By Debbie Schlussel
This week, I’ll be screening “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” the Adam Sandler Mossad-agent-versus-Palestinian-terrorists comedy about which I’ve been writing on this site and to which I’ve been looking forward.
But an interview with “Zohan” co-star Emmanuelle Chriqui in the June edition of Women’s Health magazine sounds like the moral message of this movie might be what I originally feared: the Rodney King, “Can’t We All Just Get Along?” BS. Diners at Jerusalem’s Sbarro Pizza, patrons at Tel Aviv’s Mike’s Bar and the Dolfinarium Disco, those trying to celebrate Passover at Netanya’s Park Hotel–all of them . . . well, the ones who are still alive, know that we cannot all just get along.

Beautiful Airhead Emmanuelle Chriqui Clueless on Mid-East
But Chriqui, a (tattooed) Jew of Moroccan descent who was raised in Montreal, plays Sandler’s love interest–a kindly Palestinian woman who gives the Jewish former Israeli Mossad agent his first job as a hairdresser in New York. Aww, Peace in the Middle . . . Manhattan.
And Chriqui doesn’t have a clue. She describes her Israeli Moroccan relatives’ support for their country and recounting of the anti-Semitic persecution they endured even in “moderate” Morocco, as “the other side”:

I have relatives in Israel. When I was growing up, all I ever heard about was “the other side,” and it was mostly negative.

Hmmm . . . how much of “the other side” would she hear in an Arab or Muslim country?
Guess what, Emanuelle? Rape, torture, murder, and property confiscation–the general scheme of Arab Muslim treatment of the Jews in Arab countries–usually isn’t “positive.” It’s generally “mostly negative.” Ditto for the experience of being one of the million Jews kicked out of Arab Muslim nations since Israel became a state. Newsflash, Emanuelle: That’s mostly negative.
Chriqui continues with her clueless, misguided hippie, peacenik outlook:

Through this comedy, you get to see our similarities as well as our difference–but how we can live together, too. We’re actors showing how the world should be, but it’s still real. We had both Palestinians and Isrealis on the set.

Um, no. A movie set is not real.
Israelis and Jews do want peace, but those of us who are realists know we’ll never get it . . . especially not through a Hollywood set and a silly comedy, while a billion plus of our real-life enemies want to eliminate us and complete what Hitler started.
Like I said, tell it–“how we can live together”–to diners at Jerusalem’s Sbarro Pizza, patrons at Tel Aviv’s Mike’s Bar and the Dolfinarium Disco, those trying to celebrate Passover at Netanya’s Park Hotel–all of them . . . well, the ones who are still alive.
This is not even Isreal, and I can’t exist here without getting Muslim death, beheading, rape, and torture threats from my Muslim “neighbors” Lola Elzein, Mohammad Fouad Abdallah, Robert Mustaq John, and Wasil Burki.
Israel is not a Hollywood set. It is a tiny island of civility, humanity, brainpower, innovation, and courage amidst several continents and nations comprising Greater Barbaria. It’s hardly the same thing as surviving along with fellow ditzes with make-up artists, fancy wardrobing, and giant, unmerited paychecks, and chai lattes amidst palm trees.
So sad that even actors in a comedy about Israeli agents fighting terrorists, don’t get it. Even sadder when the utterer of such stupidity is a descendant of a family which saw that life as Jews in the Arab Muslim world was hardly like the good life in Burbank and Malibu.
Memo to Emmanuelle Chriqui: Shut Up and Act!
Looking forward to this “Zohan” movie less and less.