On 19 November 2023, Israel's national broadcaster Kan uploaded this song to X (formerly Twitter) in which Israeli children sing in celebration and support f...
I didn’t know what to quote so I quoted the whole thing. You could start with the “Incitement to genocide is a crime” section. It might explain why the video and tweets were deleted so quickly.
Israel’s national broadcaster Kan uploaded this song to X (formerly Twitter) in which Israeli children sing in celebration and support for the Israeli army’s mass extermination campaign of Palestinians in Gaza.
The sweet faces of children make an incongruous accompaniment to the genocidal lyrics of the so-called Friendship Song 2023.
“Autumn night falls over the beach of Gaza, planes are bombing, destruction, destruction,” the children sing in angelic voices. “Within a year we will annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields.”
The lyrics were translated for The Electronic Intifada by independent writer and filmmaker David Sheen and you can watch a subtitled video of the song above, or in the tweet below:
🚨WATCH: Israeli children sing, “We will annihilate everyone” in Gaza, against a background of destruction.
This video was posted and then deleted by Israeli national broadcaster @kann_news.
— Electronic Intifada (@intifada) November 19, 2023
You can also read all the lyrics below.
Incitement to genocide is a crime
Kan, the Israeli broadcaster, posted the full video of the song on its X account on Sunday but deleted it a short time later amid an outcry from Israeli and other users.
Some expressed concern that it would help “Hamas propaganda,” while others appeared genuinely disgusted by the video’s violent and genocidal messages.
An archived copy of the now-deleted Kan tweet can still be found online. Kan also deleted a page featuring the song from its website but that too is archived.
The now-deleted page on Kan’s website was headlined, “Love sanctified by blood: The children of the Gaza envelope re-record The Friendship Song.”
It is unclear why Kan removed the video, but it is possible that someone there was concerned that it could make the channel complicit in genocide.
Two decades ago, officials of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines were convicted by an international tribunal for incitement to genocide for broadcasts promoting the extermination of Tutsi people in Rwanda nine years earlier.
The song and video were originally created by Ofer Rosenbaum a so-called “crisis-communication expert” who heads a public relations firm called Rosenbaum Communication.
PR firm for ethnic cleansers
The video was published by “The Civil Front,” an organization run by Ofer Rosenbaum that purports to rally the Israeli homefront in support of the war on Gaza.
In 2020, Rosenbaum was responsible for a billboard campaign in Tel Aviv depicting Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh kneeling on the ground blindfolded, under the slogan “Peace is only made with defeated enemies.”
The client for this campaign was the Israel Victory Project, a cutout of the Middle East Forum, the organization run by notorious anti-Muslim agitator Daniel Pipes.
The Israeli Victory Project is currently promoting the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.
Minister of Intelligence @GilaGamliel writes in the @Jerusalem_Post “#Victory is an opportunity for #Israel in the midst of crisis”. She calls for int’l assistance for voluntary resettlement of Gazans outside of the Strip. What do you think? #NoHamas https://t.co/SDElPm1kiO
— Israel Victory Project - הפרויקט לניצחון ישראל (@IsraelVictoryP1) November 19, 2023
Rosenbaum also took on as a client Malka Leifer, a former principal of a Jewish girls school in Melbourne who spent years trying to avoid extradition from Israel back to Australia to face charges of child sexual abuse.
Rosenbaum claimed later to regret this decision, albeit only after the effort to stop Leifer’s extradition failed in 2021.
In August, Leifer was sentenced by a court in Melbourne to 15 years in prison for raping and sexually abusing two girls.
Using children to promote a message of genocide is another form of abuse.
“The Friendship Song 2023”
Lyrics by Ofer Rosenbaum and Shulamit Stolero
First Stanza:
Autumn night falls over the beach of Gaza Planes are bombing, destruction, destruction Look the IDF is crossing the line to annihilate the swastika-bearers In another year there will be nothing there And we will safely return to our homes Within a year we will annihilate everyone And then we will return to plow our fields
Chorus:
And we will remember everyone the pretty and the pure We will never let our hearts forget a friendship like that Love sanctified with blood You will return and bloom amongst us
Second Stanza:
We have now run out of words Our soul still cries out Our soul not only sings Today our soul also fights One people The people of forever evermore We won’t stop protecting our homes We won’t be silent We will show the world how today we destroy our enemy
Chorus repeats
Lyrics translated from Hebrew for The Electronic Intifada by David Sheen.
I didn’t know what to quote so I quoted the whole thing. You could start with the “Incitement to genocide is a crime” section. It might explain why the video and tweets were deleted so quickly.
The meme about the US soldier hugging his kid with the caption ‘I killed kids your age’, except here it has an added ‘thank you dad!’
God not only is it evil it also sucks
Trying to imagine how fucked up someone’s day-to-day is that not only did they want this video made, they proudly shared it on the internet…
My face after reading this