A song titled “Udrub Udrub Tel Abib” (We Will Strike a Blow at Tel Aviv) and other violent extremist antisemitic material were removed from leading music streaming platform Spotify after a petition was issued a year ago by UK-based pro-Israel organization We Believe in Israel (WBII).
WBII and the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD), UK’s Jewish umbrella organization, issued a statement thanking Spotify for removing the song. WBII is a UK grassroots pro-Israel campaign and is a broad coalition of over 25,000 supporters of Israel.
An independent search by The Jerusalem Post could not find the song on Spotify, however, it does appear on Youtube as a “Palestinian resistance song.”
“Arabic Katyusha” and “The Death of Israel” are some other songs that were moved from Spotify. The move came after a petition organized by WBII was filed to Spotify that collected nearly 4,000 signatures, while the Board made representations to Michelle Donelan, the UK’s secretary of state of digital culture, media and sport.
Inciting violence against Israelis
“Udrub Udrub Tel Abib” directly incites violence against Israelis while using overtly antisemitic language. Its lyrics include sentences such as “Strike a blow at Tel Aviv and frighten the Zionists. The more you build it the more we will destroy it,” or “We don’t want a truce or solution. All we want is to strike Tel Aviv.” Other violent text in this song includes “Oh Fajr missile, explode in the Knesset and the army base.”
WBII director Luke Akehurst said that it is “good news that Spotify has finally listened to public disgust about hosting clearly antisemitic content which contravenes their own content policies, including directly inciting violence against Israelis. He added that “now we need them to look at why they are hosting explicitly antisemitic and conspiratorial songs by Lowkey and Ambassador MC.”
“It’s good news that Spotify have finally listened to public disgust about hosting clearly antisemitic content which contravenes their own content policies, including directly inciting violence against Israelis," Luke Akehurst, Director of WBII, said. He added that "now we need them to look at why they are hosting explicitly antisemitic and conspiratorial songs by Lowkey and Ambassador MC.”
BoD vice president Amanda Bowman said that “we are pleased that Spotify has acted to remove certain material that clearly breached their own rules regarding hateful messaging. We hope that they will continue to apply these rules to works by other artists that similarly contravene their guidelines.”