Israel’s premier comedy show on Channel 12, Eretz Nehederet, showed its regular segment of news clips where reporters and presenters made some faux pas on Wednesday night, and this time, it was all about newscasters getting punchy after spending dozens of hours in a row on the air.
People in Israel at the moment are likely understand exactly how those newscasters felt. Israelis are seemingly worn out by the current war with Iran, which has now lasted as long as the previous war in June, with the warfare showing no sign of winding down.
Wednesday’s Eretz Nehederet functioned as a kind of snapshot of the country’s mood and managed, as it has in so many other times of crisis, to give people something to laugh about.
Although the show was not subtle, it was funny.
During the day, the cast released clips of themselves in their shelters, and talked on morning news shows about what it was like going into an intense comedy show after being awakened six – or was it seven? – times during the night by missile attacks from Iran and Lebanon.
The show opened with a clip, purportedly from the Finance Ministry, showing how parents could return to work, since the government has reopened most workplaces – but not schools.
In the clip, a mother (Shani Cohen) was shown instructing the family dog on how to prepare formula for a baby, make lunch, and keep the children entertained by reading to them.
The mom “thought it best” that the dog read the children the classic Lea Goldberg book, Where’s Pluto?, which is a narrative about a dog. Her dog chortled as he read it.
“If it doesn’t work with the dog, you can try it with the cat, too,” said the announcer. “As we told you, you can try it with the cat as well.”
All the while, the family’s cat could be seen sleeping peacefully, unfazed, refusing to wake up.
That laughing dog was just dumb enough to bring a smile to tired faces. Host Eyal Kitzis said he understood that the war was taking a toll on everyone, and wondered when it would end.
He then turned to “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu” (Mariano Edelman), who was giving a press conference and boasting that during the war, “We’ve done things we only dreamed about, once, back when we still slept at night.”
“We’re changing the face of the Middle East. In Iran, there was [Ali] Khamenei. Now, there’s his son. OK, we’re rejuvenating the Middle East. The father was 86, the son is 56. We set the Iranians back 30 years,” the actor playing Netanyahu said.
Speaking from a bomb shelter, Asher “the cab driver” (Yuval Semo) and his wife, Chani (Liat Harlev), tried to pin the prime minister down about how long the war would last.
“Citizens of Israel, you’re going to live in a state that will control the Middle East,” said the prime minister. “All right,” said Asher. “But could we live in a state where you can take a shower?”
Having no reply to that particular query, Netanyahu said he could give previews of the next wars, and in clips “from 2027, 2029, and 2031,” he appeared to address the nation, saying the exact same thing.
Kitzis, understanding that no answer would be forthcoming, asked Israel’s leader why he had voted to give more money to the ultra-Orthodox community than to the people in the North, who, even as the show was on the air, were attacked by constant missile barrages.
'What a week, what a week...'
Not receiving an answer, Kitzis turned to a higher power, “US President Donald Trump” (Omar Etzion), who wore a Superman costume with a T on his chest.
Trump said, “What a week, what a week. We are winning so much, Iran has nothing left.” He then detailed how much of the Iranian military had been destroyed.
Asked by Kitzis when the war would end, Trump said, “Yesterday I said it would be soon. And today, I will say the opposite – ‘noos.’” The war was not to bring down the ayatollah and the regime, the US president said, but to bring down the oil prices.
“They are my only kryptonite,” he added.
Netanyahu jumped back in, saying that the only purpose of the war was actually to secure a pardon for him from the cases in which he is on trial.
Trump agreed, saying he would get President Isaac Herzog (Roy Bar-Natan) to give the prime minister “an epic pardon.”
Herzog showed up and was uncharacteristically assertive with Trump, saying that Israel was an independent state and listing various accomplishments, including that “Bruno Mars almost appeared here twice, we have honor!”
As he talked, commandos, like those who carried out the US raid on Venezuela that deposed leader Nicolás Maduro, showed up and dragged Herzog off, to Trump’s approval.
“Now, you’ll have to ask me for a pardon,” said Trump. “I’m the only one who gets to decide who runs the countries I control.”
He added that Netanyahu would control Israel, and that soccer star Lionel Messi, whom he met this week, would “rule Iran.”
Later, Kitzis showed an actual clip of Trump, who said at a press conference, “I don’t want to brag… but no other president can do some of this sh*t I’m doing.”
“Absolutely,” Kitzis agreed.
But the secession in Iran “was not going according to Trump’s plan,” so the show “had to move” to zoom in on a bunker in Tehran, where two “Iranian officials” were seen trying to bully “Mojtaba Khamenei” into taking over, much to the new Khamenei’s dismay.
They pulled slips of paper out of a turban, had him guess a number from one to 10, and played musical chairs to the tune of Israeli singer Rita’s big hit, “Your Soul” (“Bo” in Hebrew).
No matter what slip of paper he drew, Khamenei was always the chosen one. At the end of the skit, the young Khamenei was left alone, just as his bunker exploded.
Other segments spoofed the investigative and current affairs television program, Uvda, and its correspondent, Itai Anghel’s interview with the head of a Kurdish militia in Iran.
They also parodied Social Equality Minister May Golan’s pricey trip to New York this weekend to give a speech; an Iranian official showing crazy AI pictures of Tel Aviv buildings swarmed by insects and hamburgers; and Israel’s Eurovision contestant Noam Bettan singing this year’s song, “Michelle,” which is mostly in French, and giving a Hebrew version that told of a romance gone wrong because the couple were confined to the bomb shelter too much.
There were more laughs to be had from the war, such as when a man famous for being photographed in a grey shirt in a bomb shelter in the previous war and a new shelter star, Liran, known for sporting white glasses in the shelter, faced off.
A final skit showed a man trying to sell apartments in a new housing development, City of Refuge, which would be completely underground, while the famous Ehud Banai song, “City of Refuge,” played in the background.
Kitzis closed with the hope that this “would all be behind us soon,” as more actual names of northern towns under attack appeared on the right side of the screen.
That Eretz Nehederet could put on a show at all under the circumstances was remarkable, and that the show was actually this funny seemed to prove the closing line – that we do have a wonderful country.