During a Galei Tzahal (IDF radio) broadcast on Wednesday, one of the broadcasters announced the death of anti-Israel director and actor Mohammad Bakri, while praising him.
"During our broadcast, the beloved, amazing actor Mohammad Bakri, who was really one of the greatest, passed away. A big hug to the Bakri family. Really, the greatest," the broadcaster stated.
Bakri, an Arab Israeli citizen, frequently spoke out against the Jewish state internationally and sparked widespread outrage and severe controversy when he released the film “Jenin, Jenin,” which criticized IDF operations during Operation Defensive Shield. The film was initially banned from screening in Israel, a decision later overturned by the Supreme Court. However, following a defamation lawsuit filed by a reserve soldier who appeared in the film, it was once again prohibited from being screened.
In the past, Bakri told the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, that “attempts at normalization with the Zionist enemy are tantamount to betrayal. It is a shameful and unacceptable act. The government of the Zionist entity practices racism and suppresses any attempt by Palestinian artists living within its borders.”
The Galei Tzahal radio station commented: "The statement was made casually by the host of a magazine program, after learning news for the first time during the live broadcast. The remark did not address the full picture, and the host was only discussing Bakri as a film and theater actor, and from that point of view alone. In a conversation with the host, he expressed regret for the remarks as they were said. We stress that the remark does not reflect the station's position. Other coverage by the station addressed the issue differently and critically, and also discussed the fact that the individual slandered IDF soldiers. It is unfortunate that a single remark is used to discredit the station's activities and all of its broadcasts."
MK Avihai Boaron attacked the remarks and said that it is now clear why the military radio station must be shut down. “Bakri, the filmmaker who portrayed IDF soldiers as war criminals, whom the court ordered to pay compensation to IDF soldiers for defamation he published against them, while ruling that Bakri’s film contains ‘lies and fabrications, constitutes a tendentious smear of the fighters, and maligns the reputation of IDF soldiers’-Bakri, who joined Holocaust deniers when he said: ‘They did not investigate whether what Holocaust survivors said was true, nor did they investigate the side of the Germans who did it.’ This Bakri received praise on Galei Tzahal by a station host who said of Bakri: ‘One of the greatest of the great-big hug to his family.’ Anyone who needed justification for why it is right to close this station has now received it,” Boaron said.
Minister Shlomo Karhi added, “‘The home of the soldiers’ mourns and glorifies one of the greatest supporters of terror there is. The one who said: attempts at normalization with the Zionist enemy are tantamount to treason. The one responsible for one of the most antisemitic and anti-Zionist films ever made here, which slandered the country and the IDF around the world. May his name and memory be erased. Soon our heroic fighters will have no reason to be ashamed of their ‘home.’”