TV satire has Netanyahu urging the public to forget his failures

Satirical show “Eretz Nehederet” (A Wonderful Country) launched a new season on Wednesday night with a sketch savaging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his ostensible failures of leadership.

In the opener, Netanyahu, portrayed as usual by Mariano Idelman, solemnly asks the public to forget about his stumbles in the lead-up to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, as well as his prosecution of the ongoing war in Gaza and Lebanon.

Netanyahu appears beneath a banner declaring “Forget,” depicted in the style of “Yizkor” — the Hebrew word for remembrance that is regularly featured in national memorial services.

Employing the same grave tone and style of delivery seen at memorial events, Idelman’s Netanyahu says, “Israel must forget my failures.”

He goes on to list a series of points that critics of Netanyahu often raise, including the evidently fallacious widespread idea before October 7 that Hamas was deterred from carrying out a major attack, and Israel’s allowing the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to Hamas prior to the war.

Israelis should forget “How the mighty took calculated risks,” he says, a play on the biblical phrase “How the mighty have fallen,” also often used in ceremonies.

Israel, he continues, should forget the hostages in Gaza. He asks forgiveness from “those we did not manage to free and forgiveness in advance from those we will not manage to free,” a reference to failed efforts to reach a ceasefire deal that would include the release of the remaining hostages. Netanyahu’s critics allege he has torpedoed a deal for political interests.

פתיחת העונה של @Eretz_Nehederet. צפיית חובה pic.twitter.com/dTWsGEI1Kb

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— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) November 6, 2024

Israelis, the faux Netanyahu goes on, should also “forget about” a state commission of inquiry into the war. “What is there to investigate?”

They should also forget about towns in the north, which have been bombarded for over a year by the Hezbollah terror group from Lebanon, with most of their residents displaced.

They should forget “security incidents” — a reference to various cases involving national security breaches or alleged misconduct in Netanyahu’s orbit for which critics say the prime minister should be held accountable.

The prime minister also asks to forget his firing of Yoav Gallant as defense minister on Tuesday, in a move that has outraged the opposition and, according to snap polls since, is opposed by most of the public.

In another sketch later in the program, Netanyahu is depicted dreaming of a hostage held in Gaza who implores him, “Please don’t abandon us; we are suffering and starving.” But the prime minister dismisses all of her arguments for a hostage deal, then tells her that he is not the one who decides such matters and that she should instead speak to his far-right coalition partners who oppose any deal that would end the war against Hamas.

בוקס בבטן pic.twitter.com/5794CLIatB

— ניצן שפירא | Nitzan Shapira (@shapira_nitzan) November 6, 2024

Last year, just weeks after the Hamas attack, “Eretz Nehederet” ran a sketch in which Netanyahu was depicted as being visited by the ghost of former prime minister Golda Meir, in which she thanked him for eclipsing the failures of the Yom Kippur War with the disaster of October 7.