On the Friday night Channel 2 news magazine Friday Studio, Arad Nir, who is foreign-news editor for Channel 2, declared: “I want a referendum! A referendum on who wants to send his children to enlist in this army. And I do not wish to send my children to this army. I would vote No in such a referendum.”
Arad Nir, who has a degree in veterinary medicine and speaks fluent Esperanto, used to co-host a sex-advice show with Dr. Ruth Westheimer. He is a familiar anchor on Channel 2 news shows.
The context for Nir’s confrontational statement was the issue of IDF soldiers being used to entertain American visitors as a way to solicit donations. A case in point was a recent visit of Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt to an IAF base, which was greeted with base soldiers forming the name Google with their bodies on the tarmac.
Nir said he couldn’t understand why the taxes Israelis pay are not enough to sustain IDF soldiers, and then declared he would not allow his own children to enlist.
Back in 2012, Channel 2 viewers ran a petition online calling for dismissing Arad Nir over a pro-Arab interview with a resident of Gaza during the 2012 war, an interview that offered no reference to the Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilians which spawned the war.