Terrorists in Gaza obliterated a hairdressing in Salon in Rafiah early Monday morning, blowing it up with a bomb, according to the Palestinian Maan news agency. The attack on the female-owned business follows a long string of attacks on discos, hair salons, Christian schools and bookstores, Internet cafes and restaurants, which Hamas and its followers apparently consider as challenges to its dictatorial rule.
It's a case of life imitating, um, art as hair salons have become in recent days the center of terrorist activity worldwide, following last week's release of the movie "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," a raucous Israeli-Palestinian comedy starring Adam Sandler as an Israeli commando who fakes his own death to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a hairstylist.
Setting up shop in an ethnic neighborhood of Brooklyn, Zohan impresses his middle aged clientele with his sexual prowess and 1980's style haircuts. But, in a star-crossed romance the likes of which haven't been seen since West Side Story, he falls head over heels for the salon owner, a sassy Palestinian. The salon becomes a battleground for expat Israelis and Palestinians, exporting their turf war to the mean streets of the Borough.
An Israeli defense official, apparently unaware that Zohan is in fact a fictional character, called for his immediate repatriation and recruitment into an elite IDF unit, apparently as a precursor to the much-rumored and much-deferred medium-size incursion into Gaza. "Where is Zohan now that we need him?" the unnamed official reportedly wondered, apparently rhetorically.
Meanwhile, Ehud Olmert -- who these days is not even on speaking terms with the Defense Ministry and its chief Ehud Barak -- has expressed its interest in having Zohan play a "peacekeeping" role in Gaza as part of the "quiet" deal with Hamas -- but only after heroic hairstylist does something about the Prime Minister's unruly combover.
Both follically-challenged Ehuds have at least one other stylistic preference in common -- Barak in Lebanon last decade and Olmert in Gaza and Lebanon in this decade: they both have a preference for the cut-and-run. The open question is: will Zohan deliver?
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