Israelis are being sold on war with Iran in more ways than one.

In a commercial featuring John Cleese (a veteran of the zany British comedy shows, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers) a high level general takes a taste of a delectable chocolate and hazelnut spread and inadvertently [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Israelis are being sold on war with Iran in more ways than one.

In a commercial featuring John Cleese (a veteran of the zany British comedy shows, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers) a high level general takes a taste of a delectable chocolate and hazelnut spread and inadvertently sets in motion an Israeli military strike on an unnamed country — Iran by implication and context — a command that the Israelis have been waiting for and are eager to carry out.

The ad’s tour de force hinges on a pun. Three high level military officers, for whom “General Rogers” (Cleese) is the spokesman, are seated at a table in a war room. Across the table is a silver-haired man flanked by two military officers trying to persuade the generals to authorize an attack that they are apparently reluctant to approve. “I promise you we will be in and out in 33 minutes,” the silver-haired civilian tells them. “We have the right to defend ourselves!” Mulling what the panel’s response ought to be, Cleese opens the container of chocolate-hazelnut spread that happens to be on the tablet, removes the inner liner and licks it. Impressed, he reads the product’s name aloud: Sababa Egozim.  Adweek claims the phrase translates into something like “Let’s get nuts.” According to Gabe Fisher in the Times of Israel:

“Sababa” means “cool” in Israeli slang (taken from the Arabic, like many Hebrew slang words) and “egozim” are “nuts.” Put together, though, the term is slang for “super cool” or “hell yeah.”

Whatever the translation, the Israelis construe Cleese’s utterance as the generals’ official approval of a military strike. Delighted, they give one another victorious high five signs and triumphantly exit to launch their attack.

Tim Nudd of Adweek has criticized the promotional video for being “weird” and has faulted the offbeat comic for doing anything for money. An earlier version of the Adweek article, quoted by the British website, The Drum, apparently included the observation, “What would the young, rebellious Cleese, at the height of his powers in the early 1970s, say if he could see the depths to which his septuagenarian self has sunk?” Cleese reportedly received $50,00o for appearing in the ad, which was filmed in Monaco, where he lives.

This isn’t the first case of an Israeli commercial finding humor in Israel’s bellicose relationship with Iran. Last February — a few weeks after the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, that was widely believed to have been carried out by the Mossad — a commercial for the Israeli cable company HOT featured four characters from the Israeli television series Asfur. Poorly disguised as Iranian women, the foursome wonder how they’ll be able to find Kosher food in Iran. They meet a Mossad agent who is watching their show on his Samsung tablet. While examining the numerous features of the tablet, which the cable company was offering for free in a promotion, one of the “women” accidentally touches a button that causes a nearby nuclear plant to explode. The timing of the commercial also coincided with an upsurge in media speculation that Israel was indeed on the verge of attacking Iran this past spring.

Iranians didn’t think the ad was very funny. Iran’s Press TV objected to the ad’s assumption that Israel was powerful enough to easily destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, and its lighthearted view of the assassination of the country’s nuclear scientists. Arsalan Fathipour, an Iranian lawmaker who heads the Energy Committee of Iran’s parliament, called for a ban on the import of all Samsung products, objecting to Samsung’s attempt to curry favor with Israelis through the commercial. A Samsung spokesperson in Iran insisted that HOT — not Samsung — had produced the ad and was not responsible for its contents, while Samsung’s Dubai office condemned the role of the company’s Israel office in the production.

What do these Israeli commercials that make light of Israeli attacks and sabotage against Iran reveal about the prospects for war? Joking about attacking Iran may function as an emotional safety valve for Israelis, allowing them to cope with a geopolitical situation that may be spinning out of control. Iranians can hardly be blamed if they don’t appreciate the humor. An optimist might opine that Israelis being able to find amusement in attacking Iran could indicate that an actual strike is less likely.

But humor about an attack on Iran may also signal a darker trend in Israeli popular culture: the acceptance that war with Iran is inevitable, so Israelis might as well take it in stride, sit back and enjoy the show.

Following U.S news media coverage of the Burgas, Bulgaria bombing, one would conclude that the Hezbollah provenance of the attack can be determined from recent alleged Hezbollah terrorist plotting against Israelis in Cyprus and elsewhere. The New York Times quoted anonymous U.S. officials saying that the Burgas attack bears [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Following U.S news media coverage of the Burgas, Bulgaria bombing, one would conclude that the Hezbollah provenance of the attack can be determined from recent alleged Hezbollah terrorist plotting against Israelis in Cyprus and elsewhere. The New York Times quoted anonymous U.S. officials saying that the Burgas attack bears “all the hallmarks” of “the Hezbollah plots, including the arrest in Cyprus earlier this month of a suspected operative on the suspicion of scheming to kill Israeli tourists.”

So an arrest of a “suspected” Hezbollah operative who is “suspected” of a plan to kill Israeli tourists is the equivalent of an actual terrorist attack that has killed Israeli tourists? Bibi Netanyahu talked about the case on Fox News Sunday as though the Lebanese man arrested in Cyprus had done everything that was done in Burgas except actually detonate the bomb. The Israeli press has echoed this theme.

But as I reported last week, the Cyprus case is far murkier than Netanyahu and those U.S. officials have been suggesting. A senior Cypriot official told Reuters, “It is not clear what, or whether, there was a target in Cyprus.” Furthermore, the Cypriot investigators believe the Lebanese man they suspected of planning to harm Israeli tourists was acting alone, which doesn’t make it sound like a Hezbollah operation at all. Perhaps most significant of all, there has been no sign of a bomb or even of materials with which to make a bomb in conjunction with the Lebanese detainee. The Cypriot government has not yet decided whether there is enough evidence to prosecute the man on any violation of Cypriot laws.

The need for skepticism surrounding the Cyprus arrest applies even more strongly to the arrest in Bangkok January 12 of another Lebanese with a Swedish passport. The arrest came after what was described by the Thai Deputy Prime Minister as “weeks of coordination with Israel.” According to the official, the Israeli government had told Thai officials that “a group of people who appear to be from the Lebanese group Hezbollah” were planning to strike tourist sites in Bangkok in mid-January, presumably to harm Israeli tourists.

The Lebanese who was arrested was charged with possession of ammonium nitrate and urea fertilizer, which are potential bomb-making materials. But none of the other necessary components for bomb-making, such as fuses and timing devices were ever found. The former police chief, who is now the Secretary General of the Thai National Security Council expressed doubt that the man was actually a terrorist.

Given the fact that the Israelis were at the time planning the assassination of Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan in early to mid-January, the Israeli tale of a massive terrorist threat coming in mid-January, which was first passed on to Thai authorities on December 22, was extremely convenient in terms of  distracting attention from the inevitable negative press accompanying the Israeli terrorist action.

While the Obama administration and the Israeli government have pointed to these murky allegations in Cyprus and Bangkok as relevant to Burgas, it has exhibited no apparent interest in the historical record of actual suicide bombings against Israeli tourists.

The reason, apparently, is that all of the terrorist attacks that fit that description have been claimed by Al Qaeda or an affiliate.

The first suicide bombing against Israeli tourists was an Al Qaeda attack in Mombasa, Kenya, in November 2002. That operation involved an effort to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet as it took off from Mombasa’s airport, using shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, and then the triple suicide car bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa.Fortunately, the missile missed the aircraft, but the suicide bombing killed three Israeli tourists and 10 Kenyans.

The small number of Israeli deaths did accurately reflect Al Qaeda’s intentions. In claiming responsibility for the Mombasa attacks, Al Qaeda proclaimed that it was targeting “The Christian-Jewish alliance” and promised future and more lethal attacks on Jews around the world.

In October 2004, three suicide bombers detonated a truck bomb and car bombs at the Hilton Hotel in Taba and two other Red Sea resorts that were favorites of Israeli tourists in Egypt and most of the 34 dead were indeed Israelis. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, took responsibility for the attack.  The organization said the attacks were intended to “purify the land of Taba from the dirt and corruption of the grandchildren of monkeys and pigs.”

In July 2005, three more terrorist attacks by suicide bombs killed at least 88 people at a shopping area and hotel packed with tourists, including Israelis, in the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm el Sheik. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades again claimed responsibility for what it called an attack “on the Crusaders, Zionists and the renegade Egyptian regime.”

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades organization was designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on May 24 of this year. Strangely, the designation ignored the history of the organization in suicide attacks on Israeli tourists in Egypt and said it was established only in 2009. But it did point out that the organization has bases in Lebanon which have launched rocket attacks on population centers in northern Israel, as well as an Arabian Peninsula branch which has declared its interest in kidnapping U.S. and British tourists.

Even if the U.S. national security state does not wish to acknowledge that the Burgas bombing fits the profile of an Al Qaeda terrorist operation rather than one by Hezbollah, there is no excuse for the U.S. news media failure to report that inconvenient truth.

*A version of this article appeared on www.antiwar.com