American actor/comedian Michael Rapaport returned to Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s current-events oriented comedy show from Keshet 12, on Wednesday night with an especially biting sketch about how Hollywood stars are ignoring the plight of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since the October 7 attack.
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Playing himself hosting the Oscars, he joked in the opening ceremony monologue that the 134 remaining hostages had something in common with the Tinseltown royalty attending the show — neither had eaten in four months. “Next year, the hostage diet will be bigger than Ozempic,” he quipped.
The clip used footage of the Oscars to look real
The sketch was especially striking in the way it used clips of real stars attending recent awards shows to make it look as if Rapaport, who visited Israel a few months ago and spoke up for the hostages, was actually hosting the awards.
“I know you beautiful people are thinking of the hostages in Gaza all the time, you just won’t speak up about them. If Hamas would have attacked Israel and kidnapped all the dolphins, you’d be wearing dolphin helmets and throwing tuna at the podium,” he said, mentioning several other pet causes of the glitterati as well.
He went on to skewer the indifference of Hollywood’s heavy hitters by introducing new award categories. One was devoted to actresses who wore black to protest sexual misconduct a few years back but wouldn’t wear yellow ribbons to call out Hamas for its widely reported sexual assaults. “Hamas makes Harvey Weinstein look like Peter Pan,” he said, a reference to the producer convicted of multiple charges of sexual assault, sparking the #MeToo movement.
In other categories, he slammed actors who play dead Jews but won’t speak out about live babies held hostage by Hamas. This category featured two actor who are actually nominated for Oscars this year for playing real-life Jews, Cillian Murphy as Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer and Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro. He made fun of Jewish actors for their silence, naming Seth Rogen, Adam Sandler (who actually did sign a petition in support of Israel) and Larry David.
Rapaport addressed misinformation in favor of Hamas on TikTok
He also addressed the elephant in the room, the fact that the stars are scared of alienating young fans on social media. Gen Z fans, he said, “are far more dangerous than Hamas,” but added that the hostages would forgive them, before he was hustled off the stage.
Eretz Nehederet has featured a number of English-language sketches since the war began, one of which featured actor Brett Gelman. The Oscar ceremony is coming up on March 10.