Israel’s New Hasbara Video Channels SNL, but Offends Like South Park
Source: Haaretz
The video’s liberties with history are shockingly revisionist, insulting and even racist, portraying non-Jews as primitive barbarians perpetrating serial home invasions on their hapless Jewish victims.
A new video posted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry was clearly designed as a humorously sympathetic version of the deep historic ties of the Jewish people to the land of Israel - aimed at a generation that likes their politics delivered in Saturday Night Live-style satiric send-ups.
But the video’s liberties with history are shockingly revisionist, insulting and even racist, portraying non-Jews over 3,000 years of history as primitive barbarians perpetrating serial home invasions on their hapless Jewish victims. All aspects of the Diaspora are utterly ignored. Palestinian Arabs only enter the scene at the last moment of the video, portrayed as latecomers to the country, appearing out of nowhere only after the Jewish state was declared in 1948.
The video begins with a knock on the door with a sign “Jacob and Rachel - State of Israel” - the apartment of a young Israeli Jewish couple with a baby.
They open the door to what Jacob describes in a voiceover as “Two hipsters with well-groomed beards” who “probably wanna sell me an encyclopedia. I told them ‘hello, have you ever heard of Wikipedia?’” But the “hipsters” are no salesmen. They are the Assyrians. Wielding long knives, they angrily drive the couple out of their living room into their bedroom. He continues, “So it’s now 750 BC. In about 2750 years, we’ll have some quiet here.”
A series of invaders follows, each one more chaotic and warlike, trashing the house: the Babylonians, the Hellenists, the Romans, “early Arabic era” Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes.The couple is forced to wander from their bedroom to the kids’ room to the bathroom and then into a tent. Finally, when the Ottoman Empire shows up, things settle down and they are served Turkish delight in their tent. Jacob asks, “And then it was quiet. Is it finally over? Has everyone left my house? My Land of Israel?”
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