As you may already know, last week, Cellcom, the largest mobile phone service provider in Israel, released this 60-second ad produced by advertising giant McCann-Erikson. It depicts Israeli soldiers having fun at the West Bank separation wall.
In the commercial, the good times start when a soccer ball flies over from the Palestinian side. Although the ball goes back and forth for quite a while, we never do see the Palestinian, who seems nothing more than an automatic ball feeder, and soon the soldiers call their attractive friends on their cell phones to come join in. It's topped off with a Club Med/We Are the World/Labor Day Clam Bake soundtrack and a tag line that says, "So what is it that we all want? Just a little fun." And that's it.
I expected a different ending.
Now everybody put on your capitalist thinking caps and tell me what it means. On second thought, here's the progressive Israeli blogger, Dimi Reider with his analysis, in a post entitled "Playing With the Animals in the Zoo":
Ads aimed at the general market, like this one, are invaluable time capsules, representing public mood much more faithfully than any art. They can’t afford to affront and lose a single customer – and thus they document not just what a society really is, but what it really thinks itself to be, which can be just as decisive as facts and figures.
The progressive Israeli blog Promised Land also provides some analysis:
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.
This is a picture of mainstream Israeli society. So very, very far from the picture many progressives here imagined. I had hoped that Israel's quirky parliamentary system had been producing governments that did not accurately represent the majority of Israelis-- that much of mainstream Israeli society held to liberal ideals. Now I am not so sure. I thought the large part of the problem on the Israeli side was the settlers and their outsized influence. But the settlements are not the only facts on the ground.
Promised Land elaborates:
although some people in Israel find this commercial to be in bad taste, even offending, the Israeli mainstream sees nothing wrong with it – in fact, some comments on the internet even regarded it as one that advocates peace, since instead of fighting, the soldiers and the (unseen) Palestinians are having fun playing soccer.
The state of relations is so bad that Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now, in a favorable piece, called this commercial "a brave display of yearning for co-existence and a strive for reconciliation between two peoples" and noted that "The initial message received from the commercial is that in contradiction to the usual perception attributed to the Palestinians, there are human beings on the other side of the barrier." (!)
Dimi Reider's conclusion:
What’s even sadder, is that this is as much peaceful interaction with ordinary West Bankers that Israelis can stomach: Invisible, subservient, dependent on the good will of their masters (note how much time the ball spends on which side), and, of course, safely tucked up behind a huge, huge, wall.
The good news is there there is a tiny bit of a shitstorm being generated about this. The Washington Post via Reuters carried the story on Sunday with the headline "Israel Phone Firm's West Bank Wall Gag Fails to Amuse." It was a withering report, highlighting disgusted quotes from Israelis, both Arabs and Jews.
But the bad news is that Israel is not even near the stage of cognitive dissonance yet. There is no dissonance. The fact that United States had a moment of reconciliation and redemption in January has obviously colored my view of the possibilities for Israelis and Palestinians. But to quote Kossack Mike S, "Others seem to take the wrong lessons from us. Who would have thought that Lebanon and friggin Iran would have learned from us better than Israel and the EU?"