On Wednesday night, Israel’s premier comedy show, Eretz Nehederet, showed its regular segment of news clips where reporters and presenters made some faux pas, and this time, it was all about newscasters getting punchy after dozens of hours in a row on the air.
We all knew exactly how those newscasters felt. Israelis are a little worn out by the current war with Iran, which has now lasted as long as the previous war in June, and shows no sign of winding down.
Wednesday’s Eretz Nehederet functioned as a kind of snapshot of the mood of the country, and managed, as it has in so many other times of crisis, to give people something to laugh about. The show wasn’t subtle, but 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, purported to be from the Finance Ministry, showing how parents could go back to work, since the government has opened most workplaces, but not the schools.
In the clip, a mother (Shani Cohen) was shown instructing the family dog on how to prepare formula for a baby, how to make lunch, and keep 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 about a dog, and the dog chortled as he read it. “If it doesn’t work with the dog, you can try it with the cat, too… We said, you can try it,” said the announcer, as the cat slept peacefully, 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 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 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.”
Asher (Yuval Semo), the cab driver, and his wife, Chani (Liat Harlev), who spoke from a bomb shelter, tried to pin Bibi 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?”
Netanyahu didn’t have an answer for that, but he said he could give previews of the next wars, and in clips from 2027, 2029, and 2031, he appeared addressing the country, but saying the same thing.
Kitzis, understanding that no answer would be forthcoming, asked Bibi why he had voted to give more money to the ultra-Orthodox than to the people of the north, who, even as the show was on the air, were attacked by constant missile barrages.
'What a week, what a week...'
Not getting an answer, Kitzis turned to a higher power, United States 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 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, Trump said, but to bring down the oil prices. “They are my only kryptonite,” he added.
Bibi 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 President Nicholas Maduro, showed up and dragged him 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 said 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 shit I’m doing.” “Absolutely,” Kitzis agreed.
But the secession in Iran was not going according to Trump’s plan, and the show moved to a bunker in Tehran where two Iranian officials were 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 1 to 10, and played musical chairs to the tune of Rita’s big hit, “Your Soul” (“Bo” in Hebrew), and each time, he was the chosen one. At the end of the skit, the young Khamenei was left alone, just as his bunker exploded.
Other segments spoofed the news magazine show, Uvda, and its correspondent Itai Anghel’s interview with the head of a Kurdish militia in Iran; 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. The famous Ehud Banai song, “City of Refuge” played in the background.
Kitzis closed with the hope that it would all be behind us soon, as more names of northern towns 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 have a wonderful country.