Israeli Advertising

RISHON LEZION, Israel — As I have noted in sev­eral posts in my Let­ters from Israel series, peo­ple here are fre­quently brash, polit­i­cally incor­rect, tact­less, and tra­di­tional in regards to gen­der roles and stereo­types. This is espe­cially true in advertising.

Cell­com, the country’s lead­ing mobile-phone com­pany, is run­ning a new adver­tise­ment (shown above) that is gen­er­at­ing some con­tro­versy. An army patrol is dri­ving near the sep­a­ra­tion bar­rier when some­thing hits their jeep. At first, the sol­diers think they are being attacked, but it turns out that it was only an errant soc­cer ball that Pales­tini­ans on the other side of the bar­rier were using. The sol­diers and the unseen Pales­tini­ans end up play­ing with each other. The ad’s voiceover at the end says, “What do we all want? Some fun, that’s all.”

Noam Sheizaf, a jour­nal­ist for the Ma’ariv news­pa­per, is disgusted:

The fact that the Pales­tini­ans are invis­i­ble in this com­mer­cial, that the wall the sol­diers are play­ing around was built on their lands – and that Pales­tini­ans are killed while protest­ing against it – the fact that in real­ity, if a Pales­tin­ian comes close to the fence to return a foot­ball or to wave a flag he is likely to get shot; the whole real­ity of the occu­pa­tion, is some­thing Israelis are refus­ing to see. Like the voice over at the end of the com­mer­cial says (“What do we all want? Some fun, that’s all”), we see our­selves as your usual happy-and-fun-loving-Mediterranean-nation, only in uniform.

Over at Jew­li­cious, a writer named C.K. says that oth­ers view the adver­tise­ment as a “harm­less and humor­ous riff on an oth­er­wise dif­fi­cult issue – some­thing Israelis are par­tic­u­larly well known for.” I lean towards this view. Sheizaf is tak­ing a light­hearted attempt to breathe some lev­ity into a messy sit­u­a­tion much too seriously.

Still, from a mar­ket­ing stand­point, Israeli com­mer­cials are very provoca­tive to West­ern view­ers, who tend to become out­raged and offended by any insult to their sen­si­bil­i­ties. Israelis, on the other hand, will usu­ally just shrug their shoul­ders and laugh. To them, peo­ple should not be so seri­ous all the time.

Here is a col­lec­tion of famous — or infa­mous, depend­ing on your point of view — com­mer­cials from Israel fea­tur­ing the Viet­nam War; the Titanic; a young boy with two blond, teenage girls; and fem­i­nine prod­ucts that, for some rea­son, incor­po­rate “69” and “doggy-style” into the sales pitch.

Update: Here is a video reac­tion to the Cell­com adver­tise­ment. I can­not hear what the peo­ple are say­ing, so I would appre­ci­ate if any Hebrew-speakers could let me and my read­ers know.