Israeli TV satirists catch political wave
With election at hand, timing of show’s 12th-season opener perfect, say comics
HERZLIYA, Israel — The hit Israeli satirical TV show A Wonderful Land is back on the air for a 12th season, and the comedians say the timing is perfect.
There is yet another Israeli election, and the colorful cast of real-life Israeli leaders is getting skewered in skits on a show described as the Saturday Night Live of the Holy Land, whose actors impersonate with wicked aim the country’s often over-the-top political class.
“Yes, the timing is a gift, but then again Israel is the gift that keeps on giving for the satirist,” said Muli Segev, the executive producer of Eretz Nehederet, as the show is named in Hebrew.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party suddenly find themselves in a tight race leading up the March 17 contest. According to the latest polls, Netanyahu is running neck and neck with challengers Isaac Herzog, head of the Labor Party, and his new political partner, Tzipi Livni, the former justice minister and repeat peace negotiator.
The election is essentially a referendum on Netanyahu, whom critics — especially the writers of A Wonderful Land — cast as an imperial, bombastic pessimist who rules by fear-mongering.
One popular bit in a previous season had the Netanyahu character and his wife, Sara, dressed as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
But they do give some props to Netanyahu, played with Frank Sinatra swagger by his TV portrayer, who often breaks into song and dance routines. Netanyahu’s campaign advertisements, on the other hand, cast the prime minister as the only adult in a collapsing coalition government filled with pettish, quarrelsome kindergartners — more fodder for A Wonderful Land.
Israelis have been spoofing their leaders on television since the 1970s, but the top-rated A Wonderful Land has become a kind of institution. The show is taped before a live studio audience a couple of hours before it airs on Monday nights so Segev and his writers can add topical zingers from the day’s headlines. More than 917,000 people tuned in last month for the season opener, making it the second-most watched show of the week after the Israeli version of The Amazing Race.
The episode began with a spoof of the Israeli leaders as characters from Star Wars, with Netanyahu as the dark lord Emperor Palpatine and Herzog as Luke Skywalker.
The emperor vows he cannot be defeated while flanked by his Royal Guards, who are bearded ultra-Orthodox Jews dressed in storm trooper costumes with side curls attached to their helmets. Skywalker keeps trying to turn on his light saber, but the beam is small and, umm, inadequate. The gags aren’t subtle. “Nothing is sacred,” said Segev. “Laughing at ourselves, at our ridiculous situation, it is part of the Jewish tradition, our sense of humor. For one hour a week, the people decide — not the leaders — what is funny. It’s payback.”
Amotz Asa-El, the former executive editor of the Jerusalem Post and now a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, said the show is entertaining, sure, but not able to sway vot- ers one way or another.
“They do attack everyone with equal vehemence,” he said. “They make Bibi conceited and aloof. They make of Herzog a total child, literally portray him as a kid, which is extremely damaging for a politician.”
The show runners of A Wonderful Land think the comedy has taken on a harder edge in recent years.
“Are there red lines? No, the politicians keep moving them,” said the show’s host, Eyal Kitzis. “We have to be more extreme than them, to exaggerate more. But it is getting harder and harder. They are becoming their caricatures.”
Segev compared Israeli politics to “a bad soap opera,” and the politicos to “a crazy family.” The producer was speaking on a recent day in a spare dressing room as his actors busied themselves in wardrobe and ran through their lines.
The current format sports a long-suffering anchorman/ host, the ultimate straight man, sitting at a news desk flanked by his “guests” — actors in wigs and prosthetics who impersonate Israel’s leaders, spending the show talking over and at each other.
In the season opener, “Netanyahu” shows up for the debate dressed in a track suit with a plate of the Jewish pastry rugelach. When the anchorman asks what gives with the nosh and the casual attire, Netanyahu shrugs and says it doesn’t matter what he does anymore, the voters will re-elect him anyway (to a fourth and historic term as premier, by the way).
The show runners say their own political bearings are liberal. They know the Israeli audience tilts right. They say they try hard to be equal-opportunity offenders.
They once spoofed the prophet Abraham, but they mostly step around Islam.
Palestinians are fair game, but the show is concerned with Jewish Israeli fixations, the characters dominated by politicians and ordinary citizens.
They make fun of religious Jews and secular Jews, the endless wars and ineffectual peaceniks, Hamas rockets and the foreign media, which are skewered as biased or clueless.
In the season premiere of the show, which is produced by local TV company Keshet, host Kitzis refers to a recent attack on a Tel Aviv bus by a knife-wielding Palestinian.
“Terror and conflict are still here,” he says. The screen cuts to a phony BBC correspondent who reports, “Tragedy struck this morning as a Palestinian man was violently thrown off a bus after the driver robbed him and took a knife he rightfully owned.”
During a game-show skit titled “Zionist or Terrorist?” the actor portraying the rightwing, pro-settler politician Naftali Bennett says of a rising young star in the Labor Party, “She can’t be a true Zionist! She went abroad on vacation … and enjoyed it!”
The joke is that good Zionists can vacation in France, but they’re supposed to be miserable.