The idea that Israelis could give up on Israel and live their lives in another land has always been an anathema to the Zionist movement, and poses an existential threat to the country. This is evident in its simplest form in the language used to describe people who emigrate from Israel, "Yordim" (going down), which has clearly negative connotations, as opposed to the term given to Jews who immigrate to Israel, "Olim" (rising up)
The Immigration and Absorption Ministry's ad campaign was intended to pull at the heartstrings of expatriate Israelis. The ads were posted on billboards across the United States, mainly in communities where there is a high concentration of Israeli expatriates, such as Los Angeles and Miami. In addition, the Immigration and Absorption Ministry put up videos on their website for the campaign. These ads extol the viewers that they will always be Israelis while their children will not be, and that they will lose their Jewish roots in the melting pot of assimilation. These ads - while having the right intentions - portray the message in a way that was completely disrespectful to American Jews, while being a huge waste of money.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to pull the ad campaign as well as the YouTube videos associated with them was the right decision to make. The advertisements blatantly insulted American Jews and should never have been published in the first place. In announcing the pulling of the ads, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, acknowledged the hurtful nature of the ads and the reasoning behind why they were pulled.
But there was something disturbing about Oren's announcement: the statement that neither the Prime Minister's Office nor the Israeli Embassy in Washington was forewarned of the campaign. This could either be the truth or just a game of politics, but I am not sure which is worse.
If they knew about the ad campaign and let it go through, it shows that the complete disregard for American Jews goes through to the highest levels of Israeli government.
If in fact they did not know about the campaign, then that is most certainly worse. For an internal government agency to start an advertising campaign in a foreign country without having first received the requisite permissions is a show of complete incompetence. How is it that, according to a report in the Jewish Channel's Weekly Jewish News, three million shekels were spent on the campaign, billboards were put up, commercials aired on Israeli satellite channels, and a website was built, and neither the prime minister nor Israel's ambassador to the U.S. knew about it? Didn't anybody in the Immigration and Absorption Ministry think to run this by the Prime Minister's Office or the embassy of the country in which this ad campaign was to take place? This is simply abhorrent!
These advertisements portray a view of Israelis living abroad who are losing their “Israeliness” as well as their "Jewishness" by the very fact that they live in the United States. One of the ads shows grandparents based in Israel having a video-chat with their children and grandchild who live in America during the holiday season. The grandparents, who are shown with a lit Menorah in the background celebrating Hanukkah, ask their granddaughter if she knows what holiday it is. The assimilated granddaughter answers, “Christmas!” In response, the grandparents look at each other and at the girl's parents with a wary glance. The advertisement ends with the narrator saying “They will always be Israelis, their children won’t”. This advertisement argues that it is impossible for Israeli’s to live a “real” Jewish life outside of Israel. While not only being completely untrue, this argument is quite offensive to American Jews.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Why Israel's expat campaign offended so many U.S. Jews
1:37 PM
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