Channel 14 broadcast a call for the annihilation of all residents of the Gaza Strip in a special program marking the Tisha B'Av fast. This is not the first time Channel 14 has broadcast incitement to violence. In fact, incitement to violence, racism and war crimes is common in the channel's broadcasts.

Channel 14 is a religious channel with an extreme right-wing agenda, owned by Yitzhak Mirilashvili, son of oligarch Michael Mirilashvili. Channel 14 is part of a media group that also includes the economic channel "Channel 10," the ultra-Orthodox radio station "Radio Kol Chai," the extreme right-wing website "0404," and the religious-nationalist newspaper "Olam Katan."

Since 2018, the channel has received cumulative benefits of tens of millions of shekels from Benjamin Netanyahu's governments, and regularly broadcasts government propaganda while updateding its agenda according to the messages of indicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to ratings data from the Rating Committee, the channel competes for second place among Israel's main television channels.

The Seventh Eye has published four public reports documenting numerous examples of various types of incitement in the channel's broadcasts and publications by its broadcasters, over time and regularly. A petition to the High Court of Justice is pending against the channel, demanding the opening of a criminal investigation against the channel. Since the massacre carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023, it has systematically broadcast content that constitutes incitement to genocide, violence and racism against the Palestinian population in Gaza. The petitioners attached a detailed list of approximately 250 statements identified and documented from the channel's broadcasts and publications by its broadcasters, indicating that this is a systematic line and not random statements.

Dror Shalom incites genocide on Channel 14, screenshot

In the "Israel Morning" program, as part of a special broadcast for Tisha B'Av (3.8), the channel again broadcast a call for genocide and annihilation of men, women and children.

"I'll start with the fact that we are on Tisha B'Av, a day of unity, a day of awakening," opened one of the participants in the broadcast, Dror Shalom. Immediately afterwards, he proceeded to call for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"Regarding Gaza, the belly is full," continued the Channel 14 panelist. "All these events, all this conduct. You know, there's some kind of feeling that the essence of hell has descended on the world and it is Gaza. This is the Sodom and Gomorrah of our time and the conduct there must be extreme to the point that I think I'm using the most civilized words possible, it's destruction and annihilation of everything that moves there. We will be much, much healthier if we advance this to today, not tomorrow, today. What we simply need to do there is fire and pillars of smoke. Sink Gaza and give it as food to the fish."

As mentioned, incitement to violence and war crimes is not unusual on Channel 14. For example, just last week we reported that broadcasters Shimon Riklin and Tamir Morg joked with guests in the studio of the daily program "Riklin & Co." at the expense of a Gazan mother whose daughter died of starvation, mocked her and suggested she ate her daughter.

Accordingly, in the "Israel Morning" studio there were no condemnations heard of the inciting words calling for the destruction of a population, but rather the opposite. Oded Menashe, the program's host, expressed regret that "it doesn't look like that's where this is going," and added: "There's fatigue in the country and it seems this isn't going in the direction of fire and pillars of smoke."

Later in the broadcast, under the heading "The Battle on the Public Relations Front," Shalom continued with a statement implying that Palestinian fetuses should also be destroyed: "Even one who hasn't been born yet in Gaza, he's also a terrorist."

Shalom was presented on screen as "Dr. Dror Shalom, Developer and Head of Tactical Combat Department." This is not Brigadier General Dror Shalom, head of the Political-Security Division at the Defense Ministry, but rather someone who presents himself as "founder and developer of the 'Israeli Krav Maga' method" and as someone who was appointed as "head of a department for Krav Maga and tactical fighting at Training Base 1." In a video that was published, he appears on Facebook armed with a weapon while instructing a group of soldiers wearing uniforms and saying: "With us the rules right now, the guidelines, there are no rules, no legal advisor, everything is permitted everything is permitted everything is permitted, and I'm under everything is permitted."

Later in the broadcast where Shalom incited genocide, former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin, a regular guest on the channel's programs, explained that "for decades, half a jubilee, we've been uttering the word 'Palestinian' about this invented people. What do you want from Macron?" And later added that "conquest, expulsion and settlement" is what should have been done in Gaza from the beginning and so too today. Earlier this year, Feiglin appeared on Channel 14's "The Patriots" program, called for burning hundreds of thousands of Palestinians alive and blamed the General Staff leadership for the October 7 massacre.

Tisha B'Av is a religious day of mourning, on which a fast was established to commemorate national disasters, primarily the destruction of the Temples. In the modern period, various events have been added to those commemorated on this day, including those of expulsion and destruction: the approval for the destruction of European Jewry received by SS commander Heinrich Himmler on August 2, 1941, which fell on Tisha B'Av, and the deportation of Jews from Warsaw and Paris to concentration camps near Tisha B'Av the following year.

The article was first published in Hebrew on August 4.