TIMES OF ISRAEL
by Judah Ari Gross
June 30, 2015

In a vile prank conducted by an Egyptian television station, a well-known Syrian singer was taken on a pleasure cruise off the Egyptian coast, and then arrested by purported Israeli naval forces, interrogated at gunpoint at an elaborately constructed faux Israeli army base, and led out for execution, with a gun put to his head. The hoax, screened by Egypt’s Al-Hayat TV, is one of a rash of such tasteless pranks filmed and screened by various TV stations in the Arab world to coincide with the current Ramadan festivities. The victim was the Syrian actor Bassem Yakhour, who was taken out for a pleasure cruise in a yacht at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh Red Sea resort along with a small group of other passengers, all of whom were in on the hoax. READ MORE