Fresh off the plane from DC, where 14,000 of my best friends and I celebrated the American-Israeli relationship at the annual AIPAC Policy Conference, I’m still dizzy from the speakers, showcases, and the fact that DC shut down for, gasp, 3 inches of snow.
In the spirit of embracing the partnership between our two nations, I’ll just highlight three interesting American-Israeli collaborations that, when compared to the ElMindA BNA brain scan technology, TaKaDu water monitoring systems, and the Camero device that can see through brick walls, are a little more fun that serious.
The beautiful Gal Gadot, one of the stars of the past three Fast and Furious movies, and a former Miss Israel, just inked a deal to play Wonder Woman in a series of three movies. What’s more amazing is that she’s doing it for very little money- only $300,000 per film. Apparently she’s going through some pretty intense physical training to prepare for the role, and had some fighting words about the traditional physique of Amazon women as compared to her own body type. You go, girl.
Scarlett Johansson defied the BDSers and proudly championed Israeli company SodaStream at the Super Bowl and after as its new brand ambassador. Now the poster child for Zionists everywhere, she even elicited a special thank-you from Bibi Netanyahu in his speech on Tuesday in Washington. In a typical charismatic-while-speaking-English moment, Bibi quipped “Frankly, my dear, I DO give a damn” while praising her willingness to stand strong in the face of the protests. All of the older folks laughed, while the 3,000 college and high school kids probably had no idea what he was talking about.
But behind the headlines and in the genre of catchy, awful, sexist pop music comes the latest Israeli invasion. For all of you who change the station when Jason Derulo and 2 Chainz’s “Talk Dirty” comes on the radio so your kids don’t hear the lyrics, but listen to it when you’re alone, you’ve heard the saxophone sample from Hermetico (it comes around first at 1:00 of the track), a song by New York- and Tel Aviv-based Balkan Beat Box. It’s not the first interesting partnership of Israeli music in American hip-hop (see Miri Ben-Ari’s partnership with Kanye West or Wyclef and Subliminal’s “In Tel Aviv”), and it won’t be the last… but the song is, um, catchy… and nasty.
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