Now, Israel's "SNL"-style satire show "Eretz Nehederet" has produced a reimagined version by Israel's governing coalition: "Without the world." This dark version is sung without the "centrist adults" who joined the war cabinet after October 7, but by the whole dismal, extremist, clownish ensemble that Benjamin Netanyahu chose after the November 2022 elections.
The shared melody with the charity hit is where the similarities end: This is a ballad of boorishness, small-minded idiocy and populism. It is therefore a fitting anthem for the Netanyahu government.
Its simple lyrics conjure up the whole fetid morass of arrogance, theocratic mumbo jumbo and psychopathic disconnection from reality that characterizes this coalition.
PM Netanyahu opens the circus by declaring: "It's time to sing loudly to the world/We don't need you anymore." Foreign Minister Israel Katz intones: "We'll manage just fine without the United States." Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich trills, "Who needs an air force, missiles or an English lesson?" Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu says we can depend on God, "who always saves us, or sometimes does," chimes in ultra-Orthodox Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf.
Likud MK Tally Gotliv screams at the hypothetical global audience: "You're all antisemites. You're complete Nazis. So we'll boycott you – suck on that!" Bibi declares, "We'll close the skies, we'll destroy Ben-Gurion Airport," while Transportation Minister Miri Regev suggests Israeli special forces "flatten London."
Their lines are an almost painfully accurate assessment of how the Netanyahu government understands the world's reaction to the cataclysmic suffering of civilians in Gaza. Forget the fear of becoming a pariah state: this government embraces that future, fervently.
But the special sauce is the chorus, led by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and then with the ecstatic participation of his colleagues: "Without the world, it'll be alright. And we don't need any favors from the goyim, we'll survive (bli neder)."
Bli neder is a Hebrew _expression_ meaning "without the commitment of a vow." It has religious connotations, but it's an idiom used here to undercut the entire bloated hubris of Ben-Gvir's chorus, which is repeated, heartily, by the whole sorry gang: "No promises," it's saying.
Indeed, there are promises previously thought to be fundamental to the contract between the state and its citizens – to be safe in one's bed; for the rescue of captured citizens to be a primal duty; to respond to a horrific assault armed with a clear strategy and ethical limits. But again, that would be entirely foreign to the DNA of this government, so it's fitting that its members lustily reiterate: No promises.
Sometimes, perhaps, satire is too easy. The Netanyahu government is populated by living caricatures of what thoughtful, strategic, decent leadership should be. The cast of characters have even said many of the lines attributed to them in the song in real life, on TV.
But sometimes satire is too easy when it sticks to its comfort zone. What "Eretz Nehederet" doesn't broach directly, in fitting with its positioning as the symbolic centrist campfire around which the nation sits, is how all these biting critiques are playing out in terms of the war in Gaza. The war itself, the Palestinians, the hostages, the messianic visions of expulsion and resettling the Strip are not mentioned by name.
Last week in Tel Aviv, the novelist David Grossman remarked, in terms of the escalating destruction being wrought by the government, that "There is a great fear that those will be left here [in Israel] will be mainly the fanatics and the racists and the nationalists, and the same scenario among the Palestinians."
When Israel's government is already packed with fanatics, racists and nationalists, it's hardly a stretch to imagine them singing together, as they do in the sketch, "The whole world can go drop dead." And it's easy to visualize that same utter contempt directed at the majority of their fellow citizens who, according to poll after poll, want to replace them. While "Eretz Nehederet" is satire, grounded in observable reality, we have to hope Grossman's words aren't a prophecy.