Israeli show’s satirizing of US student support for Hamas goes viral
Eretz Nehederet clip racking millions of views shows ultra-liberal students espousing antisemitism, cheerfully backing Gaza terrorist who responds with derision and death threats
An Israeli TV show’s satirical take on support for Palestinians among US college students was viewed over 11 million times on social media by Monday evening, just 24 hours after it first aired.
Keshet TV’s long-running satirical show “Eretz Nehederet” (“A Wonderful Country”) broadcast the skit on Sunday, depicting a pair of students giving mindless support to the Hamas terror group, which on October 7 carried out a devastating assault on Israel that killed 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians. Over 240 men, women, and children were abducted and taken captive in Gaza.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and remove it from control of the Gaza Strip. As the war rages on, US colleges have seen pro-Palestinian demonstrations and a rise in antisemitic incidents, while also facing criticism for their lack of condemnation of the Hamas attacks.
The sketch imagined a broadcast from the “Columbia Untisemity News” in which two uber-liberal students introduce themselves as welcoming everyone who is “LGBTQH,” then explaining that the “H’ is for “Hamas” which is “so trending right now.”
The students are seen tearing down posters demanding the release of kidnapped Israelis, with one declaring “Jews make the world dirty,” but quickly noting “I’m not antisemitic, I’m racist fluid.”
The pair then “interview” via video link a Hamas gunman called Abu Fatwa in Gaza, but fail to notice his endless tirade of insults and threats directed at them such as promising to “kill all your infidels” and that if one of the students — who is overtly camp — visits Gaza, “we will throw you from the roof, you homosexual dirt.”
"Columbia Untisemity": Israel's No. 1 Satire program mocks the support for Hamas on college campuses@mulisegev@Eretz_Nehederet pic.twitter.com/v3BogKbS5y
— Yonit Levi (@LeviYonit) November 5, 2023
When Abu Fatwa says he is lacking only more rockets, one of the students enthuses: “As long as it’s organic.”
“First we finish with Israel, and America is next,” adds Abu Fatwa.
The clip wraps up with the two students dancing and chanting the slogan “From the river to the sea,” a demand for the elimination of Israel that has featured widely at anti-Israel rallies in the past month, but changing the second line of the chant by inserting the word “Jews” to give “Palestine will be Jews free.”
Channel 12 news anchor Yonit Levi posted the clip to her X (formerly Twitter) account on Sunday, and by the next day it had been viewed more than 11.5 million times, with over 30,000 “likes,” in addition to others who posted it.
As Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, aimed at destroying Hamas, has intensified, many college students have expressed solidarity with Palestinians and Gaza, and some with Hamas, resulting in swift censure from some Jewish academics.
US colleges and universities have also drawn criticism over their public statements about the violence in Israel, with prominent Jewish donors in a few cases vowing to cut off institutions that they said insufficiently condemned Hamas or allowed antisemitic sentiment to flourish.
The climate has so alarmed the Biden administration that the US Education Department has given itself two weeks to create and present a plan to combat the wartime spike in campus antisemitism.
The online spread of the clip came after a week earlier, Eretz Nehederet — the Israeli version of “Saturday Night Live” — lampooned the BBC for what many Jews and Israelis see as pro-Palestinian bias in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
