It will be near impossible to touch Borat as far as the genius he stumbled into while skewering an entire culture’s ingrained flaws, but at least Sascha Baron Cohen is finding time to confuse hummus with Hamas when interviewing victims for his latest outing as Bruno.

The British born, Cambridge-educated, 37-year-old actor, who took what Christopher Guest started with Spinal Tap to hysterically offensive, interactive new heights, managed to dupe a former Mossad (i.e. badass Israeli secret service) agent while masquerading as his gay, Austrian alter-ego.

“What’s the connection between a political movement and food,” Bruno asks at one point.

Universal ponied up some serious dough for Bruno based on Borat’s success – hopefully they get some headier satire in the process.  (Unfair knock; Cohen’s below interview of hapless meatheads spring-breaking on Daytona Beach ranks up there with just about anything he ever pulled off as Borat).

A byproduct of Cohen’s attempt at the Borat brand of culture-prodding may have shed the most light exactly where he was aiming.  Check the difference in how it was reported by the Jersusalem Post vs. the UK’s Telegraph:

It’s unclear whether his Mossad retirement benefit card will be confiscated, but former spy and current political analyst Yossi Alpher is certainly feeling sheepish after being fooled by actor Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Borat.

Cohen was in Jerusalem two weeks ago filming scenes for his next movie, Bruno, based on a character the British comedian played in his Da Ali G Show. In that show, Cohen played Bruno as a flamboyant Austrian fashion and celebrity journalist, regularly interviewing unwitting members of the public who weren’t aware he wasn’t a real person.

Cohen’s producers contacted Alpher, a writer on Israel-related strategic issues and co-editor of the Israeli-Palestinian political Web site Bitterlemons, and asked him to be interviewed along with a Palestinian for a documentary that would explain the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the youth of the world.

vs.

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has duped a former Mossad agent and a Palestinian academic into a spoof interview in which they debated the difference between Hamas and hummus.

Israeli Yossi Alpher and Palestinian Ghassam Khalib agreed to be interviewed by Austrian television presenter Bruno, unaware that the camp character is Baron Cohen’s latest alter ego.

In the interview, which took place in Jerusalem, Bruno asked: “What’s the connection between a political movement and food? Why hummus?”

One of the guests politely explained: “Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist political movement. Hummus is a food.”

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, or maybe it’s just innocent ethnocentrism, but it’s funny that the Israeli newspaper simply says “a Palestinian” whereas the British paper sets them on equal intellectual footing.

Tags: ali g, arab israeli conflict, borat, bruno, mossad, sacha baron cohen