GLC
I know that war is now and there is no head for other things, but I need a personal word. This week, a technician from Army Explorers came to dismantle my home studio and return the equipment to the warehouse. Thus ended a 43-year career at the military broadcasting station, in a minute's silence. There were no speeches, no gold watch, no handshakes. War.
Army Radio made me. I owe her my life as it turned out to be. She, too, owes me parts of her character as I have shaped in the endless programs I have submitted to her. When we talk about GLC, we also talk about DNA that I created, for better or for worse. I came at the gates of the station at the age of 18. I was hired to be an announcer. Combat was not on the agenda at all. I was thin and sickly.
Pretty soon I found myself starring together with my then-partner, and even today, Erez Tal, in the biggest hit of most time, "What's There". Then we created more shows together, "Sandwich" for example, and if you're of age you'll probably remember. If not, nothing I write will convey the experience. From there I continued to a microphoneic couple relationship with other radio giants, Kobi Meidan in "As of Now" the late Uri Orbach and Jackie Levy in "The Last Word" which I broadcast for 14 years, which caused my disillusionment, and other good guys.
The station that changed me. The entrance to Army Radio in Jaffa, photo: Yehoshua Yosef
Even though most of my life has passed behind the microphone, I still remember the moment I found out I had been hired. It was on a pay phone, at Ben Gurion Airport, on a trip before the army. I called one last time before the flight to see if there was an answer, and to my surprise they told me yes, I was accepted. The run from one end of the terminal to the other while screaming and jumping has not been seen there since. And I was right. It's the best gift I've ever received. If the answer were no, you probably wouldn't be reading those words right now, because I was somewhere else, in a different job, in a different life, with another family.
I met my wife Naama at Galatzi. She was my editor, and our souls bonded while working. In the old ragged building, our love blossomed, and was strengthened by our love of radio. I love radio with all my heart, always love, I will always look for a microphone to unite with. He and my thoughts flow uninterrupted.
But I had to leave. My new job at Keshet Broadcasting forced me to resign. A very difficult decision, but necessary. The last program I broadcast, "The Discourse," will no longer return after the war. This saddens me a lot. I loved hearing citizens speak on a variety of topics every day. But it's over, like everything. Thank you to the good old station for letting me express my mission in the world. This is where my broadcasts end.
way
Three ideological movements were exposed naked during this war. A beautiful war to clarify values. These are: global progressiveness, global feminism, and the climate movement. Three movements that I had long suspected had lost their way, but now, within a few weeks of fighting in Gaza, their swollen feathers fell off and beneath them was revealed a thin, bony, ugly, hollow body.
Signs are given in them. The first of the movements that betrayed big is the feminist movement. The fact that until now women's organizations around the world have not risen to condemn in the strongest possible terms the horrific rapes of the October 7th, and that it has largely been unofficially declared that sexual abuse of Israelis is a legitimate path in the Arab national struggle, has taken all the air out of the movement. This is not a women's rights movement, but a political movement to take over centers of power, and therefore from now on it should be treated as such. The disappointment of Israeli women, headed by Merav Michaeli, with the betrayal of women around the world, who replaced gender justice with refined anti-Semitism, must also lead to disillusionment in the methods of struggle here at home. Work on us. It wasn't the truth that mattered. Not the soul of the women affected. Just power. What a disappointment.
The second movement that stinked was the global climate movement. How in a second, under the direction of the loathsome Grethe Thunberg, the movement turned into another anti-Semitic association. And as in the feminist case, it only proves how much of a lie lies at its core. A true ideology doesn't have to embrace fashionable hatred to survive, because it has the truth, and the truth never needs a lie as reinforcement. The current claim of the climates, that Zionism must be eradicated in order for there to be climate justice in the world, makes it clear to anyone who has suspected before that these are opportunists who dress up what is fashionable in order to get budgets and attention. How the green becomes a brown of decay. How an innocent girl became a little Nazi. The wonderful world.
Silence. Greta Thunberg, photo: from the movie "I, Greta"
And the third movement, from which we knew nothing good would come of it, is the Progress movement, world progress. This movement, whose entire ideological basis is false and misleading for the purposes of government, shows in these dark days how dangerous emptiness of thought there is, and what hypocrisy there is in the left wings of liberalism, which are willing to ally with Islam, which in essence has nothing to do with progress, just to take over resources. Disgust.
At the end of every ideology awaits disturbances. In the world and in Israel. This month we saw how this is happening before our eyes. May we understand from this, that you always have to walk the middle line, stay away from extremists. Any extremist can turn on you when they don't have ideological fuel, and any movement can turn into an obscene movement in an instant.
Commemoration
I heard a strong idea, and I share it with you. In the killing field of the party, in bad fields, hundreds of burnt cars remained. What are we going to do with them? I understood that according to the ruling of Rabbi Yaakov Roger, the supreme authority on burial matters in Israel, cars with human remains that cannot be reached should be buried, like people. Not arguing with halakha. Still, there are many other vehicles of the partygoers still standing in a sooty field, the latest evidence of what happened there.
The reader Miri Orbach wrote to me about a thought that came to her, and even began to move it with the responsible parties. There is an opportunity to create the biggest, most impressive, most powerful, most horrifying monument ever. A monument that will be visible from the end of the country to the end. You have to take all the skeletons of cars and create a huge statue from them, cars soldered to each other rising from the field where they burned to heaven. And if some of these cars have to be buried, then on the contrary, they could be the underground part of this crazy monument. The foundations of the enormous structure are made of twisted tin skeletons, and even an underground part that can be viewed through armored glass according to the large pit.
One of the monuments that speaks to me the most in Israel is the one at the Beit Lid junction, the stairs that ascend to heaven and on which climb 22 figures, the same number murdered in a terrorist attack in 1995. It was created by the artist Sarah Conforti with the wisdom of her hands and imagination, and the impression made by this monument goes straight to the heart. At the time, it took years to authorize a nationalist to erect this extraordinary memorial. Now there is an opportunity to immediately open an international tender among the world's leading artists, which will also create a wide publicity buzz and media coverage that will tell the story through the scrap and through how they will be connected to a huge construction that will stand for years to come. The model I'm thinking about is armored vehicles on the way to Jerusalem. To this day, it is impossible to pass by them without thinking about what their passengers went through on the way to breaking the siege.
To take the horror and create a one-time art from it - this is the essence of the commandment and you chose life. I wish there was someone with the vision and ability to execute who would send this idea to reality on the ground.
avrigilad@gmail.com
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