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I don’t know what it is about Galey Tzahal, but their staff and radio presenters embody the worst, most Islamophobic aspects of Israeli society. I’ve posted here in the past about the racist Facebook post of the station manager telling a ‘joke’ about Israeli Jews celebrating the Arabs who died in Israel’s wars on Remembrance Day (Yom Ha’Zikaron). Then there were similar racist statements by another program host in which he said he hoped the next U.S. president would “hate Arabs.”

Today, Haaretz reports (Hebrew) that yet another host, Dr. Avshalom Kor, who ostensibly airs a show ‘celebrating’ the Hebrew language, launched into a vicious diatribe against Palestinians. Kor is a 35 year veteran of the radio station. The audio of his program (Hebrew) is here. Among the other things he had to say were these:

Palestinian postal letters were “letter bombs.” Palestinian stamps featured images of a sniper firing on and wounding an innocent bystander. When Palestinians talk of a woman being “a bombshell,” they’re not talking about her being ‘a blonde.’ Palestinians in general have an urge to kill and he compared them to cannibals.

Speaking of the Palestinian ambassador killed in Prague by an explosion of the safe in his residence, he said that only Palestinian diplomats use bombs as part of their briefing materials. “Everyone,” Kor joked, “keeps in his safe what is dearest to his heart.” In mentioning the ambassador’s wife, who was also injured in the blast, he quoted the Talmudic rabbis who said that the marriage of two ‘fools’ (the mentally-ill) is not legally recognized. Why? Because ‘no man lives willingly with a snake.’

In a play on words between the name of the ambassador, Jamal, and the Hebrew word gamal (“to repay”), Kor said that Egyptians pronounce the name Gamal. When Israel ‘brought the PLO back’ (his words, not mine) to Palestine from Tunisia, it ‘repaid’ Israel with bombs like the one that killed him.

Kor spoke with derision about the Palestinian celebrations that accompanied the release of the latest round of prisoners (“murderers of children,” he called them) from Israeli jails. It reminded him of the story of the man captured by a tribe of cannibals. The chief gets to eat his face, others his ears and hands and feet. ‘When they [the Palestinians] speak to us about the heart of the matter, pretty soon they’ll leave [words] aside and get right to the [literal] heart of the matter [i.e. cannibalism].’

He characterized PA leader Abu Mazen as a donkey and likened him to the saying about a donkey climbing a ladder: “Can a donkey like him, who welcomes murderers with official government celebrations, climb the rungs of the ladder of peace?”

Keep in mind that it’s Bibi Netanyahu and Israeli hasbara NGOs like Palestine Media Watch and MEMRI who feast on bits of supposed Palestinian incitement against Israel. They latch onto protests like the ones at Al Quds University and falsely claims Nazi salutes were delivered. But they forget incidents like this that aren’t rare at all in Israel. In other words, there is just as much and probably more racism and hatred aired on Israeli airwaves as on Palestinian. Israeli apologists, however, ignore it because it spoils the narrative they’re creating. One which many in the U.S., including Hillary Clinton, have been brainwashed to believe.

Finally, though Kor supposedly honors the Hebrew language and Judaic traditions in his program, he does nothing of the sort. This is not the Judaism I know. Nor is it one I recognize as being normative. Instead, it is a religion of hate that he espouses. A shameful, embarrassing rump version of Judaism.