Western Wall vs. the models

Shas ministers, unhappy with a Tourism Ministry plan to use models in a marketing campaign, suggest marketing the Cave of the Patriarchs, Western Wall tunnels as 'the face of Israel'
Itamar Eichner

In response to a Yedioth Ahronoth article on Tourism Ministry censorship of a presentation that included female models, Shas ministers are proposing that the Western Wall, Rachel’s tomb, and the Cave of the Patriarchs be used instead of models to market Israel around the world.

At Sunday’s special Cabinet session on the tourism crisis, Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog demanded a special USD 150 million budget to market Israel abroad in the next three years. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke of the difficulty in promoting tourism in wartime, and asked Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson to work with Herzog to develop a marketing plan to be financed as part of a multi-year budget.

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Herzog noted that people in other countries are beginning to realize that there is no completely safe place to travel. “The main game is marketing,” said Tourism Ministry Director General Nahum Itzkovich.

The ministers watched ads from an Egyptian tourism campaign to see how a country that has had severe tourism crises can now have seven million tourists a year. The ads presented Egypt as a Western country filled with beaches and other attractions, and Minister Roni Bar-On noted that “the Egyptians must have filmed this before the hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh was blown up.”

It's not the beach

But Shas ministers, unimpressed by Israel’s advertising, criticized the Tourism Ministry decision to use models in skimpy clothing in their advertising campaign.

“If the Tourism Ministry shows things that are just like the rest of the world, no tourist will come here, but if the same films show things that are only in Israel, many tourists will come,” said Minister Eli Yishai.

“Israel has motifs whose significance and uniqueness are amazing: the Western Wall, Rachel’s tomb, the Cave of the Patriarchs, the Western Wall tunnels, and many others that should be shown in the Diaspora. Tourists don’t come for what there is on the beach, but in spite of what there is on the beach.”

Speaking about the security checks that sometimes delay tourists at Ben Gurion airport, Environment Minister Gidon Ezra stated that “this does us tremendous damage. There’s a chance that a person coming to Israel for the first time won’t want to come back. This issue is handled by the General Security Services, and we need to exercise a great deal of flexibility on the issue.”