POLITICALLY impotent, opponents of Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, are resorting to satirical humour to undermine his government.
The ease, and minimum of fuss, with which three opposition motions of no confidence in Mr Netanyahu's ruling coalition were defeated in the Knesset yesterday underlined the hopelessness of the parliamentary battle against
Mr Netanyahu's hardline policies. The comedians, by contrast, are having so profound an impact as to have triggered a minor coalition crisis and a series of failed government efforts at censorship.
Leading the humour offensive is Gil Kopatch, a soft spoken 27 year old who offers a left wing interpretation of biblical stories in a weekly spot on state television's much watched Week's End variety show. His recent descriptions of Eve as the planet's "first sex bomb" and Noah as a drunkard "with his willy out" have prompted Shas, an ultra Orthodox faction on whose support Mr Netanyahu depends for his Knesset majority, to threaten to bolt the government unless he is banned from the airwaves.
Shas Knesset members accuse Mr Kopatch of treating the Bible with contempt. He retorts that he draws on respected rabbinical sources, that no one has a monopoly on interpreting the Bible, and that, as a practising Jew himself, he is trying to draw viewers closer to the religious texts by using contemporary language.
Last weekend Mr Kopatch focused directly on Mr Netanyahu, and specifically on his failure to honour Israel's signed commitment to withdraw most of its troops from Hebron. Recalling Abraham's purchase of Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs - the burial shrine holy to both Jews and Muslims - Mr Kopatch noted that Abraham did not acquire it from its Hittite owner in "normal Israeli" fashion.
"Abraham had the strongest army around," he noted. And if he had been a true Israeli" Abraham would have simply seized the spot. But he didn't. He courteously approached the site's owner and insisted on paying a fair price.
The moral of that story, Mr Kopatch observed dryly, was that it pays to treat your adversaries fairly. What's more, Mr Kopatch added, Abraham was laid to rest in Hebron by his sons Isaac and Ishmael leaders, respectively, of the Jews and the Arabs. It meant, he said, that the site was joint property - not Israel's exclusive preserve.
If Mr Kopatch's humour strikes home with subtle effect, the satirists responsible for Hahartsufim - the local version of Spitting Image - are more blatant. Sketches ridicule Mr Netanyahu's perceived incompetence (he was shown begging the defeated Labour leader, Mr Shimon Peres, not to leave the prime minister's office because he had no idea what to do on his own); his domination by his wife Sarah and by his own officials (shown deftly pulling his puppet strings) and, most damningly, his bizarre relationship with Yasser Arafat.
One shocking sketch, broadcast soon after he and the Palestinian leader had shaken hands warmly in Washington last month, showed Mr Netanyahu singing of his new love for Mr Arafat - a love discovered "thanks to the victims, and through the blood" of the vicious September Israeli Palestinian gun battles.
Channel 2, the commercial station which screens the puppet satire, is far beyond government control. State TV, which screens Mr Kopatch, is also immune in principle from government pressure. Nevertheless, Mr Avigdor Lieberman, Mr Netanyahu's office director, has been pressing for Mr Kopatch's spot to be banned. And behind the scenes, Mr Netanyahu is working on plans to privatise the network - selling it off to an American Jewish businessmen, who just happens to support his policies.