Sweeney 'Converts' on Israeli TV. 'Rami Levy Has Great Wings.'
Israeli comedy giant Eretz Nehederet opened its season with Sweeney singing garbled Hatikvah and announcing 'Rami Levy has great wings' ... her Novig ad sampled the national anthem, and the Israelis noticed.
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Sydney Sweeney sang Israel's national anthem in garbled Hebrew on Israeli TV Monday night, announced a chicken-wing grocery campaign, and promised to tone down her commercials. The bit worked because her Novig ad had already done the setup.
Eretz Nehederet, Israel's political sketch comedy series on N12, opened its season premiere with a segment built on two separate news threads: Sweeney's rumored conversion to Judaism to marry music manager Scooter Braun, and the Novig "Just Sports" ad that sampled Hatikvah. Actress Mishel Pru played her, entering to sing the Israeli national anthem with malapropisms intact.
The Anthem Reference Was Not a Stretch
When the Novig ad launched September 9, viewers noticed that the Anderson .Paak track "Come Down" on the soundtrack samples a Hatikvah melody. We reported on the conspiracy theories that followed, including claims that the sample was intentional Israeli influence. The Jerusalem Post's premiere review settled the audio question directly: "Fans had thought they heard the anthem in the ad, and it was true." The sample was real, the context was a popular 2016 hip-hop track, and Israeli TV noticed both things.
Host Eyal Kitzis opened the segment by observing that a popular sex symbol joining "the tribe" amid rising antisemitism would be a "publicity coup." Pru's Sweeney then announced her next venture: a Rami Levy supermarket campaign. The slogan: "Rami Levy has great wings." Her American Eagle campaign's signature line was "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans." The one-word swap turned two separate ad campaigns into a single punchline, requiring the Israeli audience to know both simultaneously.
What Satire Needs to Function
Eretz Nehederet's writers needed their audience to recognize the Hatikvah sample, the conversion rumor, the American Eagle slogan, and the Scooter Braun relationship for any of the jokes to land. That is not a brand endorsement. That is a cultural penetration measurement with a studio audience.
The Novig campaign's numbers already told part of this story. CNBC reported October 3 that trading volume climbed 94% and first-time depositors surged 218% in the 20 days around the September 9 launch. But conversion metrics do not capture what an Israeli comedy writer thought was funny enough to put between Netanyahu impressions.
The premiere was primarily election satire. Netanyahu and poll-leading challenger Gadi Eisenkot were the main targets, with an Odyssey parody centered on Israel's exhausted reserve soldiers running through the first half. The Sweeney segment appeared in the middle of that, which is its own kind of editorial categorization. She sat between political sketches.
The episode also closed with a Fauda spoof of the September 30 foiled flydubai hijacking. Lior Raz played the real-life Israeli plumber Yaniv Hayoun, who helped subdue the hijacker by requesting spare wrenches and leaving to find a part, then drew a Star of David with the plane's contrails.
Eretz Nehederet has satirized US presidents, tech billionaires, and wars. Getting a segment in the same episode as October 7 anniversary satire is a different kind of press coverage than a profile in a trade magazine.
