A petition signed by thousands of Israelis was sent on Wednesday to Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Culture Minister Hili Tropper, calling on them to instruct Army Radio to stop playing songs by pop star Dua Lipa.
The petition, organized Im Tirtzu, came after Lipa had sparked outrage on Sunday by sharing an anti-Israel and anti-IDF post to her 46 million followers on Instagram.
“While everybody’s in the mood to talk about human rights, this is what happens EVERYDAY in Palestine,” the post began. “The big bad tough guys of the #IDF thoroughly enjoy beating and shooting children,” the post continued, before accusing the Israeli government of being “fake Jews” that created Hamas.
“The only ‘justification’ as to why they don’t deserve freedom is because ‘Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel.’ Which is utterly HYSTERICAL bc the United States (fake Christians in the mid west) and Israel (fake Jewish ppl in the Israeli government) created Hamas SIMPLY for all of you geniuses to believe that Hamas is the reasons for the decades worth of occupation, oppression, ethnic cleansing, and MURDER.”
For the record, Israel did not create Hamas, but it certainly viewed it is a welcome bulwark against the PLO in the liberated territories when the group was established in 1987. To this day, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s security strategy is founded on playing these two groups against each other as a way of prolonging Israeli control without having to actually annex these areas.
5,880 Israelis signed the petition calling to pull Lipa’s songs from Army Radio’s Galgalatz, Israel’s most popular top 40 radio station, which operates under the Ministry of Defense.
“In light of the incitement against IDF soldiers, anti-Semitism, blood libels, conspiracy theories, and the blatant lies in the post that the singer shared, it is not fitting for a radio station affiliated with the IDF to continue to broadcast her songs,” Im Tirtzu wrote in the petition.
Dov Trachtman, Im Tirtzu’s digital media manager, noted that it is “inconceivable for the military’s radio station to continue to promote someone who goes against IDF soldiers. The Defense Minister and Culture Minister must place an end to this absurdity.”
Army Radio responded to the petition, saying: “Galgalatz does not boycott any artist. The songs are chosen at the discretion of the editors of each segment.”