by Rebecca Honig Friedman

Jews are so hot right now.
First Jewtastic launched its “Top Ten Fanciable Jews” survey. Now Maxim is featuring a “Women of the Israel Defense Forces” photospread in its July issue.
But the Maxim spread is not the brainchild of the magazine’s horndog editors. No, the idea came directly from the Israeli Consulate in New York, who want to improve Israel’s image in America:

The idea originated in the media office at Israel’s consulate in New York, where research showed that Israel meant little to young American men.
“Males that age have no feeling toward Israel one way or another, and we view that as a problem, so we came up with an idea that would be appealing to them,” said David Dorfman, a media adviser at the consulate.

Yeah, right. American men having no feelings one way or the other about Israel is a huge problem.
More like a huge opportunity to exploit. Improve Israel’s public image by finding the most easily influenced - the blank slates with no opinion one way or the other - and reaching them where they’re liable to be the most influenced - their crotches.
We all know sex sells, but shamelessly selling its women is hardly the best way for Israel - a country considered among the world’s worst offenders in human trafficking and prostitution, by the way - to boost its public image. [CORRECTION: Since the post I linked to, Israel has been taken off of the US “Watch List” for human trafficking violations and is now considered amongst Tier 2 countries “whose governments do not fully comply with the Act’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.” A great development but still by no means perfect.]
Israel’s own female politicians are up in arms about the campaign, which they have deemed to be “pornographic” and “an outrage” [NYPost]. Even the gossip blog Gawker calls the spread “ill-advised” in their write-up about Maxim’s party to celebrate the feature.
If Gawker thinks it’s ill-advised, you’d imagine someone at the consulate would have realized it, too.
Perhaps they were also thinking with their crotches. Indeed, the Consul General, the Deputy Consul General and the Director of Media Affairs are all men.
In contrast, Colette Avital, an Israeli legislator who previously served as Israel’s consul general in New York, said of the campaign, “We definitely have public relations problems, and I’m all for creative solutions. . . But there are enough beautiful and interesting things we can use to tap this demographic than to show a half-naked woman in a magazine of this kind, considered pornographic.”[CBS2.com]
We couldn’t agree more. Israel’s got breathtaking landscapes, ancient holy sites, delicious cuisine, and, oh yeah, HOT MEN!
At the very least the consulate could have arranged for an equivalent photospread of “Men of the Israeli Defense Forces” in Cosmo.
But think women won’t be swayed by some racy pictures? Ok then, even better, Jewess suggests “The Pen is Mightier than the Uzi: Poetry by Men of the IDF.”
If the Israeli Consulate is interested we’d be happy to arrange for it…

Posted on June 23rd, 2007 Filed under: Uncategorized |