He's Larry David, and this is from the show Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's satire so no one is supposed to be seen in a positive light and everything is played for laughs, but I found this episode to be a pretty illuminating example of how anti-Palestinian rhetoric gets normalized.
The plot is that Larry and his friend Jeff get hooked on a Palestinian restaurant despite being (presumably) zionists. Except when they're gawking around the restaurant like "omg this place is so antisemitic haha!!", none of the posters actually say anything about Jewish people...?
Like...what's wrong with these?
We are not led to question WHY Palestinians have to climb a wall with a barbed wire fence or why they only have stones to throw against TANKS. It's assumed that this is all necessary because Palestinians are just innately antisemitic and they're unreasonable for rebelling like this. Except in the same breath, Larry and Jeff acknowledge the West Bank settlements?? (Saying they'd get taken down if this restaurant brought their delicious chicken over there).
Like how are you going to admit there are a bunch of illegal settlements on internationally-recognized Palestinian land and then act like they're just mad because they're antisemitic and not because of the ILLEGAL MILITARIZED OCCUPATION 😭
Then they look at a random Palestinian family sitting nearby just minding their own business and are like "haha looks like they're planning the next intifada!!"
In their view, Palestinians don't acknowledge the right of Jewish people to exist because idk that's just the way it is!!
This is not subverted because later on the whole restaurant claps when Larry fights to stop his other friend from entering the restaurant with a yarmulke ("It's too bold!")
The Palestinian characters are portrayed as comically antisemitic, and a Palestinian woman Shara in particular is framed as an object of forbidden desire.
The main conflict of the episode features Larry's friend group protesting the Palestinian restaurant's new second location for no other reason than that it's opening next to a Jewish deli
This is all played for laughs, but if you look closer at the protest signs, the ones on the Palestinian side are completely reasonable while the ones on the Israel side are like "NO TERRORIST CHICKEN!!"
So it's really the pro-Israel characters who are protesting the mere existence of Palestinians too close to them, but it gets framed as a Both Sides Are Silly thing that ends with Larry originating that famous GIF because he's genuinely torn between the two (and not because he thinks the Palestinians are in the right to push back but because Shara offers him a threesome with her sister!!).
Yeah, this is supposed to be a comedy. But it's comedy that makes you laugh off the brutal and illegal reality of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.
Not saying no one's allowed to like this show anymore or use this GIF or whatever (this episode aired in 2011 btw), but it's good to take a step back and question how Palestinians are portrayed in media because there's so much gaslighting and obfuscating of their true grievances.
amandla
theartofmadeline
germansingergirl
