The New Israel Fund, a liberal organization that funds anti-Zionist Arab groups and ultra-leftist groups in Israel, was upset by Army Radio talk show hosts’ comments Thursday regarding one of the groups that they sponsor. Irit Linur and Kobi Arieli, hosts of daily talk show “The Last Word,” opened the show with a conversation about Breaking the Silence, an organization that recently spread anonymous stories about IDF soldiers who supposedly abused Arabs in Gaza. Send them home with scars Arieli said to Linur and the listeners: “Listen, when we were small, there were two camps in the neighborhood. There was our camp, the Chizki group. We were very strong. One day we caught someone from our camp who gave information to the other camp. I saw him in the neighborhood a few years ago and I saw the scar near his ear from what Chizki did to him.” “He just grabbed a hold of him… you know… kids… I think it even ended up on the verge of violence, never mind. This is forbidden of course but it’s an instinct. And my question is – in the case of leftist traitors with identity problems ratting on us to another camp – the question is why don’t our strong guys work them over and send them home with scars?” Linur answered: “Okay, you are talking about Breaking the Silence which manufactured a report with all sorts of ridiculous and ungrounded allegations,” and then exclaimed “ground yourself, you piece of garbage!” – apparently addressing an imaginary member of Breaking the Silence. The conversation continued and Linur said that “cowards and chickens like Breaking the Silence are not worth wasting violence over.” She summed up the talk by saying that “beating people up violently is not our style,” to which Arieli replied: “Not us!…Chizki! Chizki! Where are you when we need you?” Fund: Linur and Arieli were not in combat The New Israel Fund (NIF), which has donors in North America and Britain, and which funds Breaking the Silence, sent a letter to IDF Radio Commander Yitzchak Tunik Sunday and demanded that he take disciplinary action against the two hosts. NIF head Eliezer Yaari wrote in his letter that as he listened to the conversation he thought about the fact that “all of the members of Breaking the Silence were combat soldiers and that the group is currently headed by a woman who was a combat Border Police officer” Yaari expressed “wonder” at Ms. Linur’s comments “about the courage of those whose entire military service was in combat IDF units, a pleasure that Mrs. Linur – and certainly Mr. Arieli – were spared.” “The incitement to violence, and perhaps even murder, is being carried out in the military radio, which employs citizens some of whom did not complete a full term of service in the IDF, and who – like Arieli – spiritedly defend the right of people to shirk service.”
