The Daily Show‘s host Jon Stewart returned Monday night to criticize Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, likening his country’s remote explosion of pagers and walkie-talkies aimed at targeting Lebanon’s paramilitary group Hezbollah to something out of a 1980s Bond film.
“By the way, Lebanon is also a country,” Stewart said, responding to a clip of Netanyahu saying he will not tolerate “wanton rocketing” of Israel. The host also questioned what Netanyahu was doing if not “wanton rocketing” of other nations, to uproarious applause from the audience.
“What makes you think they’re going to accept your rocketing or whatever other James Bond sh– you’ve been up to?” he asked.
He continued, saying, “Exploding pagers. Ah! Lebanon expected Israel to attack from the south but instead they attacked from the 1980s. What?!”
The political-comic host then joked that Lebanon should hit back with a pixelated green-and-white arcade shooting game from that era.
Continuing his segment, Stewart said nothing is more indicative of the “language calisthenics” employed to describe the crisis as Israel’s “de-escalation through escalation” tactic, which he called the footnote to World War II.
“De-escalation through escalation, where have I heard—” he began, pulling up copies of George Orwell’s 1984, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and, finally, the comic book collection Garfield Fat Cat 3-Pack.
“Though I do take issue with one of Garfield’s bromides: I happen to love Mondays. It’s the start and end of every work week. Though I hear Fridays are nice,” he joked, shrugging.
Elsewhere in the segment, Stewart critiqued the U.S. government’s claim that it is “tirelessly working” toward a ceasefire and the prevention of a “wider war,” which is now a reality, through the Lebanon attack, that some, including ex-CIA director Leon Panetta, have denounced as an act of “terrorism.”
