OneVoice, saying a lot of nothing, loses Palestinian support
The impression I got from OneVoice, following my visit to their blogger meetup in Manhattan a couple of weeks back, was that it too is essentially another example of Sterling’s prophecy come fulfilled — a shallow attempt at making the cause of Israeli-Palestinian “peace” (as opposed to the ever popular cause of “resistance to the occupation”) hip and chic, and hence more desirable. OneVoice has thus enlisted the support and visibility of folks like Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman, Edward Norton, and Muhammad Ali to tell the world it’s time for two states for two people.
OneVoice, saying a lot of nothing, loses Palestinian support
Orthodox Anarchist | October 14, 2007
In his January 2000 Veridian manifesto, Bruce Sterling told of a future in which pressing political issues, in particular environmental sustainability, would not find resonance with the mainstream public until the championing of such causes was seen as fashionable and chic.
Sterling, who had already long verified his penchant for prophecy — coining the term “cyberspace” when describing a yet-to-exist-in-present-form Internet in 1982 — couldn’t have been more correct. Some current examples of this phenomenon that come to mind are PETA’s “I’d rather go naked” campaign, Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong campaign, the celebrity frenzy surrounding Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Live Earth concert, and Bono’s One and Red campaigns.
The impression I got from OneVoice, following my visit to their blogger meetup in Manhattan a couple of weeks back, was that it too is essentially another example of Sterling’s prophecy come fulfilled — a shallow attempt at making the cause of Israeli-Palestinian “peace” (as opposed to the ever popular cause of “resistance to the occupation”) hip and chic, and hence more desirable. OneVoice has thus enlisted the support and visibility of folks like Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman, Edward Norton, and Muhammad Ali to tell the world it’s time for two states for two people.
On the slate for our evening of free pricey beers and cheeses, at a posh downtown gallery/facility for corporate focus groups adorned with high-quality die-cut OneVoice brochures, were talks from Craig (Craigslist) Newmark and Arianna Huffington, who both seemed to offer relatively little insight into the matzav or even the purpose of OneVoice, and who further seemed disinterested in engaging directly with those of us beneath their class, politely dismissing the nobodies they were supposedly there to inspire, to instead rub elbows with the other money in the room.
