MK Danon
MK DanonIsrael news photo: Flash 90

MK Danny Danon (Likud) responded on Monday to the shutting down of the Hebrew broadcasts of the radio station All for Peace.

The ultra-leftist station broadcasts from Ramallah and police shut down the Hebrew programming over the weekend. The station is run by a Palestinian Authority organization called Biladi, named for the PLO anthem, in conjunction with the Givat Haviva Center for Peace.

“After a long process, we finally saw the right decision being made,” MK Danon, who played a pivotal role in the shutting down of the station, told Arutz Sheva. “This illegal station was not about peace. It was about war, about incitement.

Danon added, “When we saw in September the incitement [on the station] against IDF soldiers and against the citizens of Israel, I approached the Attorney General and the Minister of Communications and asked them to shut down the station and it happened.”

He also recalled what happened with Arutz Sheva radio, which had broadcast for 14 years from a ship anchored at sea and was eventually shut down in 2003 by the Supreme Court, following motions by leftist MKs, who were unhappy with its nationalist-rightist viewpoint. The MKs claimed that Arutz Sheva was operating illegally despite the fact that an ultra-leftist station named the Voice of Peace had broadcast in precisely the same way for three decades, unmolested.

“We all remember what happened with Arutz Sheva, how people who wanted to listen to this station couldn’t do so,” Danon said. “What we saw today is that people from the left must also obey the law, and I’m very happy that we were able to shut down this station which was promoting hatred and incitement and did so illegally.”

All for Peace was co-managed by former Meretz MK Mossi Raz, who was questioned by police Thursday and the station stopped its Hebrew broadcasts on FM radio shortly afterward.

According to the station’s website, Raz was forced to make a telephone call and instruct the station's technicians to halt the broadcasts: “The police made it clear to Raz that if he does not comply with the demand to sign and perform the call, he would be brought before a judge to remand and to be arrested and that the police will raid the offices of the radio station. Mossi Raz had to fulfill the demands of the police investigators.”