Israel‘s public broadcaster has published a song featuring a group of children promising to “annihilate everyone” in Gaza.
The video, entitled Friendship Song 2023, was posted by Kan News on 19 November and features nationalistic lyrics co-written by campaigner Ofer Rosenbaum.
The lyrics reference the ongoing Israeli assault in the Gaza Strip and talk of the Israeli army crossing into the besieged enclave to “annihilate the swastika-bearers”.
“In another year there will be nothing there. And we will safely return to our homes,” the children sing. “Within a year we will annihilate everyone. And then we will return to plow our fields.”
Following accusations that the song was advocating “genocide”, the video was removed from Kan’s website and social media accounts without an explanation.
Israel has launched an unprecedented campaign of siege and bombardment in the Gaza Strip since 7 October.
In six weeks, Israeli fighter jets have killed at least 13,000 Palestinians, including 5,500 children. The bombing has devastated the small enclave’s civilian population, with attacks mostly hitting residential homes, hospitals, schools, universities, mosques and other public infrastructure.
The assault was launched following an incursion into Israel by Palestinian armed groups on 7 October, which killed 1,200 people.
Rosenbaum, the song’s writer, is the chairman of the Civil Front, a movement created to “restore Israeli citizens’ confidence in the state’s security forces” according to the Jerusalem Post.
He was also responsible last month for a billboard campaign throughout Israel depicting the leaders of various Palestinian organisations being defeated and captured by the Israeli army.
Through his public relations firm Rosenbaum Communications, he was involved in a campaign to prevent the extradition of Malka Leifer, an Israeli-Australian woman who was accused of involvement in widespread sexual abuse of children at a religious school in Victoria.
Rosenbaum later said it was a “mistake on my part” to have supported Leifer, who was eventually deported and sentenced to 15 years in prison.