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A letter to the Palestinians

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Conversion on the dance floor - A weekly report by an Israeli in Berlin
By Amit Epstein  |  06/05/2010

On the first sentence of my first list at this platform, as I was writing about my point of view at the Christmas to New Year's time, I've stated that the only event I dislike even more in Berlin, is the first of May riots.

I then promised to write about it in the future, and it seems as future has arrived…

                                                                                                           Photo: Amit Epstein
 

I do not wish to discuss the true meaning(s) of that date, its initial purpose and former symbolic weight. As a disciplined capitalist I cannot understand how anyone today would support any other system but capitalism…although I too would have been happy to think that some social principles could integrate within the race for money, supporting the unable. But really, never mind me and my egoistic self-centered ideology – as I've mentioned just above, the concern I have with the riots is not ideological. For me, the class issue or the socio-economical meanings are less important at this moment or stage, since they have practically became a side effect to the violence of the masses.

 

I won't lie – when I heard as a pupil in elementary school about Marie Antoinette's words, I couldn't see where did she go wrong. I still strongly believe in eating cakes and there are several good options in the area of Heinrichplatz, at the center of Kreuzberg district to do so – yet, every 1 of May the neighborhood turns into one of the most violent areas in Berlin, and from Kottbusser Tor to Mariannenplatz it is in fact a battle field.

 

Year by year my feelings towards this fiasco grows stronger – the day has become an opportunity with a kind of unspoken permission from above to unleash the aggressiveness suppressed in the routine life of the unfortunate and so-called outsiders of society. Some of them, important enough to state, did nothing to
get included or even secluded themselves intentionally.
 
Demonstrating against wrongs, protesting in the name of faith – religious or ideological – is great. No doubt. Still, using that thin layer of moral just to bash cars, attack policemen, vandalize public property and burn Israeli and American flags (and about the role of the Israeli flag in the right and the left wings of political activists in Germany I will definitely write something sometime soon) – all of that, as much as it must be fun for some uneducated unemployed and/or so-called anarchists, is not enough. It is not a statement on its own. It just makes one wonder about the danger of submitting to such arguments which cannot find words and therefore require fists and broken bottles. Personally, as I hear shouting and loud singing in German, I do not stay long in the area to find out what's the cause – I just check the nearest escape possibility.             

 

 

 

 

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