The Net shows a pic of a Putin spokesman next to the infamous Mossad agent, Eli Copter (variant spelling: Eli Kopter) who, according to the Russian info master, masterminded the death of the Butcher of Tehran (Iran president Ebrahim Raisi) and his butcher Boy Wonder (Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian) last week.
Agent Heli-copter.
Who did this? 🤣 pic.twitter.com/uIzpTI245m
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) May 19, 2024
Of course, Eli is a biblical name (I Samuel 1:3) and is a quite common name in Israel today, although most often with a different spelling. And as well, the Russians have a problem with the English letter ‘h’ as no such sound is native to Russian. So, he might have just missed the pun that most everyone else understood pretty quickly.
AF – The IDF Mourns The Loss Of Their Undercover Agent, Eli Copter pic.twitter.com/G0tok0TFyV
— Associated Fress (@AssociatedFress) May 19, 2024
Or maybe the reason that he made a fool of himself by taking this seriously (as did Hamas and other tyrant states) was that tyrants and their supporters just aren’t big on humor. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: Trump and the Glorious Revolution)
Think of when the politicians who had destroyed tens of thousands of emails under subpoena and tried to pretend that nothing had happened (Hey Alvin! Hey Jack! Here’s a much easier conviction if it’s the law and democracy you are really defending) — think of how they reacted when Trump, in high irony, called out to Putin and asked him to assist in recovering the lost emails, as they had surely read the files when they were stored where Hillary had put them. Remember the very straight faces of the various Dems who missed the joke then.
When control of their lives is being taken out of peoples’ hands, humor reminds them that there is a deeper truth in the world.
Tyrants and aspiring tyrants come up short in getting ironic humor.
Humor irks tyrants. Tyrants live for control; humor evades control. Tyrants don’t understand what others feel or really think; humor thrives because it gets people and tells us the truth that we often can’t or won’t express.
A joke from Stalin’s Russia makes the point.
Stalin wanted to know what the people really thought about him, so one day, the joke goes, he put on a disguise and went alone to a movie theater. At the beginning of the film, the screen was filled with a shot of Stalin, the Father of the Peoples, with stirring patriotic music playing. All the people in the theater immediately stood and began to cheer.
Stalin was overwhelmed. It was his Sally Fields moment. He just sat in his seat, taking it all in.
Then he felt a tap on his shoulder. The man behind him was leaning over and whispered in Stalin’s ear: “Comrade! We all feel like you do, but it’s not safe. Stand up!”
Jews have had a lot of experience with tyrants, small and large, Nazis and Communists both, as well as assorted others. Humor has been therapeutic for those who had to live through those hells on earth that tyrants tend so regularly to create.
Here’s humor from Nazi Germany.
A Jew came upon another Jew sitting and reading Der Stürmer, the viciously antisemitic Nazi weekly newspaper whose editor was hanged at Nuremberg. Seeing him read that rag, he asked his friend the reader, “Why are you reading that Nazi garbage?”
The reader explained with a wry smile, “If I read the Jewish paper, what do I see? There was a pogrom here; there was a persecution here. This man’s store was looted, this man’s jaw was broken. These Jews were driven out of their jobs and their homes. It’s depressing!
“But when I read this paper look what it says: The Jews run the banks! The Jews control the movies! The Jews control the world’s governments through their secret cabals! It makes me feel much better!”
When control of their lives is being taken out of peoples’ hands, humor reminds them that there is a deeper truth in the world forever beyond the reach of the Nazis and their ilk. Tyrants’ powers are real enough. But there are things they cannot reach and what makes us laugh taps into those deep truths.
One notable difference between this joke of the Nazi days and the satirical invocation of the mythical agent Eli Kopter — in 1939, the Jews were warred upon as if they were a belligerent nation, but they had no army and no state to defend them. Their humor was wry and sad, as humor was almost all they had. (READ MORE: It’s Final: Biden Has Chosen to Support Hamas)
The Eli Kopter joke is on the other hand about the death of a bloodthirsty enemy, and the wryness of the joke is not so much a defense against helplessness but a challenge and a parody of the ongoing paranoia that infects states built on hate and control and of all the many idiots who join in that kind of thinking.
Whether or not a real Agent Kopter exists — which I will neither confirm nor deny — Jews today at least have a state and the arms to defend themselves. Though there are quite a few (try in the Biden State Department for starts) who don’t get or don’t like the humor — you’ll see them standing for a moment of silence at the UN or leading a prayer for him in the Senate — most Americans give it a smile.
Some might even apply a Biblical verse to the situation: Proverbs 11:10.
Agent Kopter does.
