The Israeli immigration ministry
caused quite an offense with an advertising campaign that made it sound like American Jews aren't worth marrying:
The Israeli government withdrew an ad campaign Friday after a rare backlash from major U.S. Jewish groups for appearing to urge expatriates not to marry American Jews or raise children in the United States.
The ads struck a nerve in a community that has long debated the nature of the Jewish identity and struggled with issues of assimilation, intermarriage and tensions between religious and secular Jews.
The first ad showed a young Israeli woman wincing after her American boyfriend mistakes candles and music marking Israel's solemn memorial day for a romantic night in.
A narrator intoned: "They will always remain Israelis. Their partners won't always understand what that means. Help them return to Israel."
A second ad showed shock flashing across the faces of a pair of Israeli grandparents when their granddaughter shouted "Christmas" in English when asked what holiday she was celebrating during a video chat.
This time the narrator said: "They will always remain Israelis. Their children won't."
The ad campaign, which also included billboards in Hebrew urging Israelis to come home before their children started calling them "Daddy" instead of the Hebrew term "Abba", rippled through social media sites and was picked up by the Jewish Channel and a number of influential blogs.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the ads be pulled "immediately" and a statement released by the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, said the premier "deeply values the American Jewish community."
Ambassador Oren issued an apology for "any offence" caused by the ads, noting that while the campaign had the "laudable" aim of encouraging Israelis to return home it "did not take into account American Jewish sensibilities."
It was also conducted "without the knowledge or approval of the prime minister's office or of the Israeli embassy in Washington," he said after the ads triggered outrage.
To imply that Jewish Americans are terminally stupid that they don't understand anything deriving from Jewish traditions and customs is not only absurd and far reaching, it's also taking a serious risk of alienation. As though there aren't enough problems already, even here, between religious/secular, Hasidic/non-Hasidic, that the right has finally begun to try and fix.
Biggest question in all this affair is: who conceived and greenlighted this ad campaign, and will the perpetrators be held accountable for their actions?
As reprehensible as this ad campaign was, and I'm glad to see it was pulled, there's one voice in all this who's not fit to criticize the Israeli government: Jeffrey Goldberg, who said:
"I don't think I have ever seen a demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews as obvious as these ads," wrote Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine.
Pardon? Last year, Goldberg did something pretty offensive himself, which was to call on people not to donate to the JNF following their campaign for relief funds after a forest fire that appears to have been arson.
According to Rob Miller:
Goldberg urges people not to donate, because after all, those Rich Jew Boys have plenty of money, and besides, it’s all their own fault anyway for not having their fire services up to Goldberg’s standards, him being an expert and all.
Donate to Haiti, to Muslims in East Asia hit by tsunamis, to the ‘Palestinians’ for no apparent reason, to every other disaster under the sun, fine. But Israel? No way, not according to Goldberg. And the fact that he singles Israel out for special treatment … well, there’s a word for that.
Israel’s fire fighting services were more than adequate for years until they were suddenly hit with a number of fires the country had never experienced before where arson is suspected apparently doesn’t interest him in the least.
Jeff Dunetz has more on that here. I don't think I've ever seen a demonstration of contempt for Israeli Jews as obvious as what Goldberg had to offer, and thus, just who is he to criticize the ad campaign? Something tells me that if this were a leftist government in charge, he'd be far less inclined to open his big mouth, suggesting that his response is merely out of political bias.
That aside, the campaign was lousy, and I hope they're going to review these projects much more carefully before greenlighting them in the future.
