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Statement von David Rovics über Antideutsche, auf deren Druck sein Konzert im Club Voltaire in Frankfurt am Main abgesagt wurde
David Rovics upcoming concert at Club Voltaire has been pulled due to pressure from German group Anti-Deutsche. Read David's thoughts and position on Israel below and, if willing, send an e-mail to clubvoltaire@t-online.de

"(It) seems the club owners have had trouble with antideutsche pickets before. i was picketed by them at a gig in marburg 7 or 8 years ago. haven't had problems with them since, but i've only been in germany since then for the g8 in rostock, until this upcoming tour in april. we'll see... i do get why germany would produce a group like the antideutsche, but they're still completely wrong both in terms of their view of israeli apartheid and their tactics vis-a-vis targeting leftwing musicians who don't subscribe to their convoluted political analysis.

whenever these jokers leave germany and go anywhere else in europe they are treated as the bizarre sect that they are, but within germany many people are afraid of them -- afraid, understandably, of being accused of anti-semitism, which is the main weapon of the antideutsche. but as the rest of the european left knows much better than the german left, being opposed to israeli apartheid does not mean you are opposed to jews generally. lots of jews oppose israeli apartheid and they are neither anti-semitic nor self-haters -- on the contrary, they are consistent in their politics, unlike the antideutsche, whose support for israel apparently requires them to make the outrageous move of supporting u.s. foreign policy. what, you ask? self-proclaimed communists supporting the war in iraq...? yup! you got it! that's the antideutsche.

israel is an apartheid state and as such does not have the right to exist, any more than the u.s. has a right to exist, for that matter, as a settler state on stolen land with a political and economic system in place that privileges some people over others, which it does, tho israel does it in a much more blatant (a la apartheid) manner.

jews have a right to live in palestine or whatever people want to call that land mass, but they don't have a right to create an apartheid state, any more than the boers/english did in south africa.

As the list of countries jews have had problems in that you list, arnold, what you are pointing out there is that jews have had a terrible history of oppression in EUROPE primarily. europeans -- from the catholic church to the nazi party to the many, many nazi collaborators throughout the continent, from the ukrainian fascists to the french fascists, have a lot to answer for (tho of course most of them are now dead). but palestinians had essentially nothing to do with any of that. and even if they did, forming an apartheid state where they are the second-class or often just dead-class citizens is not the solution here.

i think the idea of a bavarian homeland for the jews is a good idea. it's also good comedy, but it's really a good idea. let the bavarians move to austria. they speak german in austria don't they? it's pretty much the same. (for those who don't get the "joke," this is a play on the israelis who say the palestinians should all just move to jordan because they're really all jordanians anyway.)

very, very few people in the u.s. or anywhere else would seriously propose resettling the settlers, whether in the u.s. or israel. what is meant by "right to exist" for a country means "right for that political system to exist in that land mass." apartheid, or a slightly more subtle form in institutionalized injustice and inequality as in the u.s.a., has no right to exist anywhere, and the solution to inequality is equality. the solution to injustice is justice (not retribution). equality and justice are infinitely complicated concepts, but also quite simple in their essence, something any school child can understand.

in israel as in the u.s., equality can be understood to mean a society where there are no obviously second-class citizens, where it's "one person one vote" note "one dollar one vote" as in the u.s. or "one jew one vote" as in israel, where the occupied people of the west bank and gaza (to say nothing of the refugees in other countries) have no vote. shouldn't they either be allowed to have a vote, or a country, at least one or the other...? right now they've got neither -- just a brutal, vicious occupation.

to put this in some kind of random, personal perspective here, tho, i agree with those who say "but look at the stolen land and settlements in the u.s." -- that's the main focus for me, and the biggest problem in this world today, u.s. foreign and domestic policy. it is, in fact, the reason israel is able to do what it does the way it does. it's also the main reason a lot of other terrible situations exist in the world today. and there are also equitable and practical solutions to the problem that is the united states as well, that do not involve deporting all the whites back to europe.

if i were to be sent back to europe i wonder where i'd go tho? the shtetl my grandmother's family fled is now downwind from chernobyl. but on my other grandmother's side they're potato famine refugees, and ireland is still severely depopulated from 500 years ago. of course if the 40 million americans who consider themselves "irish-american" all move back there it sure won't be lacking residents..."