And His Friend Is Actually...

Kudos to this letter writer:

Full disclosure

Regarding “Mind the gap,” May 20

Eldad Yaniv tries to persuade us that the political culture in Israel resembles the situation on the television series “Polishuk.” That is, there is no true leadership, all is vanity and a desire to hold on to one’s seat and preserve the interests of the owners of capital. (*) Well, thanks, Eldad Yaniv, for helping us to see the light. What would we do without you? The only problem is that Yaniv thinks we are imbeciles and that we will believe him when he says he wants to save us because he is different ‏(if he were so different, he wouldn’t have stayed so long and so successfully in the system‏), and not in order to drum up support for his new political party.

His biggest chutzpah lies in the fact that he neglects to inform us at the start of the article that Shmuel Hasfari, the creator of “Polishuk,” is his friend and ideological partner in the establishment of the nascent National Left party. (**) I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the two created the series deliberately as a first step in their political campaign.

Nir Sabo
Be’er Sheva

(*)

This is the new Zionism: being led, not leading. Surviving and not breaking through. Every Polishuk has his own scriptwriter, who moves him along the screen of life like a marionette. For example, the forum of seven Polishuks who have been meeting in Jerusalem for more than two years for urgent discussions accompanied by bourekas, until Abu Mazen and Ismail Haniyeh decided to impose Israel's permanent borders at the UN General Assembly this coming September.

The Israeli Polishuks have been working for years for the Abu Mazens, Dankners, Tshuvas & Co. That's how it is. Polishuk needs a scriptwriter because he doesn't really have a life of his own. Sasson Gabai, the actor who plays Polishuk, needs Hasfari. Bibi needs Abu Mazen. The rest need Dankner. Because of big capital. Because of big government. Because of the newspaper. And the others are afraid Tshuva will get angry. About the offshore gas.

Imagine what Bibi would do in life without Abu Mazen. What he would talk about. Who he would threaten. Or the boredom that would afflict Yuval Steinitz without Dankner. What would they do if they couldn't pass the time by marching to Dankner's tune?

(**)

This week, Minister Polishuk returned to our lives, with fine ratings. But it feels like he never left. The precise television character created by playwright Shmuel Hasfari is the spitting image of our politicians in recent decades. A nullity, a puppet on a string, a dishrag that rises to the top job. A faithful duplicate of the original politicians who have totally taken over the (non )-navigation of our lives. Keshet, the Channel 2 franchise holder, mistakenly calls "Polishuk" a comic drama. The truth is that it's a documentary about Israeli politics. And of what the hell has become of us.

It might seem odd that Israeli politics does not attract successful young people to its ranks, as has been the case in the past decade and a half in most of the Western world.

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