A promotional video clip for a new satire show set to air on Israel’s public broadcast Channel 1 was removed minutes after it was first posted online Sunday, as viewers complained bitterly of an offensive anti-right-wing bias in the clip. As part of its ongoing effort to become a more competitive television station, Channel 1 purchased Ha-Yehudim Ba’im” (The Jews Are Coming), which the production company bills as a show of satirical sketches focused on the Biblical period, on the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and on European Jewry, but with a contemporary twist. The show is set to begin airing in October. The 19-second promotional video shows three religious-looking men, two with rifles and one with a handgun. The three represent the three “songwriters” credited in the video: Baruch Goldstein, the Lubavitcher who butchered 29 and wounded 125 Palestinian worshippers in Hebron’s contested synagogue/mosque in 1994; Yigal Amir, who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin; and Yona Avrushmi, who lobbed a hand grenade into a left-wing rally in 1983, killing one and wounding nine others (among them former Labor minister Avraham Burg and current Likud minister Yuval Steinitz). In the beginning of the video, the Avrushmi character pops up in a set reminiscent of a children’s show, with flowers and a rainbow behind him, and sings, “Sometimes I’m a hero, sometimes a killer.” He is followed by the Amir character, singing “Sometimes I assassinate,” and the Baruch Goldstein character, whose line is “Sometimes I slaughter.” As the three begin to dance in a circle, entering the chorus, “But I’m a right-wing murderer,” the video cuts to a baby’s pacifier being dipped in a cup of wine and placed on a table with the instruments used in a ritual circumcision. The caption reads:

The Jews are coming. And they are godless.

Jerusalemite Evyatar Gat saw the promotional clip on the Channel 1 website and quickly downloaded it to his computer. He then uploaded it to YouTube. Within minutes of posting it online, Channel 1 removed the promo, Gat told The Times of Israel. Channel 1 said in a statement:

The director of the Israel Broadcasting Authority instructed that the promo be removed after we were apprised of its content. He will conduct an inquiry with the programming manager in order to establish how the promo went up without anyone having seen it and without the approval of an authorized party in the programming department.

YouTube commenters called the channel and those who created the clip racists, anti-Semites and Nazis, and accused the channel of incitement. One wrote:

This isn’t satire. It’s cheap provocation.

A few users wrote that they felt the channel had done nothing wrong. The clip showed three right-wing activists who had in fact committed murder, they said. But the vast majority of viewers who commented were not as forgiving. According to a report on Ynet, Jewish Home party MK Ayelet Shaked was among those who appealed to Channel 1 about the clip, saying, among other things:

The promo portrays settlers as bloodthirsty murderers. Is this what the taxpayers’ money is being spent on?

As of Sunday evening, the clip was nowhere to be found on Channel 1′s Facebook page, but several users posted it to the page of the channel’s ombudsman, and the handful of comments that followed were highly critical. The website of the production company, take2.co.il, was inaccessible on Sunday evening. One user wrote:

Have you lost your minds? With whom are you competing? The anti-Semitic television series from Syria and Turkey? Somebody there had better get a grip before this deranged horror airs.

Perhaps ironically, while Ha-Yehudim Ba’im has been in the works for several months, Channel 1 was also recently rumored to be negotiating with Caroline Glick’s cash-strapped right-wing satire website Latma.co.il for a deal that would see some of Latma’s programming included in Channel 1′s lineup. That initiative fell through. Ha-Yehudim Ba’im is set to star several veterans of other successful satirical shows, including Moni Moshonov of Ze-hu zeh and K’tzarim fame, Yael Sharoni, who has starred in a host of comedic and dramatic shows and Yaniv Biton, who has featured in the Israeli comedies “Comeback” and Tzchok me-Avoda.

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Good, more nations should be willing to stand up to 'satirists' who do nothing but try and weaken and undermine the cohesion of the body politic.

I agree that you should be banned

babyfinland posted:

I saw this headline and I only read it because I knew I would find one of those words that always accompany US media coverage of Israeli racism. It is always about emotions and anguish and soul searching. Look at this: "The court decision has reignited an emotional public debate about the fate of the migrants." This is like saying that Nazis triggered emotional public debates about the plight of Jews in Germany. Can you imagine the uproar if this was a language used to cover up and glamorize the racism of another people on this planet? And when the New York Times refer to "emotional public debate" are they referring to public chants about "niggers" in Israel and how they should be torched?

"The Birmingham Church bombings spurred an emotional wave of debate of what it meant to be an American in 20th century society"