Op-Ed: An IDF Soldier Reacts to Israeli Singer's Anti-IDF Song

The writer is a new immigrant to Israel who served in the elite IDF Golani Brigade, and is now a political science major and the head of the Zionist student organization Im Tirzu at Bar Ilan University.

Earlier this week, the singer Izhar Ashdot was scheduled to appear on Galai Tzahal, the Israel Army Radio station.

In his new song, which he was supposed to sing, Ashdot comes out against Israeli soldiers, singing, “In their heart is only hate, evil intention and darkness...they learn cruelly...how to instill fear...how to kill - it's just a matter of habit."

When I found out about this, I posted on Facebook in various groups, informing people about what was about to happen, and imploring them to take action and protest against this. I was naïve enough to believe that everyone would want to speak out against this, I mean, a man who publicly calls soldiers murderers is about to perform on the station dedicated to those very soldiers he is calling murderers – it's laughable.

Unfortunately I was mistaken. My posts were attacked by numerous people, crying out about democracy, freedom of speech, and how we, as a democratic country, must let this man perform.

First and foremost, that argument holds absolutely no ground. Galai Tzahal is a government owned station, and they are well within their rights to say that a person who comes out criticizing their values has no business being on their station. If Ashdot wants to perform on a privately owned station, he is well within his rights, but not Galai Tzahal.

Imagine a singer coming on the American Forces Network, the network of the American army, and dubbing American soldiers murderers – there is no way that would be permitted, it's absurd!

He doesn't make such a good case, and he misses the best argument. Ashdot has a right to speak freely. He does not have a right to be heard, or a right to be heard in a particular forum. Benjamin Franklin regularly denied sponsors the right to print slanderous material in his publicatios. When they claimed free speech, he pointed them outside and told them they were free to mount a soapbox and say whatever they wished, but told them they do not have a right to use his press for the exercise of that right. So too with Ashdot.

If you an artist, and choose to present your work to the public, then you must be prepared to accept whatever the response of your audience. Some editor or program director may give Ashdot a platform, but it may seem like gallows. Ashdot has the right to disparage the IDF, but there are Israelis who have suffered or lost family to terrorists, who realize that their Jewishness makes them a perpetual target and their country is under constant siege. Their view of the IDF may be a bit different.

My posts were attacked by numerous people, crying out about democracy, freedom of speech, and how we, as a democratic country, must let this man perform.

In this country, these were the seeds of political correctness.

I recall in the sixties on college campuses how professors were saying that we must allow freedom of speech to the most anti-american points of view in a democracy.

Once they established a foothold they declared that they should have equal time just to be fair.

Somewhere along the way it became politically incorrect to be pro-american.

“Imagine a singer coming on the American Forces Network, the network of the American army, and dubbing American soldiers murderers – there is no way that would be permitted, it’s absurd!”

No comment.

The funny thing about Ashdot is that he owes his career to the IDF.

He's 54 years old. When he was a 19 year old and doing his compulsory IDF service, he got a plush assignment as a DJ for the IDF radio station.

He had plenty of downtime and lots of equipment, so he used IDF resources to record his first albums.

The IDF, in its unexamined generosity, made him the D-list "star" he is today.

I don't think he's made his case. On the American Forces Network one can listen to both Ed Shultz and Sean Hannity. Depending on a listener's political slant and by the standards presented, either of these hosts would be excluded; Shultz on the air claiming Bush a war criminal and Hannity claiming Obama isn't elegable. Like it or not, the vast majority of AFN listeners work for the DOD, i.e. the Executive Branch, where few concepts are more sacrosanct than that “chain of command”. If the mighty United States military can have radio hosts effectively in their employ directly attacking the very top of the command structure, I guess the IDF can tolerate a folk singer...

Actually, I think his strategy was wrong. The “artist” is just a fool, a tool, an anti-Israeli Israeli. What matters are the people who instigated his performance, and the people who approved his performance in the first place.

To put this in perspective, if National Public Radio in the US created a prime time slot for an hour of unexamined and undisputed propaganda from North Korea each week, it would not be the fault of the North Koreans and their sympathizers for saying whatever insanity they wanted to say.

It *would* be the fault of the NPR management and its financial backers who approved the idea, subsidized by US taxpayers. *They* should be regarded as people who truly hate America, by giving a voice to those who truly hate America, funded by America.

Free speech and diversity of opinion has nothing to do with it. In the Israeli case, there is no objective fact, just emotional hate of the IDF and its soldiers. Anti-Israel spew.

Is the Israeli government so bizarre that it feels the need to give “equal time” to those who want Israel and all Jews destroyed? Are Hamas, Hezbollah, the government of Iran and other Muslim nations opinions just as important as those of Israelis, in Israel?

Of course not.

“I don’t think he’s made his case. On the American Forces Network one can listen to both Ed Shultz and Sean Hannity. Depending on a listener’s political slant and by the standards presented, either of these hosts would be excluded; Shultz on the air claiming Bush a war criminal and Hannity claiming Obama isn’t elegable. Like it or not, the vast majority of AFN listeners work for the DOD, i.e. the Executive Branch, where few concepts are more sacrosanct than that “chain of command”. If the mighty United States military can have radio hosts effectively in their employ directly attacking the very top of the command structure, I guess the IDF can tolerate a folk singer... “

They may hate the president of a different party but I don’t think even Ed (certainly not Hannity) would say about our soldiers that “In their heart is only hate, evil intention and darkness...they learn cruelly...how to instill fear...how to kill - it’s just a matter of habit.”

Let him sing, then sue him for 50,000 counts of slander.

There is freedom of speech, and there is responsibility for your actions. Let him prove his accusations all 50,000 times to the individuals he is slandering.

That should take him the rest of his life in court.

For Shultz to go on the air to declare that Bush, Cheney, and by extension members of the military were war criminals, or for Hannity to tell members of the military that their boss is illegitimate and in effect should be ignored, is far more damaging to morale, order, and the overall command structure than the lyrics of a song that may get some air time once a week.

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