by MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD, Alternate Reality News Service War Writer
In the propaganda war on behalf of its genocidal attack on Gaza, the Israeli government has a secret weapon. It is ruthless. It is relentless. It is deadly. It has been proven 93% effective in tests conducted by the Israeli Offence Forces (IOF).
It’s bubbes.
Your grandmother will usually start the conversation with a familiar gambit: plying you with food. “This tomato kugel will go to waste and you’re wasting away – you have to eat some! Have a piece! Have seven! They’re tiny – and so are you! Do you have a tropical wasting away disease or something? Tell you what: I’ll wrap up what’s left for you to eat on your way home!”
As you’re stuffing tomato kugel in your mouth, your bubbe puts on her sweetest smile and says: “You know, dear, the pro-Palestinian student protesters at the University of Toronto are all terrorists funded by Hamas. Would you like a gallon of juice to wash that kugel down with?”
The IOF calls these elderly ambassadors The Bubbe Brigade. “They are our most effective propaganda tool,” explained David Ben-Karryon, Chief Public Relations Officer of the IOF, “especially when deployed against self-hating, Hamas-loving Jews. We all have memories of our cheeks getting pinched so hard by disappointed bubbes that it took hours of careful massaging to get the feeling back. Most of us would rather eat our way to a heart attack than contradict our bubbe and risk the wrath of The Pinch!”
Orders for members of The Bubbe Brigade (also sometimes referred to as Bibi’s Babes, although never in official government documents) are usually transmitted via Fox News and other far right media outlets, then reinforced when grandmothers gossip to each other on the informal Bubbe Maisa network. “Remember the assertion that three year-old Palestinians were Hamas soldiers?” Ben-Karryon grinned. “That was The Bubbe Brigade’s finest moment!”
I interviewed Bubbe Esther (of the Bathurst Manor Bubbes) at her home in The Branchplante Institute for the Terminally Old. After the twelfth helping of chicken soup (“With kreplach!” she wanted me to know; what I actually knew was that my stomach felt like the Edmund Fitzgerald-Fjord shortly before it became a Gordon Lightfoot-Loos song after the seventh bowl, but whenever I thought to ask her to stop, I felt an inexplicable burning sensation in my cheek. And I’m not even Jewish!)
Mostly, we talked about her three children and 76 grandchildren. Eventually, though, she said, “Do you find the soup oversalted? I could put a tomato in it. Oh, and did you know that three year-old Palestinians are trained to be soldiers by Hamas? It’s true! I’ve seen the weapons safety training manual written by Dr. Seuss-Caboose!”
“If you don’t mind my asking,”* I responded, “how much are you getting paid by the IOF to say these things?”
Bubbe Esther looked hurt. “I’m on a pension,” she told me, confused.
“Are you insane‽” Ben-Karryon shrieked when I told him what I had asked Bubbe Esther. “Members of The Bubbe Brigade are only effective because they don’t know that they belong to it! Now, thanks to you, we’re going to have to terminate one of our most effective assets in the Manor!”
Terminate? As in kill?
“Worse,” Ben-Karryon told me. “We’re going to have to cut off her cable access!”
I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the information I had gathered, so I arranged to interview Bubbe Mariam, who had a reputation as the most deadly kibbitzer in North America. “Are you trying out to be a fashion model, dear?” she asked me. “Because at your age, the only gig you’re likely to get is modelling adult diapers! Ha! Ha! Aha ha ha! But I kid. Seriously, you’re all skin and bones. I have homemade cabbage rolls I just bought at Yutze’s Deli. Let me get you a dozen.”
While I was stuffing myself on cabbage rolls (my personal trainer is going to have to go on danger pay until this article is finished), Bubbe Mariam told me: “You know, dear, not allowing people to walk across university lawns was the way the Nazis started.”
When she said that, I nearly spit up a mouthful of cabbage and rice in potato sauce.
When I next spoke to Ben-Karryon, I accused him of exploiting people old enough to have directly experienced the Holocaust for Israeli propaganda purposes. “Thank you for noticing!” he gratefully grinned. “Developing The Bubbe Brigade was a brilliant stroke, if I do say so myself. I mean, who is going to argue with an emotional, sincere little old lady who is also a Holocaust survivor? You’ve lost the argument even before you’ve opened your mou – oh, wait. You weren’t admiring our brilliance, were you?”
It’s enough to give even the most iron of stomachs worse indigestion than a dozen pieces of tomato kugel washed down with a gallon of juice!
* A phrase which always means: “I’m about to ask you a seriously personal question, and there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop – oww! Did you just step on my…oww! Oww! Okay! Okay, maybe there is one thing you can do to stop it…”