Truth tellers like Bob Geldof

THE EDITOR, Madam:

On July 28 at his luxury golf resort in Scotland, President Donald Trump finally admitted that there was real starvation in Gaza. This came during a lengthy press conference with British PM Sir Keir Starmer, and in direct contrast to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated statements that it’s a bold-faced lie that his country is fuelling starvation in Gaza. I watched interviews with Bob Geldof conducted a day or two before, when the activist musician did not mince his words in saying that Netanyahu is a liar as are Israeli Defence Force spokesmen.

Geldof’s interviews with RTE-News from his native Ireland and England’s Sky-TV are accessible online; his lifetime spent raising money to fight famines in several African countries, surely qualifies him to recognize starvation when he sees it. Coincidentally, a four-part documentary “Live Aid : When Rock ’n’ Roll Took Over The World” is being shown on CNN and BBC, and it’s worth looking at how that bit of recent history unfolded.

It tells how Bob Geldof and his TV-presenter wife Paula Yates first saw pictures of the Ethiopian famine in a BBC news broadcast in late October 1984. The horrific pictures inspired them to get together with other British rockers willing to volunteer their time and talents to produce a record within weeks titled “Do They Know It’s Christmas”. It was made under the name of Band-Aid, and became the fastest-selling record up to that time, raising large funds for the starving children in Ethiopia. A few weeks later, Bob Geldof had inspired a similar response from American musicians who produced We Are The World under the name USA For Africa. That led to simultaneous sold-out Live Aid concerts in London’s Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium in July 1985. That was exactly 40 years ago, and both shows were beamed around the world to 1.5 million live viewers, who became direct targets of Bob Geldof’s on-air F-Bombs when donations were slow. That raised many establishment eyebrows at the staid BBC, but had the desired effect of raising millions of dollars, with its target fund exceeded four times over. Other Live Aid concerts and fundraisers were produced over the last four decades, with many more millions being raised, along with minor controversies, of course. The world would be better off with a few less mealy-mouthed, deceitful, untruthful politicians, and with a few more fearless, plain-spoken, truth-tellers like Bob Geldof.

BERNIE SMITH

Parksville, BC

Canada