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Presenting... Israel "Lite"

(Jerusalem Post) Nathan Guttman - Whenever Donna Rosenthal, on a tour of the U.S. to talk about her book The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land, arrives at a TV studio, she carries a cassette to provide viewers with a new experience of Israel, pictures of an Ethiopian-born Israeli serving as a pilot, or high-tech Israeli industrial plants. Whenever she speaks about Israel's Arab population, she shows a copy of an Arab-language lifestyle magazine with photos of beautiful, young Arab-Israeli women. At one Ivy League university, a student was surprised to learn that it was not Israelis who carry out suicide attacks; at a rabbinical school, not one was aware that Muslims and Christians serve in the IDF; in Silicon Valley, a group of students was amazed to hear that Israel has a flourishing hi-tech industry; and everywhere, audiences expressed little or no understanding of Israel's ethnic and racial diversity. The stereotypical way in which outsiders view Israel was evident during the designing of the book's jacket, the first draft of which portrayed a haredi man holding a shofar and a Muslim wearing a keffiyeh. It took some persuading on Rosenthal's part to replace the archaic images with young, Western-looking girls, a teenager chewing bubble gum, and a woman soldier.
2006-05-26 00:00:00
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