When I was growing up and we only had one non-commercial TV channel in Israel, we used to fantasize about commercials. We used to envy those lucky people living abroad who get to see those fun mini-clips, all glossy and depicting a larger than life atmosphere. Hey, we even used to get to the movies early, so as “not to miss on the commercials”.
It’s 2009 now and Israel has long since joined the rest of the world in its commercial-aversion tendencies. However, local TV ads do provide an interesting perspective of how your “average” Israeli feels about things. Here, watch this one, it’s short and then I’ll share what it conveys for your average Zionist Jewish Israeli:
In case you’re too busy to watch, the gist of it is this: reality-style shot of a group of soldiers in full combat gear patrols along the infamous fence when suddenly a soccer ball (locally known as a football) comes landing on their jeep from the Palestinian side. They anxiously scour the area and as they discover the offending object they kick it back to the other side. As it’s returns within seconds, they “take up” the other side on for a weird game across the tall concrete fence.
Without going into the various sub-texts of this clip (some of them quite obnoxious and have nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict), the message it is trying to send out to their potential Israeli customers is pretty obvious to me. It’s one of peace and bringing people together. It’s one saying, “let’s beat each other at sports instead of shooting at each other.” Naive? obviously, as the clever Palestinian response clip here demonstrates:
Obviously, faced with objects hurled at them from the Palestinian side, IDF soldiers have a different response. They shoot tear gas at the demonstrators on the Palestinian side. Makers of this clever clip are trying to point out that, I think, that Israel/IDF is not the fun friendly lot the Cellcom ad makes them out to be.
To which I say, well duh! It’s a commercial, people. Even us naive Israelis like myself have long since learned to tell the difference between commercials and real life. I have yet to see people who drink diet Coca Cola look like the ones in the ads, all fresh, energetic and living their fun sporty life constantly showered with refreshing shards of ice. Oh, and our car, you should take a look at it – I doubt that’s how Hyundai would have it portrayed on its ads… not to mention our roads look nothing like those beautiful scenic routes their commercials place it at.
So what? Since when are commercials meant to give you an accurate realistic look on life? Instead of getting so angry at the Cellcom ad, why not look at the positive side? at the dream and fantasy it’s trying to sell? of soldiers responding with a game of football instead of gas grenades? Ok, so maybe it won’t be the idea picture, but any picture that has a game of sports in it instead of actual ammunition is better, IMO, than a picture of violence and at this point in our conflict I think it’s a picture worth fantasizing about.
on Aug 10th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
They are there every week, waiting for someone to kick that ball back.
To help prevent war and promote peace, I try to address how the propaganda enables war and violence and what we can do to prevent it. The pro-war propaganda attempts to “demonize the enemy” which causes prejudice, racism, hate, and fear, in an attempt to overcome our natural objection to killing each other.
Look at prejudice as an absence of knowledge, and start filling in the gaps. Soccer is good common ground to let each other know that there are people who will kick the ball back.
To restore humanity’s natural rejection to killing one another, the people need to be humanized. You humanize your own for security, and humanize the “enemy” for peace.