Franz Ferdinand have condemned the Israeli Defense Forces’ use of their 2004 hit “Take Me Out” in a propaganda video posted over the weekend. In an Instagram story viewed by Pitchfork, Alex Kapranos, frontman of the Scottish rock band, has slammed the IDF for using the song “without our consent.”
The IDF video, which has since been deleted, was captioned “Operation Roaring Lion – this is how it’s done,” and showed an Israeli soldier celebrating the launch of the country’s recent strikes on Iran alongside footage of fighter jets and explosions. The snippet of “Take Me Out” comes from the song’s first verse: “I’m just a cross-hair, I’m just a shot away from you / And if you leave here, you leave me broken, shattered I lie.”
“These warmongering murderers are using our music without our consent,” Kapranos wrote in the Instagram story. “This makes us both nauseous and furious. Kind of typical though, isn’t it? To strut up and take what isn’t theirs with a vile arrogance…”
On February 28, Israel and the United States launched joint attacks on Iran. The same day, President Donald J. Trump announced the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, on his social media platform Truth Social.
