This is not about Ed Sheeran

Woman and child standing in doorway of damaged house in Rafah. Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa 

Being a Good Person was always part of being special. And when I was younger, I was sure I was special. I was special but hated conflict, hated raised voices, hated making anyone unhappy in a way that might cause a raised voice. I was special and wanted to be liked and what better way to be liked than to be a Good Person? 

I still feel a certain tenderness for my younger self. All her constant pit-of-the-stomach insecurities and half-held breaths. But also a certain impatience. I want to give her a good shake now and tell her to get over herself already. The point is to limit harm in this world, not to be precious. 

By certain metrics, Ed Sheeran is special. His catchy, inoffensive pop songs have been among the most streamed of all time. He is among the singers with the highest net worth. The variety of political causes which he has supported over the years suggest that he, too, believes being a Good Person is part of being special. For his latest tour he included Macklemore, of Thrift Shop fame, as one of his supporting acts. The same Macklemore who has filled his Instagram account with exhortations to free Palestine throughout these three years of genocide, who has released two singles--one about the student encampments at Columbia University, another about Palestinian liberation, and who has regularly worn his kuffiyeh and flown the Palestinian flag at his concerts. It's surprising, then, that Sheeran would be surprised and dismayed when there was controversy after Macklemore spoke about the issue at a concert in New Jersey. But dismayed he and the concert venue owners were. Macklemore was dropped from the tour. All remaining supporting acts--who stood to lose far more financially--then quit in solidarity with Macklemore and, ostensibly, the Palestinian people. 

What does an aspiring Good Person do in such a situation? Continue with the tour--the show must go on, after all--but begin his next concert with a statement. Points off, Mr. Sheeran, for "the most complex political issue on the planet" (both because it's quite simple really--genocide is bad--and because it's so terribly cliched). Points off for "my concerts have always been a safe space for everyone"-- really? Clearly not safe for Macklemore. What about Palestinians wearing kuffiyehs and carrying flags? Hamas? Itimar Ben-Gvir? Points off for following with "that matters hugely to me" and "honoring my commitments to my fans is completely central to my sense of who I am" and "I want to address...where I stand..." Me, my, I. Points off for "I've always wanted my music and shows to be about unity not division" -- again, so cliched, so banal. Ah yes, imagine Khaled Meshal sharing a bottle of Coca Cola with Bezalel Smotrich as they listen to Perfect. Many, many points off for "what happened in Israel and the Nova music festival..." There is no both-sides-ing suffering here. Not after genocide. More points off for talking about Gaza as "catastrophic ... disproportionate ... unjustifiable" but never as genocide. I will grant you a point for mentioning the "systemic injustice that is happening in the West Bank" even if the better phrases would be ethnic cleansing and pogroms. 

Despite my contempt for his statement, I can't help but feel the same tenderness for him that I feel for my younger self. And a profound sadness. He was rattled as he read his statement (off his phone?). Acknowledged "I do not know enough." Near tears by the end. It appears that at the end of the day, Ed Sheeran is not special. He's so very ordinary. And his desires are very ordinary: to be a Good Person and sing his songs. Except he finds himself in this extraordinary moment and it is simply too much, too heavy and vast for the sort of very ordinary person that his is -- that almost all of us are -- muddling through, unable to see much beyond the horizon of the self.

But if that self has to be special, it's been a moment to give the inner Good Person a bit of attention. In the weeks after October 7th, I watched my Twitter feed fill with folks posting selfies wearing kuffiyehs--which I'm sure my younger self would have done too because it would have felt like an act of solidarity, what a Good Person does for Palestinians when they don't know what else to do. For some it was an opportunity to become a martyr by making increasingly provocative comments (that did nothing to change anything materially) until their universities unsurprisingly fired them, their comrades now required to come to their defense on behalf of the freedom to defend Palestine. And there was the incessant obsession with being "on the right side of history," as if history is a epic game of football. But you as an individual do not win history. You'll be dead by the time anyone is paying attention to its winners. Is there anything more self-absorbed than worrying not only about what everyone alive thinks about you but even those not yet born?

The problem with being a Good Person instead of doing the right thing regardless of whether it makes you a Good Person is that the being obscures the doing. The ego of the Good Person is too fragile or too insistent to carry the weight of doing what is hard and requires sacrifice. 

None of this is about Ed Sheeran or Macklemore or you or me and whatever obsessions we have with our personal goodness and the judgement of history. It's about children having their limbs amputated without anesthetic or shot because Israeli soldiers were bored. It's about universities and government archives not being merely oopsie-bombed but deliberately detonated. It's about NICU babies left to rot when Israeli soldiers forced hospital staff to leave at gunpoint. It's about Israeli soldiers siccing a dog on an autistic young man with Down syndrome and leaving him to die alone after he was mauled. It's about Israeli soldiers rifling through women's underwear drawers and posting photos wearing their lingerie. It's about Israeli soldiers who are routinely starving, torturing, and raping Palestinian hostages as I type this. Let us all just shut the fuck up, sink to our knees, beat our breasts and beg God and all of the dead and maimed for forgiveness for letting this happen. 

That there are no individual solutions to systemic problems is a theme peppered throughout the sci-fi and op/eds of that great theorist of enshittification, Cory Doctorow. Individual performances of being a Good Person may momentarily numb that terrible, gnawing, suffocating rage and anguish at our individual impotence. But yet another winter is coming. It will inevitably bring more fetid flooding and frigid weather to folks who are lucky if they have a tent to replace the solid homes Israel has destroyed. Every time the world's attention is diverted, Israel reduces the number of trucks with fuel and food allowed into Gaza. In the West Bank, Tevye's great-great-great grandchildren are routinely pogroming villages like they're Cossacks in the Pale of Settlement, while Israel has ethnically cleansed 40,000 people in the city of Jenin. We must get over ourselves. Get over our need for warm, fuzzy feelings about how good and special we are. We must look collectively, dispassionately, and steely-eyed at power. How it works and where its weaknesses are. We must find a way to exploit those weaknesses. Find a way to MAKE. THIS. STOP. 

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Give to these organizations, not because it will make you a Good Person or give you a glorious cathartic feeling of making a difference or change the system that is causing this genocide. Give because it's not about your individual ability to change anything but about a collective effort to momentarily make life slightly more bearable for Palestinians in Gaza. 

UNRWA: The UN Refugee and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East is among the oldest and most established organizations allowing a Palestinian society to exist. Which is why several countries, most notably the United States, have withdrawn funding (these countries say that somehow UNRWA is supporting Hamas but have never provided solid evidence of this). They still have a staff of over 10,000 people inside Gaza who are trying to keep garbage picked up, water flowing, and portable toilets emptied along with trying every which way to get aid in like food and fuel. Normally they are also running schools and medical clinics and much of the infrastructure that keeps Gaza running. But they are $100 million in the hole thanks to that withdrawal of funding. My widow's mite of $10/month may indeed be like spitting in the wind. Yet millions of people around the world have been watching this. Most of them could spare $10 too. 

Daughters of the Land Project: While the Israelis are making it difficult for aid to get into Gaza, they are allowing commercial trucks in. So technically there is food, but prices are exorbitant--especially if you haven't worked in three years. And that's why those UNRWA salaries are important. It means those employees, at least, can buy food for their families. But if you don't have money... well, you simply look at food you can't eat while your kids starve. I first heard about about DotLP on Bad Hasbara when it was still called the Gaza Flour Fund. Give them money so they can buy the hideously overpriced commercial food the Israelis are trucking in. 

Crips for e-SIMs for Gaza: Started by the late disability activist Alice Wong (you are so missed!), they buy e-Sims for Palestinians to connect to the outside world now that Israel has destroyed their cell towers. Those videos you're watching are because someone in Gaza has an e-SIM for their phone. From the beginning, disability activists have recognized that this genocide is a mass disabling event. Over the years I have often tried to imagine life in Gaza, the West Bank or Southern Lebanon as an ME/CFS patient with post-exertional malaise, problems being upright, unable to tolerate sensory stimuli such as loud sounds or smells or bright light.  Horrifying. 

Gaza Funds: This is a centralized place for all the Go-Fund Me and Chuffed fundraisers people in Gaza have started to help with day to day expenses or to pay the $10,000/person minimum it takes to evacuate. 

Connecting Gaza: A Canadian-based mutual aid group combining financial assistance with daily messages of support to families in Gaza. Their donations have dropped significantly as the world has seemingly moved on. Palestinians in Gaza, of course, can't move on. Except within Gaza. Where the Israelis force them to move on all the time. 

Medical Aid for Palestinians: A UK group that, along with Doctors Without Borders, may be the largest medical charity sending health care providers and supplies.