Israel’s Foreign Ministry plays Jimmy Fallon’s hashtag game — very badly

Jimmy Fallon was confused reading Israel’s response to his Twitter hashtag game. (Screenshot from YouTube)

Published April 16, 2021

(JTA) — #TwitterFail.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry tried to impress viewers of Jimmy Fallon’s show by participating in one of his Twitter hashtag games this week, but its joke fell flat. And the late-night host added to the confusion.

The NBC show has a recurring segment that asks viewers to use a certain hashtag and come up with humorous tweets. Wednesday’s was “#DescribeAMovieBadly” — participants were to sum up the plot of a movie or show in a counterintuitive way.

For example, one read “Harry Potter — 11-year-old orphan gets kidnapped, sent to magic camp, and ends up murdering one of his counselors.”

The @Israel Twitter account, which is run by the Foreign Ministry, failed to note any movie or show — so Fallon took it to be about “Fauda,” the hit Israeli thriller about counterterrorism agents, which the tweet mentioned first.

“Let’s help them out on this because I don’t understand this one,” Fallon said. “I think it’s a show, or a movie, like an Israeli show, so I don’t really know if this is funny or not. But let’s laugh at it.”

He started to read the tweet, which begins with “Fauda,” and some in the audience cheered.

“Do you know ‘Fauda’?” he asked, to more cheers.

Then he showed the tweet: “Fauda meets Edward Scissorhands meets West Side Story.” Which does not make any sense on its own.

“I love it, thank you for playing,” Fallon said before moving on.

A different account run by the Foreign Ministry later cleared up the mystery, explaining that the tweet mistakenly omitted the film it was describing: “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” a 2008 Adam Sandler comedy about an Israeli Mossad agent-turned-New York City barber.

Regardless, the ministry got the screen time it wanted.

Watch the Israel part of the segment at the 2:35 mark here: