Only Israel

A hit on YouTube with over 350,000 views, Yedida Freilich's song "Only Israel" speaks the truth louder than the meager words I can write.

A 22-year-old pianist from the Gush Etzion settlement of Neveh Daniel has become the latest YouTube phenomenon with her pro-Israel hasbara song “Only Israel.”

Yedida Freilich, a composition student at the capital’s Rubin Academy of Music and Dance, wrote the mournful piano ballad along with her father, Gabby, and brother Yuval, following the Gaza flotilla incident last month. In only two weeks, the video has attracted over 350,000 views on YouTube and turned Freilich into a celebrity in nationalist circles.

“The song transpired by chance,” Gabby Freilich told The Jerusalem Post this week from Australia, where he was visiting family. “One of Yedida’s projects in school was to compose a musical piece for a political song. As it happened, the assignment fell on the same week as the flotilla.”

Freilich said he was moved to write down lyrics after seeing the world’s reaction to the IDF raid on the Mavi Marmara, which left nine passengers dead.

The video clip of her moving performance on piano and vocals, with lyrics switching between English and Hebrew, is juxtaposed with images of Kassam rockets, St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, judge Richard Goldstone and the Mavi Marmara.

The lyrics decry the double standard Freilich says Israel faces when trying to defend itself, and includes couplets such as “Eight thousand rockets is no excuse / suicide bombers, it’s all just a ruse” and a Hebrew chorus of “Darfur is ignored, Russian troops in Chechnya, only Israel has no right to defend itself, because the world cares nothing about Jewish blood.”

“It was obvious to me that this was a hasbara [public diplomacy] song. Our efforts at explaining what happened with the flotilla were so appalling, and this did so well in explaining our positions, I knew it had to go on YouTube,” said Freilich.

He found a professional videographer, Daniel Sass, who volunteered his time, and together they chose the images and produced the clip.

Freilich insisted that the song appear with English, Hebrew and Arabic subtitles.

“I thought that it was important that the Arabs would be able to understand it,” he said.

“I think it’s a powerful song and a great tune. Yedida sings it from the heart. You can tell she’s involved in the lyrics and the performance, because it’s part of her life – her friends and her family are involved.”

Read the full story here.

Only Israel

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Operation Smackdown

Hat tip to Radarsite

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Sen. Joe Lieberman is urging Google Inc. to take down YouTube videos that he says al Qaeda and “other terrorist organizations” use to encourage violence and disseminate propaganda.

In a Monday letter addressed to Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Lieberman — who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — asked that YouTube “implement its own policy against this offensive material,” by removing the videos and preventing them from reappearing. The letter follows his committee’s staff report on terrorists’ Internet use.

YouTube is a subsidiary of Google Inc.

“Many of the videos produced by one of the production arms of al-Qaeda show attacks on U.S. forces in which American soldiers are injured and, in some cases, killed,” Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut, wrote in the letter.

As a proponent of Free Speech, I accept the concept that even the most hateful speech is protected. But what is shown on YouTube is not acceptable Free Speech. YouTube allows anyone to post anything and doesn't take it down unless someone objects, at which point they might take it down.

Might take it down? On YouTube you can easily find videos calling for the extermination of all Jews, attacks on US Troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the poison that Palestinians show their children.

Quoth the Raven:

Well, we object. We object to YouTube making a profit hosting videos celebrating the death of Coalition Soldiers (and pretty much everyone else) while washing their own hands of any responsibility. We're out to smack those videos down, and maybe shake a little sense into YouTube in the process.

Jihad wins when men and women of good conscience do nothing. Here we can fight back.

Support Operation Smackdown and add this as a link to your blog.

Then start smacking down. It's easy to do. Some of the videos I have smackdown were so horrific that I couldn't watch the whole video. Like this one of a 14 year old killing 4 US Soldiers. It has to stop and we can make it happen.

MONKEY IN THE MIDDLE SUPPORTS OPERATION SMACKDOWN!

Shouldn't you?