There was no real media storm yesterday as the news came out that OJ Simpson had passed away at age seventy-six. It all happened thirty years ago. Most people alive today would look at you in amazement if you let them into the life of OJ Simpson, football legend and Hollywood star, and mention names like Marcia Clarke, Lance Ito, Johnnie Cochrane and indeed that pater familias, the late Robert Kardashian. Or Faye Resnick and Kato Kaelin. And that also means not many people today would be able to tell you about the lives of Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman who were brutally murdered with a knife in front of her house on a warm night in Brentwood in June 1994. It produced one truly horrific crime scene.
Yet the double murder, the resulting criminal and civil trials and concurrent media spectacle define a big chunk of media culture during the second half of the 1990s. If you are part of the group that is too young: OJ Simpson murdered his ex-wife Nicole and Ron, there was abundant physical evidence of that, but by playing the race card he got acquitted.
In many ways if you look at how our divided social landscape is evolving, it is not too hard to see how the Simpson case was one of the harbingers of what we are living through today. The use of race as a strategy by the legal ‘dream team’ was as grotesque as it was evil. Even some jurors admitted many years on that they knew Simpson was guilty, yet the pressure and racial sentiments somehow forced them to abandon sound judgment. They stopped looking at the reality that was right in front of them and looked the other way. Simpson’s claim after the trial that he would spend the rest of his life finding the real killers was equally bizarre, he never even bothered.
Leading up to the acquittal were media speculating on the ‘financial killing’ Simpson was about to make: book deals, speaking engagements, paid for TV interviews, he had quite a story to tell. But all of that fell flat, and fast. The public caught on to the misguided charade and Simpson became a pariah as his guilt was, as we say in Dutch, written on his forehead. But large segments of the media and commentariat had invested in a narrative where Simpson was framed by a racist system (remember the cop, Mark Fuhrman) and had a hard time letting that go. In a weird way you could almost argue Simpson was a sort of Hamas avant-la-lettre: blood, knives and evidence of gruesome murder in plain sight, yet many people in the media and establishment were willing to put it all ‘in context’. Look at it in a different way, humanize the murderer, and there you are: maybe the defendant was the actual victim and that was why the jury let Simpson off the hook.
In this context it is also worth remembering the late Dominick Dunne, Vanity Fair contributor who covered the trial on a daily basis. He was often harassed outside the courtroom, his alleged crime being his bias against Simpson. Dunne was a great celebrity writer and was indeed not objective: his own daughter had been murdered and he had witnessed first-hand how the justice system had failed her. His point was that the truth was what mattered above all and had to be told and for that you needed to be in the courtroom every single day. And even though we barely had internet in those days, the entire world was able to do exactly that. Judge Ito’s court was the epicentre of world news for a short period of time.
Gaza Update
And so not that much has changed, we have access to endless information streams when updating ourselves on the Israel-Hamas war and if you are on Telegram you might as well be there, embedded with the fighting parties. Yet the media and increasingly the political and diplomatic story is re-framed in a stark departure from the reality on the ground. The videos and testimonies of that fateful day in October are still as raw and shocking as they were on the day itself, but the world has moved on and if there is a focus on it, it is to blame Israel. Hamas has been getting diplomatic cover as a result of all the pressure that the US and other nations are now putting on Israel to end the fighting. And instead of being annihilated by Israel with the support of what normally should have been an outraged world, Hamas is still standing and building some support.
Worse, Israel has now pulled back most of its combat forces from Gaza – there are about a 1,000 left – and there is clear discord between the US and Israel on how the effort to defeat Hamas should be conducted going forward. At the same time the news on the hostages is getting really worrisome. A leak out of the negotiations this week revealed that Hamas may not have more than 40 of the presumed 134 hostages alive and available for a deal. We have all been fearing this and indeed I pointed to the likelihood a few months ago that Israel’s cabinet might give up on them and give priority to a military win.
The real problem is that it is now clear that not a lot of hostages may come back ever, but also that Israel is really far away from accomplishing their military objectives. A double failure with Hamas now regrouping. And this turn of events is leading to increasing protests and further political divisions in Israel itself where the call for Nethanyahu to go is now more than ever centre stage.
And if things could get ever more precarious, Hamas’ leader Haniyeh’s three sons were killed in an aerial attack by Israel this week. A legitimate target they were, sure, but does anyone think this is fertile ground for a ceasefire and a hostage release deal? A war of attrition with calls for revenge from Iran in the background may bring this conflict into ever more uncharted territory with no end in sight.
Thanks for this timely update. To me, the brutality and gruesome murders perpetrated by the Hamas will forever appear on their foreheads. Israel has lost the war of revenge and the leadership should sue for a peace with the return of their remaining hostages. As the modern battlefield of the opposing parties is conducted on the homes and over the lands of its civilians, the civilians on both sides will never forget their respective losses - this is now legend. Now is the time for repair and Israel has burdened its citizens with a huge debt to make the shared holy land reasonably inhabitable. I still stand firm on the one state solution for all civilians willing to live together in reasonable harmony. I transmit my written words to the enlightened ears including those of the almighty with whom we share our prayers.