An embarrassing incident occurred at Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on Friday, when it published an extended interview with Israel's first female Bedouin comedian, who turned out to be a stage persona portrayed for years by an Israeli comedian, who is Jewish. The interview was in the newspaper's weekly supplement "Shiv'a Yamim."

The article was presented as an interview with stand-up comedian Fatma Vardi, a mother of 17 living in a shack in an unrecognized Galilee village with her husband and his three other wives. However, Fatma Vardi, is a fictional character portrayed by Gila Zimmerman, an Israeli comedian and actress. Zimmerman is not a Bedouin and lives in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv.

The fraud was exposed earlier on Friday in the website of Globes, an Israeli evening business newspaper. According to the Globes report, a simple Google search reveals that Vardi is a character and not a real person, with photos of Zimmerman in character as a Bedouin alongside photos of her as an actress. Zimmerman's contact details appear on Vardi 's website

Yedioth Ahronoth responded to the reports on the blunder saying that they were repeatedly led to believe that Vardi was real. The paper also issued an apology to its readers in case it was in fact duped.

The woman interviewed in the article presented herself as a Bedouin stand-up comedian who has performed across Israel for years and no person has ever said otherwise, said a statement released by Yedioth Ahronoth. Moreover, for eight years she had a regular spot on Moshe Timor's radio show on Israel Radio. Every week she is featured on radio as a Bedouin stand-up comedian and no person ever expressed any doubts over it. It should be noted that during the preparation of the article Moshe Timor told our reporter that in the past he even met with the woman's village mukhtar (village head) and persuaded him to let her perform on radio.

Yedioth Ahronoth also stated that in a conversation it held on Friday with Timor he again confirmed these details. It also said that Fatma appeared as a Bedouin on Friday on a morning television show on Channel 2 and that the show's hosts didn't doubts her credibility.

If we were mistaken, we apologize to our readers and we promise to draw the necessary conclusions, said the statement read.