Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Funny Israeli Commercial Causes Friction Between Samsung and Iran


Israel's newspaper Haaretz reported this week that Iran is mulling a partial ban of products manufactured by South Korean electronics giant Samsung over an Israeli commercial promoting one of the firm's products which depicts the imagined destruction of Iran's nuclear facility in Isfahan by Mossad operatives.

In the commercial for the cable TV company HOT, three characters from the popular show Asfur arrive disguised as women near the nuclear facility, where they meet a bored Mossad agent passing the time by watching the show on his Samsung tablet.

The Mossad man then shows the various features of the tablet to the characters, when one of the "visiting" Israelis accidently pushes a button which causes the nuclear plant in the background to explode. 

To this, the character said: "What? Another mysterious explosion in Iran," a quip referring to a series of explosions in Iran targeting the countries military facilities which have been attributed in the foreign media to covert Israeli attempts to target Iran's nuclear program.

On Thursday, a top Iranian lawmaker said Iran's parliament was considering to cut the country's trade ties with the country, over what he said was an "insulting" commercial, over the depiction of Iran as a "primitive society" and of insinuating that Israel was "powerful enough to easily destroy Iran's nuclear facilities or assassinate the country's nuclear scientists." 

The commercial is in Hebrew, but the clip we reproduce below has English subtitles and in the first 50 seconds of the video a few terms are introduced that will help to make the commercial more understandable. Enjoy!

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)

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