Israeli TV ad too ‘HOT’ for Iran to handle
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Pop Culture, Technology, tv, War
One thing Israelis can take pride in is their dark, subversive sense of humor.
Iran’s aiming to complete their nuclear program and aim missiles at Tel Aviv? No problem, let’s use it as a comedic backdrop.
That’s the case anyway with the current TV ad campaign by cable provider HOT, which is promoting its ‘on-demand’ epidsodes of the popular spy-comedy show ‘Asfur’ by offering a free Samsung Galaxy tablet as enticement for prospective customers to sign up for the on-demand package.
In the ad, a bored Mossad agent stationed in Iran, apparently to monitor Iran’s nuclear development, meets up with three characters from the show who are also clandestinely in the country dressed as women. Sitting in a café, the agent shows off the Samsung Galaxy, explaining that he used his downtime to use the on-demand option to watch episodes of ‘Asfur.’
At the end of the clip, one of the three Asfur accidentally pushes an application on the tablet over the frantic efforts of the agent, and a nuclear reactor is detonated in the background.
Typical Israeli sophomoric, whistling in the dark, hilarious humor. But evidently neither Iran nor Samsung are seeing the levity in it. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post sourcing Iran’s Press TV, Arsalan Fat’hipour, who heads the Iranian parliament’s energy committee, said over the weekend that Tehran was considering imposing a complete ban on buying all Samsung products. And, of course, they’ll probably aim their first operational nuke at the HOT corporate offices.
Meanwhile Samsung issued a statement saying, “Samsung Electronics is aware of a recent news report in Iranian media regarding an advertisement aired by HOT cable network of Israel. This advertisement was produced by HOT cable network without Samsung’s knowledge or participation… As a member of the global community, Samsung is committed to demonstrating respect for all people and cultures around the globe.”
The question is, how did Iran know that HOT was even airing the ads? Do they have spy here who subscribes to the company’s ‘Three-in-one” cable/Internet/phone service? If so, I hope they’re just as frustrated as the rest of us at having ‘You, Me & Dupree’ screening a million times a month on its movie channels. But I also hope he doesn’t have an itchy trigger finger.
Foto Friday – Never Forget
Filed under: Art, design, education, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, News, Politics, War
Keeping The Memory Alive (Children in the Holocaust) is a poster contest being mounted across the world to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is today (Friday).
An international panel of distinguished judges, comprising experts in both design and in Holocaust Education, selected the 16 best posters from more than 300 submitted by design students from France, Israel and the Czech Republic. They were asked to present works on the theme of Holocaust commemoration, with an emphasis on the nature of memory and the plight of children.
The three finalists designed posters that stood out for their originality, beauty, and meaning.
The work by Veronica Novakova, a designer from the Czech Republic, portrays a well-known childhood punishment. “Traditionally, to correct a child’s errant behavior, an adult will force the ‘naughty’ child to write his misdeed over and over again, until he ‘learns his lesson.’ In this case, the misdeed is written by a child who is forced to denounce his friendship with a Jewish friend.
Designer Martina Cejpova also explores the effect the Nazi anti-Jewish policy had on children. “In her poster, she depicts a universally-recognized image from childhood: a hopscotch board, chalked onto the pavement. This particular game, however, is marred by a hateful symbol of discrimination drawn onto its cross-arms – the yellow star. Its inclusion here indicates that the insidious and pervasive hatred perpetrated by the adult world has also filtered down to the world of children, destroying their innocence.”
French designer Boris Grzeszcak deals with another theme in his work – the nature of memory. “His black-and-white poster presents a striking image of a scarred tree cut to expose the rings. A deep gash cuts to the very core of the trunk, where the word “emet” (truth) is written in tiny letters… [The artist says,] ‘The truth resides in the act of remembering and above all, never forgetting these dramatic events.’”
Peter Chmela of the Czech Republic says, “This poster wants to show the impotence of Jewish children against the Nazi soldiers. I tried to illustrate this theme with a big contrast between soldier and child.”
Yael Boverman, Israel: “The object that a survivor carries throughout a lifetime enables him or her to keep their memory alive. The closet symbolizes a collective closet, reflecting the repressed memories of the Jewish people as a whole. For every survivor, the memory is forever present under the thin veil of everyday functioning, represented by the new shirts, but at the bottom of the stack, there always lies the shirt kept from a different time – the persisting memory of a past that refuses to be abandoned.”
The project is funded by the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF), together with Yad Vashem, Israel; Mémorial de la Shoah, France; and the European Shoah Legacy Institute, Czech Republic; in cooperation with the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme.
In addition to the posters, there is also a lesson plan that provides tools to aid students and teachers in discussing the more universal aspects of memory — as well as the challenges facing those who use the visual arts to commemorate the Holocaust today.
Israel’s big jump
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Technology, War
It’s not something you see every day – or even every 15 years apparently.
Not that anyone other than those that participated actually saw anything, but overnight earlier this week, about 1,000 paratroopers in the IDF conducted a brigade-level parachute jump exercise.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the last time such a drill was held was over 15 years ago, even though soldiers in the Paratroopers Brigade, as well as some other IDF units, continue to undergo parachuting training on a regular basis.
The jump was kept hush-hush, but of course the families and friends of the families knew all about it, which means that most of the country was aware it was taking place. And when the army publicly disclosed the exercise 24 hours later and published photos and video of the jump, proud fathers and mothers scrutinized them for a glimpse of their sons.
According to military assessments, those sons are going to play an important role in any potential future conflict in the region.
“We cannot know what will happen in the changing Middle East and every western military which respects itself needs to know how to parachute large forces, bring them back together and then launch an attack,” Paratroopers Brigade commander Col. Amir Baram told reporters ahead of the jump which was done from Israel Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft over the Negev Desert
The jump went off as planned, and while the commanders were concerned that some paratroopers might be injured during the landing due to the heavy loads they were carrying, the IDF announced that only four soldiers required medical treatment for injuries to their legs.
Take a look at the jump here.
Nostalgia Sunday – Yaffa Yarkoni
Filed under: Art, coexistence, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Movies, Music, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Profiles, tv, War
It would be remiss of me if I did not mention the death of singer Yaffa Yarkoni at the age of 86 last week.
The papers, both local and international, reported on her passing — she was indeed the symbol of the War of Independence generation and a singer of some of Israel’s most beloved songs.
But she was also loved for being a fixture on the Israel Song Festival and Children’s Song Festival circuits, in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively.
For many years, she was an unofficial cultural ambassador for Israel, who charmed visiting international celebrities like Sean Connery, Cliff Richard and Sammy Davis Junior.
Like many women performers with a strong personality and powerful stage presence she, like fellow diva Shoshana Damari, inspired a generation of local drag queens.
Most of all, Yarkoni was a dyed-in-the-wool performer who was born to be onstage. In later years, she came out strongly as a member of Israel’s peace camp. In this interview, she covers topics ranging from cataloging her gowns, (so that she would never wear the same dress twice to a given venue), to face lifts (she didn’t have one and shows the back of her ears to prove it). She also describes the time she went down to Sinai to perform for the troops and ended up giving an impromptu performance to an onlooker who happened to be an Egyptian soldier on the other side of the line. “On the way back, I said to myself, ya allah, maybe we can end this war simply with song?”
Shattered calm close to an Israeli home
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life, News, War
The entrance to Ma'aleh Adumim usually looks like this.
It’s generally a boring place, despite the thousands of cars that pass daily, and the hundreds of construction workers – mostly from the neighboring Palestinian village of Azariyah – who on foot pass through the barrier on the way to their day jobs.
So, it was surprising to find out on Saturday night, after Shabbat came to an end, that a guard at the entrance had been lightly injured in a stabbing attack that morning.
According to The Jerusalem Post report, “a suspected Palestinian terrorist launched a knife attack against a security guard at the entrance to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem on Saturday. The municipal guard was lightly injured in the assault. He was evacuated to hospital for treatment. Police and IDF forces were searching the area for the suspect.”
It took place on a beautifully sunny, mild winter’s day, less than a quarter-mile from my house, unbeknownst to the families in the neighborhood enjoying the day with their families.
An odd thing about the incident – generally Palestinians aren’t coming into Ma’aleh Adumim on Shabbat, since there’s no building or repair work going on. So either the perpetrator made a special trip to attack, or he had another reason to be coming to the city.
Either way, whether the attack was the result of cumulative anger, hate and frustration at Israeli ‘occupiers, or he had a personal vendetta about a work issue that left him humiliated or enraged, or whether he was mentally unstable and the guard was a natural target, the ‘business-as-usual’ feeling that passes for reality in the West Bank is a tenuous one that can be broken at any time with ease of a knife’s steel blade passing in the wind.
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