"I HATE ISRAEL" TOP OF THE POPS IN PALESTINE
"ISRAEL AT A LOSS" SAYS SHARON
Jerusalem -- Following the release of Egyptian singer Shaban Abed al-Rahim's new album featuring a song entitled "I Hate Israel", the tape has become a best-seller among Palestinians with local vendors claiming to have sold hundreds of tapes in recent weeks.
In an interview with the portly but kind-looking Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who reminds you of your grandfather apart from the whole mass murder aspect, the personable Sharon commented, "Israel is at a loss. No matter how much we do for the Palestinians, they can't seem to react in any way apart from hating us." [more]
INTERVIEW: ISRAELI MINISTER OF TRANSPORTATION AND TOURISM
Major-General Rechavam Ze'evy, MK
Al-Bassaleh's Israeli political correspondent Moshe Ben Melech interviewed Ze'evy in his Jerusalem mansion.Interviewer: What challenges do you currently face in your work?
Ze'evy: Our primary focus at the Ministry of Tourism in the current period is convincing the world that the violence they see on their television screens every night isn't a problem.
Interviewer: And how do you do that?
Ze'evy: Well, we originally thought of implementing international law on the ground and ending the military occupation, but then we laughed out loud and asked ourselves, "For what?"
The Arabs will keep banging their heads up against the cage for another month or two, we'll rattle their cages for another month while the international community asks us nicely to stop -- which then we will, and we'll look concillatory as a result -- then the Arabs will have to come crawling back to us.
So, instead of trying to tweak reality on the ground, we came up with a new idea for an ad campaign to tweak the more important political reality on television, and kick our heels up while this little cycle burns out: "The Israel you don't see on the nightly news."
We've been running the slogan alongside bland pictures of lovers buying each other flowers, people eating felafel, that kind of thing, in an effort to try to convince people that we're just an average kinda country.
Interviewer: And has it worked?
Ze'evy: Well, we've had airlines cancelling their only routes to Israel right and left, we're currently anticipating a loss in our national tourism revenue of between 20-30%, 15,000 people in the industry have already lost their jobs, and -- to cap it off -- staple tourist destinations like beach discos have been bombed at the same time we've been peddling this line.
So, I guess that no, it hasn't worked.
Interviewer: What do you think the problem is?
Ze'evy: Well, probably the whole ad campaign. I mean, think about it. We're dumb asses if we think that the average potential tourist hasn't been made so brain dead by television that they don't realise that what you see on the nightly news about any country is probably one-tenth of the horror.
I mean, if we've erased 100 Palestinian children off the face of the earth since September last year, it doesn't take much brain power to figure out that we've probably permanently crippled another 500 and seriously injured probably another 6,000 or so kids.
I wouldn't want to go and sun on the beach in a country run by infanticidal maniacs, would you? If every 100th child that walked through the gates of Disneyworld was shot with live ammunition, I can't see many parents wanting to take their children to see Micky and Minnie, can you?
Interviewer: What about pilgrims and religious tourism in general? Can't that aspect be promoted more to compensate?
Ze'evy: What have we got going for us? The Bible? Our best hope is that pilgrims stop reading it. In the early parts there's more murder, ethnic cleansing, oppression, racial discrimination, and prostitution than you can shake a double-ended kong dong at, for heaven's sakes. And we've been getting God's goat for years. If they keep reading up to those parts, we'll see every nascent Prophet Amos or Isaiah between Beaver Lick, Kentucky, and Hooker, Kansas turning up in droves to picket the Knesset in sackcloth. The mental hospitals would be full.
So, we finally concluded in the cabinet meeting, if we want to fix the problem of what people are seeing on the evening news, the only sensible solution for Israel is to shoot all the journalists and film our own news.
Interviewer: Um, thank you Mr. Ze'evy.
| ...BREAKING NEWS... |
 | WILD WEATHER: A fine day for most parts of the occupied Palestinian territories today. These conditions will not last and the territories are expected to turn unsettled or disputed once again towards the weekend. Many spots dry, but rather mixed fortunes as regards sunshine. A few showers are expected in Gaza and the Beit Jala area, mostly of tank shells directed at civillian neighborhoods and refugee camps, with some stubborn areas of black cloud expected to follow. Thunder will be heard around Palestinian Authority buildings, as US F-16s fly by. Tomorrow, a bullet-like rain will spread across Gaza and Ramallah by the morning, with cloudier skies for western areas of Palestine later, mainly the result of Israeli army tear gas in several places. |
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TERRITORIES TRAFFIC: It's going to be another bumper-to-bumper summer after Israel placed a number of sweeping restrictions on movement of Palestinian commuters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians are advised to car pool with available VIPs and pregnant mothers are recommended to investigate home-birthing techniques. |  From our Weather and Traffic correspondent, Mandela Ibn Madroob |
| NEWS IN BRIEF |
Poll: 9 out of 10 Palestinians say that the Star Wars character Yoda would be their preferred official spokesman.  Above: In a press release today, a Israeli Union of Sniffer Dogs representative protested the extended closure, citing that much of the Palestinian produce encountered in their daily work is no longer fit as a lunchtime treat. RSPCA International condemned Israel's criminal behaviour towards animals. Palestinians in Gaza, entering their 9th year of effective closure, were not available for comment.  Above: A member of Hamas previews the organisation's new media strategy. The campaign poster, expected to run in leading newspapers around the world, depicts a picture of an F-16 scanned from a child's book, and two photos of the Israeli prime minister and defence minister, captioned, "Crimenals. Murdarers."  Above: Following the announcement of a new US "get tough" policy with Israel, Secretary of State Colin Powell lets the Israelis know the maximum calibre of ammunition that the US will tolerate being used in Israeli strikes against Palestinian towns. 
Above: Palestinians today compained at the lack of arts & craft materials available due to the closure. "It's frightful," commented Mohammed al-Muharrid, 34, of Ramallah, "The quality of effigies is really going downhill. There simply isn't enough top-range material in the shops and Sharon's such a fat toad that we run out of cloth and stuffing before we get to his Jabba the Hut-shaped head. It's completely ghastly!"  Above: Officials of the Palestinian Preventative Security Service look at an Israeli shell hole in the wall of Preventative Security Service head Jibril Rajoub's Ramallah home, and wonder who could have prevented it. |