Israeli politicians easy targets on April Fools' Day
Facebook has become the platform for April Fools' Day hoaxes in Israel, where politicians are mocked on the background of social and security tensions.
In 2011, Yair Lapid was the anchor for Israeli TV Channel 2's Friday evening news program. That same year, April 1 fell on a Friday, so Lapid's program covered international April Fools’ Day. Two years later, as the newly minted finance minister of Israel, Lapid experienced the other side of the coin and became a subject in the reports of the day’s best pranks. In Lapid’s case, a fake Facebook profile with his name posted an amazing status update on April 1: “We’ll raise taxes on corporations; we’ll work to stop the theft that is the nontaxable income of international companies; we’ll increase the public share in natural resources. That should be enough to cover the parties that the tycoons and politicians held here in the last few years.”
Surprised Internet users expressed enthusiastic support for the militant and unequivocal message, until they discovered that it was just a prank. But it’s a shame to end tradition, and the Facebook profile was active again this April 1. And so wrote "Lapid" this week: “Friends, after much deliberation, I have decided — in contrast to the opinions of the senior staff of my ministry, who threaten to quit — to cancel the Woodside deal and to instead nationalize its appointed share of the Leviathan gas reserve. The tax incentives demanded by the Australian corporation are scandalous, and more evidence that we’ve become a state whose corporations, domestic and foreign, condescendingly demand exemptions and grants, as if the Israeli public was born to serve them. … I’ve instructed my staff to prepare a five-year plan for the state administration of resources, which will guarantee cheap and available energy for all of the people of Israel, and the creation of a fund to invest the immense revenues we’ll produce in education, welfare and infrastructure. We were once slaves, but now are free. Happy holiday of freedom!” This closing was a riff on traditional Passover wishes.
It appears that even this silly day, celebrated throughout the world, is used in Israel for political protest and not necessarily for real pranks. It seems obvious: in a country full of tension, it’s dangerous to carry out pranks that could bring citizens to the limits of their patience. On the other hand, when a former prime minister is convicted of accepting bribes just the day before, it seems that reality here eclipses even the craziest ideas for pranks.
Despite this danger, Israelis love pranks. The lampoon comedy genre flourished in Israel in the 1980s, mostly thanks to actor and filmmaker Yehuda Barkan. A prank show by the name of “Fisfusim” (Candid Camera), presented by Yigal Shilon, was a hit on Channel 2 from 1994 to 2008. Over the past year, the show “Ambush,” which pranks celebrities, has taken off.
