ISRAELI PRIME minister Binyamin Netanyahu has cancelled a controversial advertising campaign aimed at convincing expatriate Israelis to return home after a backlash from American Jews.
The campaign, funded by Israel’s immigration ministry, targeted areas in the US with large Israeli expat communities, such as Los Angeles and Miami. The message on billboards and TV commercials was that the longer they stay away the more likely they will lose their Israeli and Jewish identity.
One clip showed Israeli grandparents talking by Skype to their grandchildren in America over the holiday period. With candles marking the Jewish festival of Hanukah in the background the grandmother asks her granddaughter if she knows what holiday it is and she answers “Christmas”! The four adults give each other worried looks.
Another clip featured an Israeli woman commemorating Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers but unable to explain the significance to her American Jewish partner, and ends with the message: “They will always remember Israel but their partners might not always understand; Help them to come back.”
Although immigration of Jews worldwide has always been a central tenet of Zionism, American Jews condemned the ad campaign as offensive. Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, described the campaign as “chutzpa” in his blog on the Atlantic website.
“The idea that America is no place for a proper Jew, and that a Jew who is concerned about the Jewish future should live in Israel, is archaic,” he wrote.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, described the clips as demeaning . “While we appreciate the rationale behind the Israeli government’s appeal to its citizens living in the US to return to Israel, we are concerned that some may be offended by what the video implies about American Jewry.”