Close encounters with Tzvika

June 7, 2009 - 1:17 PM by David

Tzvika Hadar

Because Israel is so small, when you go out to a public performance or concert, you’re likely to run into some familiar faces – even some famous ones.

Even so, I didn’t expect to run into a headline name on Friday when I took my boys to see a matinee performance in Tel Aviv by Blue Man Group, the celebrated US theater/musical spectacle. (The show was fantastic, by the way, and if you have chance to see it during its Tel Aviv run for the next week or so, don’t miss it.)

While walking out into the foyer following the show, we ran into Zvika Hadar coming out with his son in tow. Just the day before, it had been revealed by the police that the popular TV entertainer and comedian, and current host/judge of Israel’s American Idol – A Star is Born – was on the hit list of colleague Dudu Topaz.

Topaz is currently in police custody after confessing that he hired goons to beat up TV network execs who had spurned his proposals to bring him back to the boob tube. But evidently, they weren’t the only ones he had a vendetta with. The successful younger generation of TV personalities like Hadar, Erez Tal and Avri Gilad were also targets, according to documents police found in Topaz’s home.

In Friday’s papers, Hadar had refused to comment after being briefed by the police about the documents. I didn’t want to bother him on a fun day out with his son, and felt like a heel. But I approached him and said something like “Great show, wasn’t?” He smiled, not knowing me from Adam, and replied, “Amazing.”

I then said I was a journalist and wanted to know if he would comment about the reports on Topaz. He held up his hands and said “sorry, I’m not working today.”

Fair enough, I tried. And it didn’t surprise me when I opened up Yediot Aharonot today to find a story with the headline “Adar: Topaz is a monster.”

Just because you can rub shoulders with celebs in Israel doesn’t mean that you can actually talk to them.

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