They find it funny. A young man in glasses is sitting in the cubicle of a public restroom, looking for toilet paper. Cut. Music. A man who resembles US Secretary of State John Kerry appears in center screen and says in a booming voice: “Caught in the bathroom without any toilet paper? We have the solution. A hedgehog. Its aerodynamic shape allows you to wipe thoroughly.” The audience bursts out laughing. And the clip continues with a series of brief parodies that attempt to ridicule the US secretary of state, a man who has been working to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever since he took office. The young man following Kerry’s advice in the satirical video ends up battered and homeless.
The group behind this campaign titled, “John Kerry Solutions, Ltd.” is the My Israel movement, founded in 2010 by Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked, the Yesha Council (the settlers' umbrella organization) and the Benjamin Regional Council, a regional council covering 42 Israeli settlements of the West Bank. Bennett and Shaked were political activists in the nationalist camp then. Today, Bennett is chairman of the HaBayit HaYehudi Party and minister of the economy and trade, while Ayelet Shaked is a Knesset member for that party. Their goal is obvious. They want to cast the secretary of state as a naive fool, who offers stupid solutions to problems and then avoids any responsibility for the outcome. The instigators of this campaign claim that Kerry’s initiative to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will lead to catastrophe. “He doesn’t live here to pay the price for his suicidal solutions,” the spokesman of the Benjamin Regional Council explained. “We have a responsibility for the future of the State of Israel. John Kerry does not.”
