‘Col. Erran Morad’ continues to shock
Sacha Baron Cohen’s character sings ‘Jerusalem of Gold,’ humiliates Senate candidate
“We are neighbors,” Israeli date farmer Inon Rosenblom stated emphatically. His farm is located in the Jordan Valley Jewish settlement of Na’ama.
Rosenblom has lived in the Jordan Valley since 1982. His moshav sits on the top of a hill overlooking the fruits of his labor, a 12 hectare (about 30,000 acre) farm producing dates, basil and even tropical fish – a new venture.
There is cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis, Rosenblom said, but have you “heard of a thing called Zionism? This is our land… we only came back after a short period of 2,000 years.”
Rushing from place to place in a dusty Toyota, Rosenblom always has time to stop and talk to his workers. He employs between 10 and 30 Palestinians on a daily basis, depending on the season.
“What’s leading people here is the economy [and] to have a quiet, convenient life,” Rosenblom said. “A lot of love goes into nurturing life here; it’s like growing on concrete.”
Treated sewage water from Jerusalem is used to water date trees. Mosquito traps were created to limit the use of pesticides. And relationships with foreign importers were fostered in order to create a market for the produce.
“We exported the idea to our neighbors,” Rosenblom said of the farm’s desert agriculture techniques. They could only succeed because of the innovative growing techniques invented by Zionist settlers, he said.
“They can yell like crocodiles,” he said of his Palestinian neighbors, “but they have all that we have and more.”
CONTENTIOUS CONFECTIONERY Achva Halva Factory – Ariel
When walking through the door of the Achva Halva factory, a wave of sugary scents washes over you. The air is thick with the fragrance of halva, rugelach and meringues. You feel like you’re gaining calories just from breathing the sweet air.
In 1997, the factory moved from Tel Aviv to the Ariel Industrial Zone in the West Bank. Yoav Mallach, the factory’s operations manager, says the factory now produces four tons of tahini every hour as well as halva, meringues and baked goods.
“We don’t have any political aspects at all, not to the left side or the right side of the political issues,” Mallach said regarding the location of the factory. “It’s a good climate and close to the center of Israel geographically.”
Achva employs around 240 people. About 60% of the employees are Palestinians.
“We keep the politics and all the other issues outside the factory,” he said. “Here everyone is equal: there is no religion, no history. Keep everything, all the conflict outside. Here everyone works in complete harmony.”
Mallach says the average salary for Palestinians who work in similar Palestinian factories is around NIS 2,000 a month. At Achva, the base salary is NIS 8,000. Achva is an Israeli factory that follows Israeli labor law and minimum-wage rules.
29-year-old, Mujahed Ahmed has lived his whole life in a village with 2,200 people, located 20 minutes from the Achva factory.
“I enjoy working here. There are no Palestinians, no Israelis; everyone is working together,” Ahmed said. “You don’t find the conditions everywhere that you do in this factory.”
Ahmed is manager of the packaging department, where he works with two of his brothers and 10 cousins.
“Other people who don’t work here, are calling all the time asking [for a job]… every day I get around 20 phone calls.”
All of Mallach’s products are kosher certified, but his location
Cranking, wheezing and rocking machines are lined up row upon row. Managers straining to talk above the noise that is now the background of some 65 Palestinian and 35 Israeli workers at Lipski, a plastics factory located in Barkan’s industrial area.
“We are one factory, one plate, all of us,” Yehuda Cohen, CEO of Lipski Plastics, said. “If the company succeeds, all of us [will be] getting more. If the company does not succeed, some of us go home, and the others are getting less. This is the most important benefit that we can have here.”
The company exports rattan bins and brushes as well as plastic plumbing pipes.
“In 1988 this industrial area was built … because the government wanted to support this area. I came here 11 years ago and I found this building.”
For Cohen, being in this industrial area created a way to gain willing employees. Is there anything Col. Erran Morad can’t do? Considering he’s a fictional IDF officer – or a Mossad agent, depending on his mood – Morad can get away with saying and doing just about anything.
In fact, the ending credits of each episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s new Showtime series Who is America? include the disclaimer “nothing in this series should be considered factual.”
But on the third episode of the show, which aired on Sunday evening, Morad continued to say and do outrageous things, while the men around him don’t seem to bat an eyelash.
And as buzz around the show climbs, more people around the globe are tuning in to watch Cohen’s ludicrous Mossad character dupe public and private figures. Though just 327,000 people watched the premiere on Showtime two weeks ago, the online figures tell a different story. As of Monday, a clip of Morad convincing congressmen to endorse arming toddlers has been viewed 14 million times. The segments featuring Morad – a cocky, macho and ridiculous stereotype of an Israeli terrorism expert – have proved the show’s most successful.
On the third episode of the show, Morad met up with Roy Moore, the disgraced GOP Senate candidate who just barely lost his race last year after nine women accused him of sexual misconduct – several while they were minors.
Cohen reportedly lured Moore to the meeting with the promise of honoring him for his dedication to the State of Israel. In a statement earlier this month after learning he had been duped, Moore said he did not know he was taking part in something “planned to embarrass, humiliate, and mock not only Israel, but also religious conservatives.”
And when they sat down, the fearless Cohen – dressed as the even more fearless Morad – showed off some top-notch Israeli technology: a tunnel detection wand that has been repurposed to sniff out pedophiles.
Not surprisingly, the segment ends with Moore storming off set away from the beeping wand, after stating: “I support Israel, I don’t support this kind of stuff.”
But that wasn’t it for Morad’s presence in this episode; he returned in a truly cringe-inducing clip (that is, if you weren’t already cringing) that involved training three anti-immigration Trump supporters how to lure and trap Mexicans.
It was here that Morad dropped any pretense of logic or sense, since there seemed to be nothing he could do that would tip the men off – or deter them from their plot to deport immigrants.
That included having one of them dress up as a 15-year-old Mexican girl celebrating her Quinceañera, complete with underwear sporting a fake vagina “based on Gal Gadot.” None of the men seemed to blink an eye when Morad – dressed as a mariachi performer – began singing “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold).” The truth may have only begin to dawn on them when actual police officers showed up to the scene of their trap.
With four episodes remaining in the first season, there’s no doubt viewers will be seeing more of “Erran Morad.” And more targets will be ignorant enough to find his tough-guy Israeli act entirely believable.