You’ve probably seen the Volvo video where a zen-looking Jean Claude van Damme does the splits. Now in a hilarious parody from the Gaza Strip, Tashwesh Productions does a low-scale production to highlight the Gaza energy crisis. Watch this video below and share it with all your friends!
In the original Volvo version of “the epic split,” (below) Van Damme talks about crafting the perfect body – his own, and of course the steady, Volvo trucks that glide along while he does gradually drops into a full split.
The Gaza version features two cruddy Kia vehicles instead. And they aren’t self-propelled. Instead, several young men are seen pushing the vehicles while one, 28 year-old Mahmoud Zuiter from Tashwesh, mimics the Belgian actor’s stoic pose.
“I have been living in Gaza a long time,” he says.
“And up to this moment I feel like I am living and not living, like Amro Diab.”
“The electricity cuts off up to 12 hours at a time. I have come to sleep and wake up and the electricity still would not be back.”
“And the water comes on when the electricity is off. I miss taking a shower!”
“All of this does not make Van Damme better than me, but unfortunately, there is no gas in town.”
A comedian from Gaza, Zuiter told ABC News he and his friends wanted to use humor to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinian people.
“Van Damme is very famous, and millions of people like him,” Zuiter said. “I made the video in the style of Van Damme, but I changed some of the things so that people would understand the suffering.”
Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories have been experiencing a severe energy and water crisis that is worse during summer months, but the Gaza strip has been hit the hardest because of the Israeli blockade.
Amnesty International released an urgent appeal earlier this month for Israel to lift the blockade in order to ease the terrible crisis.
“For the last month, all of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents have been living without power for most of the time and in the shadow of a public health catastrophe, after their sole power plant was forced to shut down, causing the failure of several sewerage and water plants.”
Alon Tal on the other side of the border explains in this op-ed on the New York Times why Gaza’s problems water and sewage problems are also some of its own.
Hopefully the video, which has gone viral with more than 100,000 hits so far, will have some kind of positive impact.
Author: Tafline Laylin
As a tour leader who led “eco-friendly” camping trips throughout North America, Tafline soon realized that she was instead leaving behind a trail of gas fumes, plastic bottles and Pringles. In fact, wherever she traveled – whether it was Viet Nam or South Africa or England – it became clear how inefficiently the mandate to re-think our consumer culture is reaching the general public. Born in Iran, raised in South Africa and the United States, she currently splits her time between Africa and the Middle East. Tafline can be reached at tafline (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
I love it when Palestinians use irony! I like that a lot better than posts about Israeli deluded self-praise.