“In a few days, we will observe the seder evening, but we don’t know if we’ll open the door to Eliyahu the Prophet, or slam the bomb shelter door closed in the neighbor’s face,” said Eyal Kitzis, the host of Channel 12's Israeli comedy show Eretz Nehederet on Wednesday night, in a broadcast in which most of the skits had to do with the upcoming Passover holiday.
Much of the humor this week had a bitter tinge, which was perhaps only natural during a week in which millions of Israelis spent much of their time in shelters as missiles from Iran and Lebanon rained down on virtually every part of the country, killing several citizens and causing massive damage, for the fourth week.
The show’s cold open was like a period drama, set in modern-day Givatayim, that showcased the increasingly stark divide between Israelis who have a safe room in their homes and those who must run every couple of hours, sometimes every hour, to public shelters. The skit showed an aristocratic couple living in a mansion and dressed in authentic 19th-century clothes. When this couple received a missile alert, they were happy to go to their safe room, where they sipped sherry and chatted about how much they approved of the war.
But a poor couple, dressed in rags and carrying their children, had to run to a public shelter in a barn, filled with straw and farm animals, where they shared the space with strangers. The noble couple spoke about how wise they were to insist on living quarters with a safe room, while the poor couple argued over the real estate decision in which they prioritized good schools and a nice neighborhood over an apartment with a safe room.
It was also a week where US President Donald Trump suddenly said that he was on the brink of making a deal with Iran, news that left many Israelis queasily wondering if the American leader hadn’t simply grown bored of continuing the fight, and whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu truly knew whether the war still had the president’s support.
A political Passover seder
Bibi (Mariano Edelman) and Trump (Omer Etzion) showed up to celebrate the seder with Kitzis. Bibi came in for some ribbing over his visit earlier in the week to Arad, where a missile from Iran injured dozens, and the prime minister had brought his own bomb shelter with him, which went with him when he left.
Transportation Minister Miri Regev (Yuval Semo) and Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman (Shani Cohen) brought a portable shelter to the studio to protect Bibi during his Eretz Nehederet appearance, and he frequently ran to hide in it whenever he heard a loud noise.
Asked about a possible ceasefire to be brokered by Trump in the near future, he said that he understood the public’s disappointment about the war ending without achieving its main goal, “A pardon for me.” But he said it had achieved every other goal and was a historic success. He and the two ministers took out a Passover Haggadah and sang one of the songs from it, “Avadim Hayinu” (We Were Slaves), but with lyrics about the war in Iran, such as, “We were slaves, now we are flying in the skies of Iran like kings.”
But Trump, dressed in a festive white suit, rained on Bibi’s parade, or rather his seder, saying, “You promised me it would be easy, like Venezuela.” The main thing, said Trump, was that he didn’t want the war to escalate. “I don’t want to put boots on the ground. They could get dirty.” Showing off his cowboy boots, he sang, “These boots were made for carpets… I love my boots, but not on the ground.”
Trying to burnish the accomplishments of this war, Bibi and the ministers sang a version of the Passover song, “Dayenu” (It Would Have Been Enough), with lyrics like, “Even if we had not succeeded in toppling the government but we had removed the nuclear threat, it would have been enough.”
Even Trump sang along. But asked by Regev whether it was true there would be no vaunted “total victory” in Iran, Bibi said: “Of course there is! Just like the total victory in Gaza, and over Hezbollah, that for six full minutes has not launched a missile on us.”
'It's called ghosting'
Iranian expert Beni Sabti (Eli Finish) jumped in, criticizing Trump, saying, “He said [to the Iranian people], ‘Help is on the way,’ and then he disappeared… It’s called ghosting, what you did.”
There was also a brief stop in the bunker of the new Iranian leader, Mojtaba Khamenei (Yaniv Biton), with Khamenei’s advisors (Mariano Edelman and Yuval Semo) making a date to meet Trump’s negotiator Steve Witkoff at a branch of the Israeli coffee bar Aroma in Islamabad. Khamenei came in just as Witkoff called back, and they sent the new Supreme Leader out to check on whether he had hung the people he planned to, as they agreed with Witkoff to call the war a draw.
When Khamenei returned, they told him to make a video to put to rest the rumors that he was dead. Facing the camera, he said, in English, “Mr. Trump, you are fired,” referencing the catchphrase from Trump’s television show, The Apprentice, that an Iranian government spokesman actually used this week, and then referenced a famous line from The Princess Bride, saying, “My name is Inigo Khamenei, you killed my father. Prepare to die.”
When he looked to the advisers for approval, they were gone, and a bomb hit the bunker.
The Four Questions of Passover
There were many other skits that looked at different aspects of Israeli life, poking fun at ultra-Orthodox lawmakers for pushing their own agenda in the middle of the war, at an influencer going stir crazy at home, at military commentators for refusing to say anything definitive, at religious podcasters, at the cast of the children’s show, The Pajamas, now grown up and singing in a shelter, and at many other Israelis just trying to get through the week.
Back in the seder at the studio, a boy came in to sing, “The Four Questions,” with different lyrics, and that went, “Why is this war different from all other wars?” Bibi promised the lad, “When you grow up, there will be no more questions.”