Israel’s Likud Party kicked off its campaign on the eve of the Shavuot holiday with a video clip that only humorless viewers wouldn’t find funny. Naturally, then, the “anybody but Bibi” camp responded to it with righteous indignation, rather than laughter.
Nevertheless, the short film promptly went viral on all social-media platforms and continues to be shared, even by prominent non-Hebrew-speakers, such as Elon Musk and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who clearly identify with the message.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, here’s a recap.
The setting is a dinner table, with a family of four—a father, mother, brother and sister—gathered to mark the Jewish festival. The mother opens the conversation.
“It turns out that Shabi’s son watches Channel 14,” she says, referring to the right-wing TV station that drives the anti-free-speech left crazy to the point of vowing to shut it down.
“Disgusting,” her husband replies, grimacing.
Meanwhile, the daughter is tapping away on her phone. To get everybody’s attention, the son clinks on his wine glass with a spoon.
“Mom, Dad, I want to tell you something,” he says.
“You’re gay,” the father guesses.
“What?” the son says, puzzled.
“Maybe let the boy tell us himself that he’s gay,” his wife reprimands.
“Coming out of the closet is so 2019,” the daughter says, barely looking up from her screen.
“I’m not gay,” the son says. Here’s where we learn his name.
“Adi, we’ll always love you,” his mother says, leaning in with sympathy.
“Let the boy speak,” her husband admonishes.
“I’m a right-winger,” Adi says. His father spits out his wine explosively. His mother buries her face in her hands, then reaches out to touch and reassure him.
“It’s OK, it’s OK, we’ll get through this together,” she says. Her husband concedes.
“Everything’s OK! Nobody’s perfect,” he says, adding, with air quotes, “’Right wing?’ [You mean, like Naftali] Bennett [or Gadi] Eizenkot...”
At this suggestion, the daughter rolls her eyes. “Who’s been telling him that?” she asks rhetorically, either to herself or to the person with whom she’s FaceTiming.
“[They’re] the most non-right-wingers, boomer!” she announces, with a dig at her father’s generation.
“I’m a Bibi-ist,” Adi says, clarifying that he supports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As his mother falls back in her chair, his father yells, “How could that be? You work in high-tech!”
Interrupting her husband, Adi’s mother wails, “My son is a Bibi-ist!”
His father shouts, “You read books!”
His mother cries, “Anybody but Bibi!”
His father bellows, “You’re a cultured person, for God’s sake!
His sister informs her cell companion, “Listen, they’re going ballistic because my brother said he’s a Bibi-ist. They’re delusional, I swear. I can’t stand them.”
Suddenly, his mother faints, her head plunging into her cheese cake—a traditional Shavuot dessert.
“Mom!” Adi shrieks, rushing to revive her.
Too busy bemoaning the shocking confession to notice that his wife is in peril, Adi’s father concludes,“They brainwashed him in the reserves.”
“He’s in 8200,” Adi’s sister says, pointing to the fact that her brother serves in Israel’s elite military intelligence unit, which is filled with members of the liberal upper echelon.
“Call an ambulance! Don’t you see she’s drowning in cake?” Adi howls.
“Phone calls are so 2019,” his sister says.
Adi gives his mother chest compressions, while his father gesticulates.
As the clip comes to a close, a narrator addresses the audience. “You’re not alone,” he says. “More than two million right-wing voters are confronted every year by discrimination, anger and hatred solely because of their political stance. Do a Google search for ‘a Bibi-ist is not half a person.’”
The scene ends with Adi urging his mother not to “go to the light,” and his father beseeching, “But what’s bad about being gay?” To which Adi screeches, “Are you for real??!!”
The epilogue is a written blessing—“Happy Shavuot to everybody”—punctuated with emojis of an Israeli flag and a heart.
The ensuing pearl-clutching on the part of the chattering classes has been almost as entertaining as the content in question. Accusations of “incitement,” “purposeful divisiveness” and other ludicrous assertions illustrate just how sour and intolerant the protest movement is.
Not that further evidence is required, mind you. Just ask Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana.
The gay father-of-two—whose partner and situation are embraced by Netanyahu, welcomed by factions to the right of Likud and even accepted by haredi parliamentarians—is shunned by the left in general and leftist members of the LGBT community in particular. You know, the majority of that group, which prides itself (no pun intended) on so-called “progressive” ideas and values.
But Ohana, as far as they’re concerned, is on the “wrong” side of the spectrum, since he doesn’t hold with most of their positions. He described himself in a 2016 Slate interview as “a Jew, an Israeli, a Mizrahi, a homosexual, a Likudnik, a security-forces veteran, a liberal and a free-marketer.” And he told The New York Times in 2019 that “being attracted to men doesn’t mean you have to believe in creating a Palestinian state.”
No wonder his detractors wish he’d put a lid on it—or would be happy to muzzle him themselves. Thankfully for the rest of us actual liberals, it’s not working out that way for the self-anointed “gate-keepers” who were defeated nearly four years ago in a—gasp!—democratic election.
Unable to overturn the results, they’ve been discrediting the voters responsible for bringing about the most right-wing government, headed by the longest-serving prime minister, in the country’s history. This entails relentlessly ridiculing Netanyahu-backers, employing the term “Bibi-ist” as a slur. It thus makes them especially livid when the people at whom it’s aimed wear the label without apology.
Still, it’s tiresome being accosted at social events, forced to put up one’s dukes about Netanyahu, when no civil discussion about policy is ever on the menu. The effect is like that portrayed in the above clip. Admitting to “Bibi-ism” demands courage that not everyone possesses or feels like summoning in order to avoid both denigration and pointless debates.
My late mother, whose shift from left to right in late 1970s America, was all-too-familiar with this phenomenon. Her advice to me and my fellow Israeli conservatives a couple of decades later was: “Talk Zionism, be jovial and poke fun at your ideological rivals.”
The Likud video accomplished that feat in less than a minute and a half. Kudos for the comic relief.
