Europe are plotting their vacations in February 2024, I cannot even see what tomorrow will bring. Already, I am living in Lebanon, a country that lost all logic, where institutions barely function, where we did not have a president for a year now, where banks basically stripped us of our money, where inflation is at 128%, and where poverty levels are at 80% (and please do not believe those Instagram accounts where everyone is living their best life), a country where day-to-day life has an element of surrealism in it.

There has been too many upheavals in my life. Truly, too many to count. I was born 6 months before the 1975 war and already what was normal in my childhood, must have been totally mind-mending in anyone else's. But you know, comes a time when I really - as in really - crave stability. Boring old routine. Am serious. I keep living my life inside problems and issues and uprooting and what not. And yet, here we are - again.

Obviously, I am referring to what is happening in Palestine, specifically Gaza, with the danger of what it might mean if this spilled over to Lebanon. And this is not some farfetched scenario I am dreaming up but rather a real probability with real tangible implications on day to day life, which already is hanging to normalcy by a thread.

I was speaking to a friend and he said he quit expecting stability, he just went on assuming that everything would be sh*t. To be honest almost everyone I know seems to be in some in-between phase, one is waiting for her parents to move to the US to leave as well, another is moving to Dubai with her family but her husband was rushed to the hospital, a third is shifting from company to company where she works online for meager salaries which do not even cover her rent and living expenses, and so on and so forth.

Maybe I am imagining things, that people outside of Lebanon - you know Europe, US, etc... - have stable lives. But truth be told, I wish to have a routine where I go out to work in the morning and back home at night all while earning a very respectable salary as I used to do which was there for a fleeting period of time. But I guess instability was the norm. But after a while, all these shifting goalposts become too tiring to follow and keep up with.

I guess this is too cheesy, and that it dates me, but as the once-philosopher Madonna said "If we took a holiday (...) just one day out of life" - and preferably before February 2024 (no disrespect for my European friends' calendar).

What's goin' on? There's a riot going on

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

When Marvin Gaye issued his seminal album "What's going on" in 1971, Sly and the Family Stone released their own "There's a riot goin' on" on that same year. Which brings us back to the Middle East. The cursed region which seems to know no respite.

I refer you to this passage from "Beyrouth Mayhem-ek" which you can find here:

… And the bombings over Beirut intensified, and I found myself…
Strange how some statements seem ageless and dateless, as if their only reference is simply their own being. The above could have taken place anytime between 1975 and 1990, then sporadically – yet recurrently – after that, although choosing 1996 and 2006 would give a better statistical opportunity of be dead on. Excuse the pun. It seemed the same as saying “the sun rises”, a benign statement with no implications whatsoever in the grand scheme of things, a mechanic, repetitive act – a little like sex when the initial impulse of the discovery of the other’s body has gone.

Replace Beirut with Gaza and you get the drift.