Prime Minister quacks along
Say what you will about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the guy’s got a sense of humor. Where other politicians might blanche when parodied online, Bibi embraces the joke.
For example, after the publication of Netanyahu’s smiling face in the background when Gilad Schalit was photographed embracing his father for the first time, Bibi fans and foes alike began posting mash-ups of that image in every imaginable historical context – the prime minister at the British royal wedding, at the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, wearing dark sunglasses as a member of the Matrix team (hey, Neo and Bibi sound like a cool pair).
The prime minister’s office then joined in the fun, issuing its own picture of Bibi’s smiling facing with a humorous caption in Hebrew playing up Netanyahu’s U.N. speech. It defused the ridicule and won Bibi no small amount of online appreciation,
The latest poke at the prime minster is from 30-year-old Israel video director Amir Kotigaro who used Netanyahu’s recent AIPAC speech as the basis for a minute-long video parody. This is the speech where Bibi asks “if it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, then what is it? It’s a duck, but this duck is a nuclear duck,” referring of course to Iran.
Katigaro used Netanyahu’s text, mixed it up with a trance music background and spliced in some clips of the Looney Tunes’ classic character Daffy Duck urging the ever befuddled Elmer Fudd to shoot him. The video is quite amusing and remarkably seems to flow together without any auto-tuning (unlike with Noy Alooshe’s music mash of Muammar Gaddafi’s Zenga Zenga speech).
As with the previous iconic smile mash-up, the prime minister has apparently green-lighted the Katigaro’s video to appear on his official Facebook page. The post has 2,018 likes and 354 comments.
Katigaro’s video has now been viewed over 100,000 times since it was released last Wednesday in time for the Jewish holiday of Purim.
Toronto’s “Slut” March Heads to Israel
Last April a writer from my personal blog Green Prophet asked: Should the Middle East Have More Sluts? Of course we wanted to attract our reader’s attention, and we did with thousands of readers, hundreds of “Likes” and dozens of comments. Although I am not a feminist, I do recognize a critical link between women’s rights and environmental values. Look at the women from Barefoot College in Jordan: Women are often the first ones to transmit these values to their societies and children, and women without basic rights are not empowered to do anything. I know that linking sluts and the Middle East is a tough pill to swallow in the ultra-conservative Middle East but we wrote this article to grab your attention. To make you think.
Readers and activists were listening. According to DIY Tel Aviv the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem will be organizing their own slut walks, starting next week. Read more
Nostalgia Sunday – Adloyada-yada-yada
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Movies, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Social Justice, Travel
Could it be true that the Adloyada Purim parade is returning to Tel Aviv? According to Ahbar HaIr (City Mouse) weekly, there’s a grassroots movement forming among last summer’s Social Welfare Protest organizers to bring the legendary celebration back to its birthplace and natural habitat. Finally! A concrete aspect to the nebulous Protest — and one that I can back one hundred percent.
Briefly put, the phrase “Adloyada” comes from “ad lo yada” or “unable to differentiate”, referring to the Purim tradition of drinking until one is unable to tell the difference between evil Haman and good Mordechai. The first Adloyada parade was held in 1912 in Tel Aviv and continued until 1936. It was reestablished in the 1950s and shut down again in the 1960s. In the early 80s, the Sheinkin Adloyada came and went — fast and furious like the punk music that inspired it — and that was it. Until now.
(The full background to the Adloyada’s historic Tel Aviv roots — and its relationship to debonair choreographer and filmmaker Baruch Agadati — may be found here).
Last week, the organizers of this latest incarnation put in a request to make the renewed Adloyada an official Tel Aviv municipal event but received no response. No matter. “We don’t need permission from the establishment to go out and party,” city council member Sharon Louzon told Ahbar HaIr.
Well said — and probably the right attitude as it doesn’t look like municipality is going to back the revival any time soon. “The Adloyada was cancelled for two principle reasons,” ran the official municipal statement quoted by Ahbar HaIr, “budget and logistical complications that shut down the city almost entirely on a day of heavy traffic. In addition, it should be noted that the city of Holon hosts a very successful event, and we think it would not be right to enter into a competition as there is a concurrent event only 10 minutes driving distance away.”
Holon! Sacrilege!
The public procession is scheduled to start this coming Thursday at 11:00 AM at the end of Ibn Gabirol Boulevard (corner of HaYarkon Park) and will proceed southwards towards Rothschild Boulevard, Allenby Street, Levinsky Park and the New Central Bus Station, ending at Hatikva Park at around 3:00 PM.
More photos of Adloyadas gone by may be viewed here – plus see below for some rare footage from the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive. You can check out the Holon Adloyada from last year (also below) — it looks very fun, actually, and I think Agadati would have appreciated the Rio carnival dancers.
Purim Sameach! Have a happy Purim holiday!
Adloyada 1932
Adloyada 1960
Holon Adloyada 2011
Meet the Mossad
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Politics, Profiles, War
It’s not every day that you get to meet the one-time top spy in Israel. If you’re expecting Efraim Halevy to walk out of the pages of a John Le Carre novel or a James Bond movie, then you’ve got the wrong impression of the former head of the Mossad and a career spook since 1961.
The British-born Halevy is an unassuming, mild-mannered gentleman, evoking the cultured tones of Abba Eban and the appearance of an uncle you look forward to visiting with.
I was honored to introduce Halevy when he spoke to a rapt audience in Jerusalem this week as part of a lecture series at Kehilat Moreshet Avraham, a Conservative synagogue. Halevy spoke on the subject of “Are We The Victims of our own Biases?” – a title I didn’t really understand until he explained it.
According to Halevy – and he’s been involved with events in the region whose details will likely go to the grave with him – the Palestinians and the Arab world aren’t the only ones who’ve intentionally or not, prevented the normalization of relations between Israel and everyone else in the neighborhood. We’re also to blame.
Halevy, who led the Mossad from 1998 to 2002, doesn’t think Israel needs to insist on the Palestinians or anyone else for that matter recognizing Israel as a Jewish state or approving its right to exist. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, he said that Israel is a Jewish state and that any treaty or agreement signed with Israel by any other state or entity is tantamount to recognition, and it’s one of our biases based on insecurity that we insist on that extra step.
After reaching a peace agreement with Egypt, which had been Israel’s “most formidable enemy,” Israel should have surely gained an enormous injection of self-confidence, because in this achievement, Israel had broken the Arab anti-Israel alliance of solidarity, said Halevy.
Although Israel has many near miraculous achievements to its credit, Halevy believes that Israelis have not overcome an inherent Jewish perception of being the victim. After 2,000 years of suffering, being despised among the nations and victims of anti-Semitic actions that resulted in massive loss of life, Israelis still have difficulty in being self-confident when it comes to personal and national security. Israelis always labor under threat despite the fact that “we have the most efficient, most capable and most brutal defense capability in the region.”
Halevy also ruffled some feathers in the crowd when he said that Israel is wrong to always focus on and end to the conflict.
. “There will never be an end to the conflict. We need to translate conflict into something you live with in different terms, he said, citing several conflicts in which the adversaries have found a way to live together without peace treaties or final borders. “So why should we demand a final border?” he asked. “Why should we always want the ultimate?”
It was food for thought from someone who’s been in the trenches of diplomacy and espionage for decades. And thankfully, at the end of the evening, he hadn’t disclosed any secrets that would have necessitated disposing of the entire audience.
Nostalgia Sunday – From Hollywood to Holyland
Filed under: Art, coexistence, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Movies, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Politics, Pop Culture, Travel, tv
Someone recently sent me a link to one of those time-wasting yet fascinating Internet slide shows, in this case, snapshots of unexpected celebrity combinations. For example, Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. Who’da thunk it? Vivien Leigh and Ringo Starr — who put them together? You wouldn’t have expected to see Charlie Chaplin and Mahatma Gandhi in the same room, let alone in the same frame, would you?
Or would you…? After all, it has long made political sense for leaders in government to cultivate relationships with high-profile celebrities, such as movie stars.
In honor of tonight’s Oscars, we dove into the Israel National Photo Collection and came up with a fistful of pearls, like this shot (by Moshe Pridan) of singer-actor Eddie Fisher chowing down on falafel while on a 1957 visit to the young State of Israel.
Frequent visitor Danny Kaye was snapped clowning around with Arab schoolkids in Nazareth.
While on a visit to Universal Studios in 1964, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and wife Elisheva chatted with movie stars Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida.
Photo by Moshe Pridan
Frank Sinatra made an appearance in an Upper Nazareth kindergarten.
Prime Minister Golda Meir had a tete-a-tete (and a smoke) with actor Gregory Peck and wife Veronique at a 1969 gala dinner hosted by entertainment industry heads in LA.
Photo by Moshe Milner
And the ever-glamorous Elizabeth Taylor met with Prime Minister Menachem Begin and wife Aliza in 1977.
Photo by Yaacov Saar
This above photo was taken at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, but the National Photo Collection has many others of Taylor visiting Israel, including one of her and husband Richard Burton at the Western Wall. There’s also a deer-in-the-headlights shot of Sophia Loren, engulfed by the local paparazzi as she lands at Lydda airport to shoot the movie Judith. Diana Ross serenading Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin? Who’da thunk it?
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