Sponsored by the ExploreIsrael travel company, a whitewashing trip sparks calls for Oscar nominees to reject "Israel propaganda".
“Mazel Tov on your Oscar nomination! ExploreIsrael.com would like to invite you and your plus-one on a 10-day all inclusive VIP trip to Israel. Including first class airfare, 5 star hotel, security detail, executive car service ... and all the falafel you can eat!”
So reads a voucher being offered to Oscar nominees in the best actor/actress, best supporting and director categories as part of the notorious Oscar goodie bags.
The inclusion of such a trip for Oscar elites is a transparent attempt by the Israeli government to sweeten the image of the country and sell Israel as a desert paradise, not a repressive colonial state.
Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 and continues to build Jewish-only settlements while not only denying rights and basic resources to Palestinians, but actively attempting to push them from the land through home demolitions, confiscation of goods, no urban planning, few municipal services and arbitrary detention. It is an occupation and it must be said loud and clear.
In an 8 February press release from the Tourism Ministry, a statement from Levin reads:Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin recognizes the impact of a Hollywood VIP trip on hearts and minds, especially as Israel increasingly looks like a pariah state.
"These are the most senior people in the film industry in Hollywood and leading opinion-formers who we are interested in hosting here in Israel so that they will experience the country first hand and not through the media. If they do indeed accept the invitation, their visit will have enormous resonance among millions of fans and followers, including social media. The very fact that they are considering visiting Israel places the option in the public discourse in the social and professional circles in which the stars move."
Levin certainly doesn’t mention it by name, but it seems clear that Israel is feeling the hurt from a ten-year Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The hope that attendees will “experience the country first hand” instead of through the media suggests Israel is concerned about the bad press and negative attention it is receiving, just as Palestine is ascending to the global level. Recent developments include a Palestinian embassy in Brazil, the flying of a Palestinian flag outside the U.N. headquarters in New York, and the granting by the U.N. of Palestine as a non-member observer state.
The Palestinian Authority has also brought Israel up on war crime convictions in the international criminal court at the Hague, primarily for its 2014 assault on Gaza that left over 2,000 civilians dead.
Co-founder of the BDS movement Omar Barghouti wrote a scathing response to the Oscar’s decision to include the Israel trip in their goodie bags, and urged the celebrities to come out in support of the cultural boycott of Israel—just as Roger Waters, Elvis Costello and Lauryn Hill before them.
“There are no Hunger Games in Gaza but there is real hunger, and it is induced by years of Israeli occupation and siege. We hope Oscar nominees will take the moral path of rejecting this free propaganda gift from Capitol while its brutal troops and settlers burn and colonize our District 12,” Barghouti writes, referring to the popular Hollywood film the Hunger Games.
Later on, he elaborates on the Israeli campaign of facts-on-the-ground, which asserts Israeli dominion over Palestinian lands by putting Israelis in those places, thus making it harder to dispute Israeli sovereignty.
“The proposed tour sets out to create the impression that occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, is part of Israel despite the fact that the UN, including the US, recognizes it as occupied Palestinian territory. This comes at a time when Israel is accelerating its ethnic cleansing and killing of Palestinians in Jerusalem and entrenching its colonialism and apartheid policies,” adds Barghouti.
And a quick look on ExploreIsrael.com—the Brooklyn based travel company run by Orthodox Jews offering the Oscars gift—reveals the company to be working on the part of erasing Palestinian claims of ownership to the land.
For example in the “Lets explore!” section of its website, there is a listing for the City of David attraction complete with tagline “The Bible come to life.” The only problem is the City of David is a manufactured tourist attraction, based on a few First Temple artifacts, and built entirely within the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan.
The settler group Elad, with enormous outside financial backing as well as compliance of the Israeli Antiquities and Nature and Parks Authorities, has taken over hundreds of Palestinian homes for the development of their tourist attraction. Street signs, put up by the group, make no mention of the Palestinian neighborhoods, nor do they read in Arabic despite the fact that it is supposedly an official language of the state.
Elad uses archaeology, whether real or fabricated, to openly push out the Palestinian residents of Silwan. The Jerusalem municipality demolishes homes constantly and in an absurd but horrifyingly true turn of events, Elad was unable to push a single Palestinian family from the newly built, multi-million dollar City of David visitor center. So the family, in order to enter and exit their home, must walk through an attraction something like Disney World, past often violent settlers and ignorant tourists. Their mistake? Being Palestinian.
ExploreIsrael.com also lists a shooting range in the Jewish-only West Bank settlement of Gush Etzion as something to do while in Israel. No mention is made of the fact that the settlement is illegal under international law, or as Barghouti writes, both the U.N. and the U.S. recognize it as occupied Palestinian territory.
“If you don’t want to do hard core, anti-terror training, there is also paintball here,” the website reads.
Let’s hope the Oscar celebrities don’t like paintball.
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