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Israeli satirists, like the highest-rated Israeli TV show "Eretz Nehederet," are helping Israelis blow off steam. (File)
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| By Associated Press August 6, 2006 |
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Satirists are pouring their energies into the war effort, helping Israelis blow off steam by poking fun at their politicians and generals, and of course at Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
One TV skit shows former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon waking up from his coma thinking he's back in 1982, when he masterminded Israel's first Lebanon war. Others show the army chief as a cocky cowboy and a famous singer outstaying his welcome in a bomb shelter.
But although Israel prides itself on laughing at absolutely anything, some critics are charging that Israeli satirists are making do with cheap shots at easy targets and are pulling their punches on the real issues of the day.
In a country where public debate often reaches hysterical levels and criticism is something of a national pastime, satire has a special place: The highest-rated TV show in the country is a satirical program, "Eretz Nehederet," or "Wonderful Country," a fake news broadcast featuring a roster of popular comedians.
The show portrays the chief of staff, Dan Halutz, a former fighter pilot, as a Top Gun type in Air Force coveralls and tinted sunglasses, thoroughly enamored of his military toys. President Moshe Katsav, recently at the center of allegations of sexual harassment, appears as a svelte cad in a bathrobe on a mission to show his support for the female residents of Israel's bombarded north.
"Eretz Nehederet" has taken aim at overenthusiastic media coverage of the war, devoting one skit to a military correspondent for the country's biggest TV station. Here he enthuses about an army plan to take Beirut and then Damascus before admitting to the anchor that it's his own plan, not the army's. Then he picks up a rifle and fires a burst in the direction of Lebanon.
The show has also poked fun at the celebrities who have flocked to Israel's north to cheer up residents, showing David Broza, a popular singer, arriving at a Haifa bomb shelter with his guitar and refusing to leave. "Even Nasrallah gives us a few hours of quiet," one exhausted resident complains.
The undisputed star of the past three weeks, however, is Nasrallah.
The Hezbollah leader, said Muli Segev, Eretz Nehederet's executive producer, has become no less than an Israeli media icon. Segev's show portrays him as a megalomaniac who wants little more than to star on Israeli TV, loudly proclaiming his status as a "ratings magician."
Off the screens of mainstream commercial television, the Hezbollah leader has inspired examples of low-blow humor of the kind distributed over the Internet.
One is a song that has achieved national fame: "Yallah Ya Nasrallah," essentially a string of schoolyard epithets directed at the Hezbollah leader along with a promise of imminent assassination. An animated clip of similar subtlety has Nasrallah introducing himself as DJ Hassan, rapping about bombarding Israel, morphing into a scantily-clad, bearded belly dancer, then getting hit by a missile and disappearing in a puff of smoke.
Israel's inability to make the real Nasrallah similarly disappear has also been fair game for satire.
On "Eretz Nehederet," the chief of staff notes hopefully that Nasrallah has not been heard from in several days and might be dead, only to have the Hezbollah leader himself show up in person at the studio to prove him wrong. This still is not enough to convince the army spokeswoman, also in the studio, who suggests this live appearance might be "pre-taped."
But some charge that satirists are avoiding tough issues, such as whether the war is being run properly and why Israel's mighty military has failed to stop Hezbollah rocket barrages.
Ehud Asheri, a TV critic and columnist for the daily newspaper Ha'aretz, said there is wall-to-wall support for the war, and that the public "isn't willing to tolerate anyone undermining this." By concentrating on targets like Nasrallah, Asheri said, shows like Eretz Nehederet are avoiding the real issues.
"We're all dancing around the communal bonfire right now," said Kobi Arieli, a columnist and satirist for the daily Ma'ariv.
Yedidya Meir, editor of the satire page at Ha'aretz, got reader complaints over a piece on Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas near the Gaza border on June 25. His satire page had Prime Minister Ehud Olmert saying he remembered all of Israel's missing soldiers, especially "that one with the glasses," referring to Shalit. Some readers thought this was going too far, and Meir was slammed in letters to the editor for bad taste.
"But I wasn't making fun of Gilad," Meir said. "I was making fun of the use that politicians made of him, and that's something entirely different."
The absence of more direct satirical attacks on the war is understandable, Meir said. His neighbor, Yonatan Einhorn, a 22-year-old soldier, was killed in Lebanon earlier this week, he said.
His priority, Meir added, was not to go against the consensus.
"The first thing my satire page is supposed to do is make people laugh," he said. "The rest of the paper is so sad."
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