An ad campaign in the US paid for by the Israeli government has left
many Jewish Americans feeling insulted. The commercials, designed to
encourage Israeli Jews to return to their roots, seem to have done more
harm than good.
RT’s Paula Slier talked to a family living in Brooklyn, New York.
Gal Beckerman is Israeli, married to Deborah Kolben, an American Jewish
woman. Together with their young daughter, they could be the family
featured in the controversial advertisement campaign.
“What it was saying was that my husband shouldn’t have married me,” Deborah says. “The emotional response was just kind of ‘ouch’.”
There
were three ads sponsored by the Israeli government and aired across the
United States that evoked more than just an “ouch” from American Jews.
One
features an Israeli couple asking what festival it is – and the
American grand-daughter happily answers “Christmas,” instead of the
Jewish festival of Hanukkah. The implied suggestion was that Jewish
identity is being diluted in America – and that has angered many Jews
who live there.
Another ad shows a toddler calling “Daddy, Daddy”
to his napping Israeli expatriate father who finally wakes up only when
his son switches to Hebrew. American Jews felt insulted by the
suggestion that Israeli Jewish identity was more pure than American
Jewish identity.
“I think that what bothered me most about the
ads is that it came from a place of almost fear-mongering, they were
almost trying to scare people, Israelis who were living here,” Gal explains.
The
ads were designed to encourage Israelis living in the United States to
come home. But critics complained they smacked of arrogance, ignorance
and cultural disrespect for America. Instead of giving positive reasons
for expats to return to Israel, they failed to address why many had left
in the first place.
“I think a lot of American Jews look to
what’s going on in Israel and what’s developing in the parliament in
particular and feel extremely alienated from that. And they say to
themselves, ‘This is not the Israel that we fell in love with, this is
not the Israel that we want to defend,’” Gal believes.
American
Jewry has always been more liberal than Israeli society. They
traditionally vote Democrat and are often open to a less orthodox
practice of Judaism than their Israeli counterparts
For years a
rift has been growing between the two, much of it based on the
aggressive policies of Tel Aviv, particularly towards Gaza and the
occupation. The parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict still show
no signs of compromise. And consecutive Israeli governments have been
unable or unwilling to reach agreement with the Palestinians, leaving
many American Jews feeling more and more alienated from Israel.
“Does
some of what’s going on in the Israeli public sphere trouble some North
American Jews? Trouble them very-very greatly? I have no question that
that’s the case,” says Rebecca Caspi from the Jewish Federations of North America.
Since
the late 1960s, Israel has built hundreds of thousands of homes in the
West Bank. More than half a million people now live in settlements. And
just this month, Tel Aviv announced it was issuing tenders for a
thousand more homes to be built across the Green Line, evoking anger and
condemnation from the international community.
As many as a
million – one in eight Israelis – live outside the country. Losing their
allegiance would be bad for the Israeli government.
“Israel
knows it needs American Jewish support, it cannot allow itself at this
point to insult them, or to distance itself from them,” says Yossi Gurvitz, an Israeli journalist and blogger.
In
the last five years, the number of people who choose to leave the Holy
Land has outpaced those wanting to come and live in Israel. And although
the ads themselves are no longer on air, the reasons that they provoked
such a backlash in the first place are far from resolved.
Source: http://rt.com/news/offensive-ad-american-jews-215/
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