Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu removed a Likud TV video mocking the appearance of journalist Amnon Abramovich, who was wounded in the Yom Kippur War, following an outcry on social media on Saturday.
The video features a skit starring an actor whose face was heavily made up to appear like Abramovich's badly burned face. The actor asks the Likud TV announcer Eliraz Sadeh, "How do I look?"
Sadeh responds, "You look like a missile, Amnon." The word "missile" is Israeli slang for someone who looks great.
Abramovich is a leftist political journalist and commentator who has reported on Netanyahu's criminal cases. He was badly burned as a reserve soldier in the IDF during the Yom Kippur War, during which he served as a tank driver. He suffered severe burns to his face and body during a battle but continued driving the tank to save the IDF soldiers he believed were still in the tank.
Following the war, Abramovich received the IDF Chief of Staff citation for bravery. His recovery was a prolonged ordeal, involving 60 surgical procedures.
When Netanyahu was asked about the video on an interview on Channel 12 on Saturday night, he responded, "They mock me, my wife and my son. They depict me with the face of a pig. You do satire every evening. You mock me and spill my blood on the news."
Following the outcry, Sadeh apologized for the video on his Facebook page, writing "It's important for me to clarify to those who didn't understand the joke or chose not to understand it. We're in an era that it doesn't matter who you are or what you did in your life. Ultimately, the most important thing about you is how you look - the Instagram era."
"When we filmed the skit, it didn't occur to us that this is how it would be interpreted and it's possible that we made a mistake in the way we expressed ourselves."
"It's important to me to note that in all sincerity we weren't specifically referring to Amnon's physical appearance in the performance of the skit. We see a million different values in Amnon that make up his image as a senior person in the Israeli media," Sadeh concluded.