Duping the Mossad

I have never seen the Borat movie, nor am I a huge fan of the Sacha Baron Cohen genre of humor.

However, that he managed to dupe former Mossad spy and current political analyst Yossi Alpher is enough to make me smile.

Sacha Baron Cohen's German rock star character interviewed Alper for his upcoming movie, and Alpher didn't quite realize he was being duped.

The JPOST reports:

Alpher - who served in the Israel Defense Forces as an intelligence officer, followed by 12 years' service in the Mossad and senior positions at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and the American Jewish Committee's Israel/Middle East office - realized something might not be quite kosher when the "rock star" interviewee brought up Hamas:

"Vait, vait. Vat's zee connection between a political movement and food? Vy humous?" asked the interviewer in heavily accented English, echoing the obsession with the chickpea spread shared by Adam Sandler's Zohan. "Yesterday I had to throw away my pita bread because it vas dripping humous. Unt it's too high in carbohydrates."

The absurd Hamas-humous confusion went on for several minutes, and Alpher began to smell a rat, but stuck with the interview nonetheless - thus joining the long list of prominent figures down the years who have sought to maintain their gravitas while being tricked by one of Cohen's ridiculous personas.

It got worse, Alpher acknowledged: "Then the interviewer declared, 'Your conflict is not so bad. Jennifer-Angelina is worse.'"

Alpher and his Palestinian partner exchanged puzzled glances at the comparison of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie fighting over Brad Pitt, but because they had both received a fee for their appearance, and still hadn't completely internalized that their interviewer was not exactly who he seemed, they soldiered on.

"We played it straight and square... We smiled at the idiotic questions and answered them patiently... We knew something ludicrous was happening but couldn't quite figure it out," Alpher wrote. "Our rock-star host concluded with a mind-boggling song about the epic Middle East conflict between 'Jews and Hindus.' At the crescendo, he grabbed our hands and joined them with his."

If former Mossad spies who hold senior positions at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and the American Jewish Committee's Israel/Middle East office can't realize that they are being fooled by a Humus joker like Sacha Baron Cohen, then it totally explains how the Olso process gained steam in the first place...and that we still believe agreement after agreement that we sign with the Palestinians.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד