How the Israeli Consulate’s Collaboration with Maxim Magazine Hurt Israel
“As soldiers, they proudly wore the uniform of the Israeli army. Now they’re wearing bikinis!” Such was Wolf Blitzer’s summation of a recent PR gambit by the Consulate General of Israel in New York, one so unexpected that it merited mention on Blitzer’s show The Situation Room, along with a wide range of international news outlets. The shock was a result of the Consulate’s collaboration with Maxim magazine on an article in their July 2007 issue featuring Israeli models in military-themed swimwear under the headline, “Women of the Israeli Defense Forces.”
Prominent Knesset member and former diplomat Colette Avital called the photos “€œpornographic.”€\xc2\x9d Israel’s Consul-General , Aryeh Merkel, countered, “The pictures aren’t anything you wouldn’t see at a pool or a beach. Israel is always mentioned in the context of wars and violence. We want to show there is a normal life.” This wasn’t enough for left-wing MK Zahava Gal-On, who argued that “It is unfortunate that the New York consulate thinks that Israel’s relevance will be expressed by the use of naked women who are treated as an object, and not as women of substance who exude achievement and success.”
The outraged politicians had a point: the blatantly sexist and exploitive nature of this campaign doesn’t reflect well on Israel. But in making an issue of the supposedly pornographic nature of the images involved, they missed a far more disturbing aspect of the whole affair, one with worrying implications for both Israel and the United States.
At first glance, the photos in the article seem fairly unremarkable. Obviously, the women involved are beautiful, and the posing pompous and unrealistic – Gal Gadot on a Tel Aviv balcony in high heels, Nivit Bash standing in a bikini at what looks like Tel Aviv’s Ha-Shalom train station. This is not so surprising, just standard Maxim fare. However, masked by the ludicrous setting of the photos is an insidious detail: all of the Israeli women in question appear, at least by American standards, to be white.
This might escape the notice of the uninformed masses who view Israel as a Middle Eastern version of apartheid South Africa or an extension of Crown Heights. However, for those acquainted with the multi-ethnic reality of Israel, the inaccuracy of the portrayal is shocking.
To review: Israel is “the Jewish state,” but it is hardly homogeneous. Arabs make up 15-20% of the population, and a very large percentage of the Jewish population (a majority in the 1980’s before mass immigration from the former Soviet Union) have their roots in North Africa (specifically Morocco) and the Middle East (Iran and Iraq). There are smaller communities from India, Georgia, China and Central Asia, and nearly 100,000 Jews from Ethiopia. Furthermore, Israel has large African, Filipino, Chinese and Vietnamese communities, although most are not citizens. Israel even has a substantial African-American population, in the form of the Black Hebrews, an obscure Detroit-based religious sect. In other words, Israel is not a “whiteâ€\xc2\x9d country.
It isn’t entirely surprising that Maxim would choose to represent Israel in this manner. After all, their 2007 €œHot 100€\xc2\x9d list of the world’s “hottest women,” released in June, included only six black women, three Asians and few other women of colour. It is disturbing, however, that the Israeli consulate, despite a stated aim of changing popular perceptions of the country, would go along with Maxim’s narrow conception of beauty, in the process playing into the hands of those who accuse Israel of being an “œapartheid€\xc2\x9d state.”
It doesn’t help, of course, that the feature is not just about Israeli women, but Israeli soldiers. Although a longstanding centerpiece of Israeli propaganda, the women of the IDF are something of a myth. Although all Jewish Israeli women are required to serve in the IDF, none serve in front-line combat positions. Most serve as guards, training instructors (like Gal Gadot in the Maxim article) or in an administrative capacity. Many religious women are exempted, as are married women, and others serve in a special volunteer corps called Chen.
This cheap distortion of reality renders even bolder the implicit militarism of the PR move, and the concurrent reduction of Israeli identity to little more than sex and violence. The fact that young Israeli women have to devote two years of their lives to defending the country isn’t sexy, it’s tragic. That this is a necessary and shared consequence is irrelevant – it is still a very heavy burden. The young women in this article have done their part for their country, and deserve sober praise that acknowledges their sacrifice of time and youth, and the loss of their fallen comrades.
Instead, the Maxim article provides just a G.I. Jane fantasy of male domination, where actual military service is represented by little more than a flak jacket and air force-style cap. The immense sacrifice of the Israeli youth is, to both Maxim and, apparently, to Israeli diplomats living comfortably in New York, just a sexy marketing ploy.
To market Israel in terms of sex and violence seems in especially bad taste when the reality of both in Israel is far from pleasant. Last summer, 119 Israeli soldiers, most no older than Maxim‘s “€œWomen of the Israeli Defense Forces,”€\xc2\x9d lost their lives fighting in Lebanon, along with as many as 1000 Lebanese civilians. One young conscript, Gilad Shalit, remains a Palestinian hostage to this day. As for sex, it has long been Israel’s dirty secret that the country is an international centre of sex slavery, with many young women being smuggled into the country by Russian Organized Crime. With harsh facts like these in mind, the decision by the consulate, and their friends at Maxim, to market Israel with a message that boils down to, “Come to Israel and sleep with babes from our military!” seems in shockingly poor taste.
