As you know, Lord, one cannot outrun you or one's past. Our days our numbered here. Even in New York City Zohan is forced to confront the old family feuds and centuries of anti-Semitism (Anti-Jewish and Anti-Muslim), which still raise their heads in relatively peaceful America--where Palestinian Arabs and Jews can normally live across the street together without any ruckuses being raised.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OInSlJzsxwQ&feature=related
Zacharak's main point is that "'Zohan' never attempts to simplify the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: If anything, it acknowledges the ways in which that conflict is both political and religious, deeply personal and nothing personal. When one of Zohan's newfound New York friends, an electronics-store employee named Oori (Ido Mosseri), first suggests he try to get a job at Dalia's salon, he notes that it's on the Palestinian side of the street: This is a movie where businesspeople with deep-rooted religious and political differences are symbolically lined up directly across from one another. Zohan resists: "I've already done enough to my parents!' -- a way of acknowledging that old wounds, on both sides, run so deep through so many generations, that it's impossible to accurately trace their genesis. In a later scene, a group of clumsy would-be terrorists led by an embittered cab driver (played by Rob Schneider) sit around a kitchen table plotting Zohan's capture. Their motivation isn't so much political (it can actually be traced to a stolen goat), but still, they tap the expertise available to them by calling a "Hezbollah hotline,' where a friendly female voice greets them with the words, "For terrorist supplies, press 1.'"
In short, the only simplification in the comedy is that not-unlike parables of Jesus, which tell much more than originally meets the eye. A.O. Scott of the New York Times writes of the film, "American diplomatic efforts have so far proved inadequate to the task of bringing peace to the Middle East, but "You Don't Mess With the Zohan' taps into deeper and more durable sources of American global power in its quest for a plausible end to hostilities. Ancient grievances and festering hatreds are no match for the forces of sex, money, celebrity and exuberant, unapologetic stupidity."
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/movies/06zoha.html
The film is raunchy but it has many redeeming qualities--and is not very explicit even in sex. "I suppose some Middle East policy-scolds may find reasons to quarrel with "Zohan," either for being too evenhanded or not evenhanded enough in its treatment of Israelis and Palestinians. Did I mention that it's a comedy? Seriously, though, the movie's radical, utopian and perfectly obvious point is that the endless collection and recitation of political grievances is not funny at all, and that political strife is a trivial distraction from the things that really matter."
In short, as Scott concludes for us who like short parables, "There is so much hummus, and so little time."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wL9fH_fjCo&NR=1&feature=fvwp
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