This is a song I wrote over the weekend, souped up in the studio by Chet Gardiner, called “Airdrop.”
I’ll tell you a little about the song, and especially why I wrote it. Last Friday, I was invited by a brilliant organizer from England named Sarah Wilkinson who is well-known in Palestine solidarity circles to join a conversation online. Activists from around the world were talking about making the AirDropAidForGaza hashtag trend on X.
The idea behind the campaign was simple. Jordan had been involved with multiple airdrops of food and medicine in order to supply the Jordanian Field Hospital in the Gaza Strip. They took this drastic measure because Israel has been preventing life-sustaining essentials from entering by land, and as a result of this along with the incessant bombing, the people of the Gaza Strip are now starving. The campaign hopes to encourage King Abdullah to do a whole lot more airdrops like those.
After a couple days of employing various strategies to get the hashtag trending, it worked. The next day (Wednesday, January 17th), Israel bombed the Jordanian Field Hospital. I believe it is seriously damaged but still functioning, as I write. It is, of course, one of many hospitals that Israeli forces have intentionally bombed in the past three months.
It’s not the first time in this war when something trending on social media may have been connected to an Israeli bombing or assassination.
The song above, “Airdrop,” is mostly about the Blockade of Berlin in 1948-49. With West Berlin largely cut off from the rest of West Germany, some politicians in the US wanted to go to war with the Soviet Union over the issue. Other leaders such as President Truman rejected that option in favor of supplying this city of 2.8 million people almost entirely by air. For over a year, over 5,000 tons of fuel, food, medicine, and everything else was being flown into West Berlin by the US and UK militaries, and nobody went hungry.
The situation with Gaza being constantly under bombardment and there being nowhere on the Strip to land a plane makes it a very different situation for reaching that kind of level of airborne aid, but as the Jordanian military has repeatedly and recently demonstrated, many tons of aid at a time can be delivered through airdrops (which is also one of the ways West Berlin was kept supplied 75 years ago as well).
Airdrop
When the blockade was imposed, and no one could come or go
And in order to successfully throttle off the flow
Of food and fuel and what's needed to survive
To keep more than two million people alive
The authorities limited imports to just a few
Tons that would be allowed to pass through
To try to break the siege on the ground
Seemed impossible until the world heard the sound
Watch the aviators streaking through the sky to try
To find out how much cargo they could fly
They drafted every plane that could be flown
Determined not to leave these millions alone
To be cold and hungry or else to be subsumed
They said it was impossible, an endeavor that was doomed
Every thirty seconds, a plane would fly away
To deliver to those trapped five thousand tons a day
More than two million, supplied by air alone
Thousands of airdrops flown
Chorus
Planes crashed, as they do, a hundred people died
But the flights kept coming, no way to put aside
The needs of all these people to have something to eat
To have fuel and medicine and shoes upon their feet
It was in West Berlin way back when
And it could all be done again
To save the Gaza Strip, or forever wonder why
We just let all the Palestinians starve and die
Chorus
Thursday at 10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern I'll host a guided tour of my new album, Notes From A Holocaust. I'll introduce each track, play videos from the studio recordings, and share some thoughts on the genocide that is underway. I'll be live on Twitch, X, YouTube, & Facebook.
I’ve got 2024 largely planned out in terms of where I’ll be touring, and I’m prepared to confirm dates with anyone in any of these locations anytime.
Plans for the Notes From A Holocaust WORLD TOUR include:
Concert for Palestine on January 20th in downtown Portland, Oregon
Southern California at the end of January
France and England throughout February 2024
the northeastern US in late March/early April
Australia in June/July — including Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide
Backyard Tour from Portland to San Francisco August 8-22
November in Scandinavia
#AirDropAidForGaza + Notes From A Holocaust GUIDED TOUR & WORLD TOUR