Songs documenting the genocide of the Palestinian people, written between October-December, 2023.

Notes From A Holocaust

This is my new podcast series, A History of the World According to David Rovics.  In this series, I take on history, starting with what we Americans call the Colonial Era, then working our way forward, tightening up the timeline as we go.

I'll upload new episodes every so often, gratis, here and on other platforms, including at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld.  You can find notes about each of the 16 episodes there now.  Eventually the whole series will be available for free download by anyone.
All of the episodes should be FCC-friendly for radio broadcast in the US, except for episode 11, because of the song, "Iceland, 2008."

For paid subscribers, 16 episodes are already up.  They can be found in the Everything folder -- if you're a CSA member, whether you signed up through Substack, Patreon, Bandcamp, or at davidrovics.com/subscribe, you should have gotten a welcome email with the link to the Everything folder, but feel free to contact me if you need that again!

A History of the World According to David Rovics

All but one of these songs I wrote in the past few months, mostly about the ongoing joint Israeli-American Holocaust of Palestinians in Gaza.  Aside from my voice and guitar, all the instrumentation you're hearing is Chet Gardiner, and the harmony vocals are Kamala Emanuel.  Kalindi Jackson made the cover.  The one song that wasn't written this year is a remix of a song I recorded at Big Red Studio back when Jeremy Corbyn was leading the British Labor Party.

From Auschwitz to Gaza

In addition to doing songs for grownups, I do songs for kids, too!  These songs all appear on one of two albums -- Har Har Har and Ballad of a Dung Beetle.

Children's Music

Lots of free music, videos, CDs for purchase and more at www.davidrovics.com/kids! Sign my email list to find out when I'm coming to your town -- and maybe even organize a show yourself!

Punk Rock Baby

Roller Coaster Train

The Fruit That Got Away

The Pirate Song

Walking On The Ceiling

As we stand by, the Israeli military is obeying its commands to annihilate the Gaza Strip.

As The Bombs Rain Down

Stop the Genocide

In the mirror world, this slogan is controversial, and is a veiled threat of genocide against the Jewish people.  In the real world, the ethnonationalist Jewish-supremacist state of Israel has been committing a genocide against the Palestinian people for the past 75 years, and this slogan is a slogan of liberation for all the people who live between the river and the sea.  As with similar slogans in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, for dominant political tendencies in Palestinian civil society it's about equality between all peoples, not genocide.  Genocide, rather, is what Israel is doing.  As the Israeli authorities openly and publicly say, this is "Nakba 2.0."  We should believe them, they're serious.

From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea

When there were still hospitals functioning in the Gaza Strip, before they were intentionally destroyed in an ongoing, genocidal bombing campaign, the surviving doctors wrote on the bodies of the surviving children, over and over again, the acronym, WCNSF -- Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.

Wounded Child -- No Surviving Family (WCNSF)

We pause this genocide for a few words from our sponsor.

Humanitarian Pause

The danger of ignoring obvious historical parallels to unfolding events is the prospect of repeating them.

Just Like the Nazis Did

This song is a public service announcement, to thank the Houthi Army for their service to the global public.

Song for the Houthi Army

On June 8th, 1967, during the course of the Six-Day War, the Israeli military tried to sink an American ship and kill all the crew -- knowing full well that's exactly what they were doing.  The attack left 34 Americans dead, hundreds maimed, and a ship destroyed.

The Ballad of the USS Liberty (When Israel Attacked the USA)

This episode explores events that took place between 1492 and the 1840’s.

The Alhambra Decree of 1492
The Golden Age of Piracy
Shays’ Rebellion
The War of 1812
The Merthyr Tydfil uprising
The Tolpuddle Martyrs
Colonization of Australia by capitalists and refugees
The Opium Wars in China
The Rent Strike Wars
Colonization of America by capitalists and refugees

Book recommendations that cover some of this history include A Peoples’ History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Villains of All Nations by Marcus Rediker.

A History of the World EPISODE 1

This episode covers events that took place between 1846-1916.

The Mexican-American War and the St. Patrick Battalion
The Fugitive Slave Act in Wisconsin
The Eureka Stockade uprising in Australia
John Brown and the abolitionist movement against slavery
The settler-colonial project in Oregon
Use of Egyptian mummies in the paper mills of Maine
Little Crow’s uprising of 1862 in Minnesota
The Highland Clearances in Scotland
The life and death of Joe Hill and the rise of the IWW
The Easter Rising in Ireland

Book recommendation for some of this history would be An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States as well as Loaded, both by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

A History of the World EPISODE 2

This episode covers events that took place from 1917-1921.

The rise and fall of the Working Class Union in Oklahoma
Danish syndicalism and the Battle of the Borso
World War 1 and the Pandemic of 1918
The Russian Revolution and US invasion of Russia
The Winnipeg General Strike
The Industrial Workers of the World and the lynching of Wesley Everest
The Palmer Raids
Kelly Butte and the use of prison labor in Oregon
The Tulsa Race Massacre
The Battle of Blair Mountain

There's no need to start at the beginning, necessarily, but all the episodes out so far can be found at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld, along with notes on each of them.

A History of the World EPISODE 3

1933-1941

The rise to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler
The International Brigades and the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War
Anti-immigration laws and sentiment in the west and the turning back of Jewish refugees
The kindertransports — rescuing Jewish children while leaving their parents to die
The SS Winnipeg and Pablo Neruda’s rescue of the Spanish refugees in France in 1939
Henry Ford and the popularity of fascism in the US
Ram Mohamed Singh Azad and resistance to colonialism in India
The US-imposed oil blockade on the Japanese Empire
The internment of Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans in the western US
Chiune Sugihara and the rescue of thousands of European Jews by “the Japanese Schindler”

On the Lincoln Battalion and the Spanish Civil War I recommend Carl Geiser’s Prisoners of the Good Fight.  On the rise to power of Hitler I recommend Berlin Diary by William Shirer.



A History of the World episode 4

1943-1949.  Listen to everything from the beginning at davidrovics.com/ahistoryoftheworld or just start with this one!

The arrests and executions of German communists such as Hamburg city councilor, Franz Jacob
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The boatlift of the Danish Jews to Sweden
The Dutch resistance and the killing of Henk Streefkerk
The Normandy landings
The liberation of Katharina Jacob and other Ravensbruck prisoners by the Red Army
The US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from Palestine, the Naqba
The Berlin Airlift of 1948-49

Book recommendation for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising would be The Bravest Battle by Dan Kurzman.  On Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Empire and the Bomb by Joseph Gerson.  On the Naqba, the Absence of Peace by Nicholas Guyatt.

A History of the World episode 5

Entering the third month of Israel's total embargo on Gaza, the starvation has begun.

This is What Genocide Looks Like

I had a good time chatting the other day with the hosts of the podcast, Unfinished Business with Paul & Rob. We talked about Gaza and music and other things.  The interview with me begins 12 minutes in.

Unfinished Business interviews David Rovics

There is a mythology so many of us grew up with, that because of the experience of the Nazi holocaust, Jews were generally a more moral people, as a whole, and no state run almost entirely by Jews could possibly do something like genocide another people.  This mythology was wrong, and Gaza is the evidence.

When the Jewish State Committed Genocide

When all is lost, all that's left is our dreams.

In Our Dreams

In the Israeli military there is a popular expression.  They say the soldiers of the world's most moral army, as they call themselves, care so much about humanity -- even Palestinian humanity -- that they are all crying while they're shooting.  I'm quite certain the same is true for Elias Rodriguez as he shot the Israeli diplomats.

If We're All Palestinians

The girl in the flames the world has been seeing over Memorial Day weekend actually survived the bombing of the classroom she was sleeping in, unlike the many other children and women and men who were burned alive, in that and other Israeli air strikes targeting children throughout Gaza, throughout the weekend.

Israel's War on Children (Another Night in Gaza)

Israel has one company that makes the sorts of bunker-busting missiles that have been annihilating the population of Gaza for so many years (Elbit Systems).  The US has the rest of them, which provide Israel with most of its missiles, fighter jets, etc.  Otherwise known as the American war machine -- without which the genocide would not be possible.

The War Machine

The Israeli regime has been telling us all along what's coming next:  mass expulsion or death for everyone in Gaza.  Do you believe them yet?

Survivors

Every day since the US/Israeli mercenaries set up their fake aid distribution killing field, they have committed a massacre of starving children -- children who have been starved by those very same governments who are putting food parcels in their hands and bullets in their backs.  Was there something else in the news?

Gunning Down Little Girls and Boys

The final phase of the genocide involves daily massacres of Palestinians so driven to feed their families that they're ready to risk being shot by Israeli soldiers in order for a chance to get ahold of a little pasta.

The Food Lines are the Front Lines Now

Throughout 2024 and early 2025, in between writing songs and essays, touring and raising kids, a side project has been another memoir project.  I declared it finished, and recorded the whole thing.  The memoir is in the form of an audiobook.

My Life as a Protest Singer is my third or fourth effort at writing a memoir.  This may seem ridiculous, but those who have engaged in the practice of memoir-writing know it’s not.  There is so much to write about, and so much that will inevitably be left unwritten.  There are so many angles, so many approaches.  The vast majority of whatever it is will never make it in.

The full production of My Life as a Protest Singer consists of 11 episodes of about an hour each, or about 11 hours of me wagging my jaw.  In its full 11 episodes it’s available exclusively for members of my Community-Supported Art program.  Whether you’re a paid member via my website or via Patreon, Substack, or Bandcamp, you’ve been given a link to my Everything folder.  It’s in there, within the “Extras” folder.  If you’re a CSA member and don’t have the link to the Everything folder handy, just email me for it.

What I have made available for free to the general public is the very abridged version, Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer, which is a 3-episode series.

Starting with Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer EPISODE 1.

Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer EPISODE 1

All this talk of "coming to the table" after being bombed some more is just so crazy.

You Can't Bomb Your Way to Peace

The reality is incomparably worse than the movie.

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Hunger Games

The US seems ever more intent to go to war with Iran.  Meanwhile, there is a country in the Middle East with undeclared nuclear weapons, which the IAEA never visits -- Israel.

Israel and its Nuclear Arsenal

This is the 3rd of 3 Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer.  The full 11 episodes of My Life as a Protest Singer are available in the Everything folder that all members of my CSA have access to (that's at davidrovics.com/subscribe).  If you appreciate my musical (and/or other) efforts, have disposable income to speak of, and might be willing to part with a few bucks a month to keep me on the road, making recordings, etc., please feel hereby encouraged to sign up!  A few dozen more people joining my CSA could vastly improve my family's currently fairly precarious finances.  Let's keep the protest music going.  Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Selections from My Life as a Protest Singer EPISODE 3

The British courts have regularly been finding Palestine Action innocent of any wrongdoing, in the group's efforts to smash the war machine, deeming them to be on the side of international law and British law, and deeming the state and the arms industry to be breaking the law.  In light of this state of affairs, the British parliament has acted decisively, passing a law with an overwhelming majority to declare Palestine Action a terrorist group, and thus to declare that anyone expressing support for Palestine Action to be a terrorist as well, potentially liable to spend up to 14 years in prison for singing the chorus to this song.

Photo by Guy Smallman

I Support Palestine Action

Vivien Langford was at last weekend's Gaza solidarity rally in Sydney for 3CR Community Radio, and she made this audio montage from the rally, featuring an amazing speech from someone from the Australian Jewish Council, followed by Kamala and I singing "I Support Palestine Action," and an announcement about the National Convergence on Canberra, which we will be singing at today, tomorrow, and Tuesday.

Sydney Gaza rally recording

Some distinctions between Auschwitz and Gaza?  Gaza is much bigger.  And the genocide is being financed and armed by the US and most of the rest of the western world.

Back when Jeremy Corbyn was the elected leader of the British Labor Party I wrote this song in praise of the great man.  Now that he is forming a new party, and a whole lot of folks are getting very excited about him and his political vision all over again, I thought it was a good time to get Chet Gardiner to do a remix of the song, to include on the next album.

Jeremy Corbyn (reprise)

If it weren't for a very long flight, all the kangaroos and kookaburras, and everyone driving on the left side of the road, I might have thought I was still in the USA.

Going Down Under

After 22 months of Israel's total war on the children of Gaza, Senator Bernie Sanders put forward a bill to stop sending arms to the Israeli death machine.  All the Republicans in the Senate voted against it, along with half of the Democrats.  These 24 Democratic senators who voted to support Israel's ongoing genocidal war have names.  And after initially trusting an AI chatbot to give me correct names, I did some proper research with the aid of human journalists, and wrote an updated version of the song.

The Genocidal Democratic Senators Song (corrected)

After more than a century of dispossession, years after the monthly massacres became daily, and the Palestinians being killed are no longer just unarmed civilians but starving children, some western leaders say in a few months' time they're going to recognize the existence of Palestine.  This is a definitive example of the term "gaslighting."

Now They Say It's Time to Recognize Palestine

This is as much a love song for the photographers as it is for a particular photograph.  Art is powerful.  We ignore that at our collective peril.  The people risking their lives to document the Gaza Holocaust know this.

Song for a Photograph

In preparation for Sunday's vigil for Gaza that I'll be singing at (12-2 pm at 12th and Hawthorne SE here in PDX) I did a livestreamed concert from my living room to practice some relevant songs.

Songs for Gaza

What do we need? Historical knowledge, vision, optimism, organization, and deep culture. When do we need it? Always.

Five Pillars for Growing Social Movements

I'm At My Wit's End

When I heard some stories about a friend's grandparents in Hamburg, Germany, I was moved to verse, twice. This is the song I wrote about her grandmother and namesake, Katharina Jacob. Particularly about the morning of her liberation from her Nazi captors by Russian troops.

This song appears on the Bandcamp album, The Other Side, which you can stream for free or donate to download here:

https://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/the-other-side

lyrics

Katharina Jacob, long before she took that name 
Was organizing workers in Hamburg just the same 
Organizing beneath the flag of deepest red 
A new dawn of peace and freedom clearly shining in her head 

Katharina Jacob first was sent to jail 
When the trappings of democracy all began to fail 
She was frequently arrested, in and out of custody 
While her first husband was in hiding from the Nazis 

Katharina Jacob was acquitted of a crime 
But the gestapo had the last word and they weren't finished with her this time 
She was sent to Ravensbrück, a killing hunger at her side 
She heard of the execution, how her second husband died 

For Katharina Jacob the end was close at hand 
She was on a death march with a ragged, starving band 
Marching through a forest, being led by the SS 
What would happen hours later seemed impossible to guess 

When the sun rose the next morning, it was the first of May 
And they all sang the Internationale 
And they all sang the Internationale 

Katharina Jacob thought about her children 
And the friends and comrades taking care of them 
Not knowing yet if any of them survived 
Not knowing that soon she'd see her daughters both alive 

Katharina Jacob watched the German soldiers fleeing 
Streaming from the east, that's what she was seeing 
Allied bombers flew above them, she thought they all might die and then 
Soon there was the silence of all the SS men 

Chorus 

Katharina Jacob saw red flags flapping in the breeze 
Above the Russian tanks and she fell upon her knees 
And so many different voices in so many different tongues 
Sang the most beautiful song that could ever have been sung 

In German, Lithuanian, in Polish and in Dutch 
A myriad of melodies as never had been such 
In Russian and in Yiddish, Italian and French 
Emerging from the forests beneath a trench 

Chorus 

Völker, hört die Signale! Auf zum letzten Gefecht! 
Die Internationale erkämpft das Menschenrecht 
Völker, hört die Signale! Auf zum letzten Gefecht! 
Die Internationale – erkämpft das Menschenrecht

They All Sang The Internationale

For the volunteers of the YPG.  This is a track from my 2017 album, Ballad of a Wobbly, which can be downloaded or streamed in its entirety at www.davidrovics.bandcamp.com.

Rojava

The miners' rebellion that brought Australia the eight-hour day decades before anyone else.

Song For The Eureka Stockade

The San Patricios -- the international brigade you've probably never heard of (half a century before the Spanish Civil War).  This version is from Live in Rostrevor (2016) with Lorna McKinnon on harmonies.

St. Patrick Battalion

A song for Bob Steck and all the other veterans of the international brigades in Spain.

This is a track from my album, Big Red Sessions, which can be streamed or downloaded at www.davidrovics.bandcamp.com

The Last Lincoln Veteran

They had to destroy the city in order to save it.  That's Professor D from the Dope Poets Society in there.

Fallujah

Song for Irish Republican Francis Hughes, who died on hunger strike.  He was known as a man of few words, among other things.

This is a track from my album, Big Red Sessions.

Up the Provos

Both hunger strikers, both freedom fighters.

This is a track from my 17-song album, Everything Can Change, which can be downloaded in full here:
http://davidrovics.bandcamp.com/album/everything-can-change

Khader Adnan, Bobby Sands

2017 album recorded at Big Red Studio with Billy Oskay, Elona Planman and others.

13. Failed State

2011 album recorded at Big Red Studio featuring Billy Oskay, Nick Angelo and others.

06. I'm A Better Anarchist Than You

Singer/songwriter, writer, podcaster (on Spotify, Substack & Patreon), libertarian socialist, dad, lover of life.

davidrovics

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