Eretz Nehederet (Wonderful Country), Israel’s Saturday Night Live-style comedy show, was back on Wednesday night, in a festive program that celebrated the return of the first seven hostages in the current agreement, and featured a visit from US President Donald Trump, who promised to, “Make Gaza great again.”
Twirling a globe, he said Trump said he would find a country that would take Gazans, a reference to his recent suggestion that Gazans whose homes have been destroyed should move to Egypt or Jordan, which both countries rejected.
“It’s a big world, there are many countries. Pink countries, yellow countries… great countries,” said Trump. Eretz Nehederet host Eyal Kitzis pointed out that if Trump carried out his plan, it would seem like “transfer,” a word that, when used in Hebrew, means deportation of a population and has a decidedly negative connotation.
“No, no, don’t say ‘trans,’ there are only two genders in America. Men, and porn actresses,” Trump scolded.
In response to Kitzis’s question about where the Gazans were supposed to go, Trump put his finger on a spot on the globe and suggested Indonesia.
Kitzis asked how, if the Gazans agreed to make the move, Trump proposed to bring them there, and the president replied that he would build a tunnel.
“The Mexicans will dig it,” he promised. “Dig, baby, dig!” After Kitzis reminded him that Indonesia had already refused to help, Trump spun the globe again and claimed his finger landed on Egypt.
Sending Palestinians to Mars?
He said that he had spoken to his friend, Egypt’s president, but had a problem with the pyramids there because “There is no place for the penthouse.” Finally, he said he would send the Palestinians to Mars. “It will be Ha-Mars,” he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed up, and Trump left, saying he would move the US Embassy, which he moved in 2018 from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, to Yavne.
Yavne was just rocked by a scandal in which clips from a security camera that showed a personal trainer having sex with women at the gym where he works were leaked online.
“We wouldn’t have thought otherwise,” said Kitzis.
A medley of songs
Another highlight of the show was an appearance by Yuval Raphael, Israel’s Eurovision contestant and a Nova survivor.
She sang a medley of the biggest hit songs of the past year, so the returned hostages would be up to speed on some of the music they missed, as well as “Hurricane,” the song last year’s Israeli contestant, Eden Golan, performed, and ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”
At the end of her performance, she welcomed the freed hostages back and said she hoped all the hostages would return soon.
In a similar skit, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari came on to brief the freed hostages on all the celebrity gossip they missed in the past year.
Mohammad Sinwar, the late Yahya Sinwar’s brother and now the head of Hamas, poked up his head from Gaza’s rubble in a different sketch, claiming Hamas had won the war.
An event planner showed up to give him a gift bag, like the very ones the hostages received from the Hamas terrorists who held them captive for almost 16 months.
Making fun of the bizarre ceremony that Hamas staged just before the four border observers were released on Saturday, which involved a woman tossing glitter on the stage, the planner said he had a vision for a really special event for the next hostage releases, with a waterfall of rosewater, in addition to more glitter.
Sinwar said the most important thing was that the banner decorating the stage should say, “Zionism won’t win” in Hebrew. The event planner asked him how to spell a Hebrew word, and Sinwar told him to look it up on Chat GPT.
At the close of the program, Kitzis said the show would return in a week and that he hoped more of the hostages would be back in Israel by then, “Because only when you’re hugging your families will we see that we have a wonderful country again.”
Jesus Christ is King
