In her latest article for Rolling Stone (MENA), Felicity links Sinéad O’Connor’s haunting song of An Gorta Mór – the purposeful program of starvation perpetrated against the Irish people, and recast as the result of crop failure – to the current horrors being perpetrated against the Palestinian people by the Israeli government.
Across the MENA region, like Sinéad, musicians have framed the language of resistance. Palestinian group DAM have spoken about their guilt and mourning as activist artists watching the devastation at home. Tunisian singer Emel Mathlouthi, her voice soaring at the Arab Spring, asserted, “I am free and my word is free/ Don’t forget the price of bread … I am the voice of those who do not die,” lyrics that resonate as both witness and indictment. Egyptian band Cairokee, Syrian singer Samih Shqeir, and Lebanese composer Marcel Khalife all fuse grief and protest, arguably turning every refrain into evidence. Through their music, collective memory is sharpened into accusation, particularly on the theme of starvation.
But, when and how can such an accusation become a criminal case?
