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 Eretz Nehederet ("Wonderful Country"), which airs weekly on
Israel's biggest private station Channel 2, spares no candidate.
Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes off as a
conniving buffoon and his main challenger, Labour party chief
Isaac Herzog, as a needy nerd.
Now in its 12th season, the Monday night show boasts a 30
percent audience share in Israel.
Recognizing the program's popularity, Obama joked in a speech
during his 2013 visit to Israel that "any drama between me and
my friend Bibi (Netanyahu) over the years was just a plot to
create material for Eretz Nehederet".
But the show's makers are modest about any sway over voters.
"We do our own thing, and whatever happens in the minds of our
viewers is their own business and responsibility," executive
producer Muli Segev told Reuters.
Freewheeling political satire, Segev said during a taping at a
studio near Tel Aviv, "is almost a sacred institute in a culture
like Israel, and it is almost a Jewish tradition".
The show features sketches, faux news-panel discussions and
pre-edited spots filmed on location. Netanyahu appeared on the
program two years ago to poke fun at himself.
Even Israel's foes might be watching. In 2008, then Defence
Minister Ehud Barak made a surprise cameo shortly before a shock
offensive in Gaza -- a display of normalcy apparently meant to
lower Hamas guerrillas' guard.
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In its newest episode, Eretz Nehederet imagined Netanyahu smugly
winning a game show dubbed "Zionist or Terrorist" in which Herzog
and center ally Tzipi Livni repeatedly and haplessly fail rigged
questions gauging their patriotism.
It also took aim at Naftali Bennett, a former tech entrepreneur
whose religious-nationalist Jewish Home party is expected to do well
in the election.
The actor playing Bennett got laughs from the studio audience by
needling cast members into saying "Amen" to his self-serving
political prayers, while posing for selfies.
Anat First, mass-media professor at Netanya Academic College, said
around one in eight Israelis tuned in for the launch last week of
Eretz Nehederet's new season.
The show, she said, is "the biggest 'campfire' we have".
Even Bennett's American-born parents, who used to watch the
long-running "Saturday Night Live" satire on U.S. television,
enjoyed the barbs aimed by the Israeli equivalent at their son.
"But the actor was thinner" than Naftali, Bennett's mother, Myrna,
told Reuters.
(Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Gareth Jones)
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