Censorship Note: The Google bot that crawls the net spotted the previous image I displayed here of Nikki Belucci. The bot apparently is extremely prudish and found that the suggestive pose would offend Google’s family-orientated audience. Google’s ad service is quite chaste, even when there is an important political point to be made about censorship. And it doesn’t stop Google from engaging in censorship itself. On pain of being consigned to the Valley of Google Death, the bot has forced me to substitute a more decorous image of Naughty Nikki.
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Boy, this is the type of post you’ve never seen in this blog and probably will never see again. But if Huffington Post can get away with prurient journalism, why can’t I? And besides, there is a serious political point to this story that won’t get lost in the visuals I promise you.
Unilever is marketing a “male grooming brand” (isn’t that what they used to call “soap”?) called Axe in Israel. In the process of doing so, it did what such companies do all over the world: it had a party. A raucous party with scantily clad men and women dancing, drinking, having a good time. Not my type of party, but hey, it’s what happens everywhere. It’s what sells soap.
But not in Israel. You see the Haredi there think they own the place. Not a thing can happen that offends their moral sensibilities without their getting their noses into it. So Omigod, there was a topless Hungarian DJ and Playboy model, Niki Belucci, at the party shaking her booty? “Not here,” say the Haredi. “We’re gonna put a stop to this right now.”
So they’ve blown their stack and threatened a boycott of Unilever products which apparently are quite popular in the Haredi community (who knew?). I’ve never known the Haredi to pay any closer attention to personal hygiene than secular Jews, but maybe my experience isn’t representative.
Unilever reacted with typical corporate fright and issued an immediate apology. Too bad. The Haredi in Israel seem to always get what they want. They have a stranglehold over social policy. They have veto power over too much of political life in Israel thanks to David Ben Gurion’s desperate desire to include them in his first governing coalition.
In short, Israel is a barely concealed theocracy with the Haredi lording it over the secular majority in many public and private spheres. Now, we find that secular Jews can’t attend a party without the ultra-Orthodox getting their knickers in a knot over it. Isn’t it about time Israelis say they’re sick and tired of this puritanical meddling? Isn’t it about time they tell the Haredi to butt out of what’s not their business? Is Israel a democracy in which all can exercise their personal rights? Or is it a Jewish fiefdom in which all must kowtow to the moral whims of a minority?
What particularly incenses me is the Taliban rabbis who are insisting that Unilever must apologize not just to Haredi but to secular Jews as well:
Rabbi Gabriel Papenheim, who chairs the Kashrut Committee for Badatz, told TheMarker that the matter was initially to have ended with their apology, but Badatz is now demanding that an apology also be published in the secular press. “The insult was to the secular community no less than to us,” he said. Papenheim added that if Unilever refused, the Badatz leaders would convene to decide on sanctions against the company.
Pardon my language but this is utter bullshit. Secular Jews don’t want or need an apology. What they need is the freedom to live in peace without Haredi interference. What this alleged secular apology would do is put the secular community on notice that the Haredi are acting as moral police on their (secular Jews’) behalf. Thank you, but no thank you is what I’d say.
I’m featuring pictures of scantily clad women today and a video (yes, there are naked people so if you’re Haredi do NOT click this link!) of the Axe party (thanks to Joel Katz of Religion and State in Israel) because I want to protest Haredi domination of Israeli society. I hope my Israeli readers will spread both the images and video link far and wide (they probably are already) and join in my protest. If we disseminate this widely enough and get it on Israeli TV then perhaps the Jewish Taliban will get the idea that they overstepped their authority.
Oh, and Joel has provided a list of Unilever products which the Haredi should start boycotting if they want to take this thing seriously:
AXE, Amora, Becel, Bertolli, Blue Bank, Calve, Dife, Close Up, Comfort, Country Crock, Domestos, Doriana, Dove, Flora, Heartbrand, Hellmann’s, Knorr, Lifebuoy, Lipton, Lux, Omo, Pond’s, Radiant, Rama, Rexona, Sienal, Slim Fast, Sunlight, Sunsik, Surf, Vaseline, Wish-Bone.
Why is a bare-breasted woman offensive to Israel but killing Palestinian children isn’t?
And by the way, when are these Haredi rabbis going to shut down the prostitution biz in Israel? Because I understand that human trafficking and prostitution are as big a problem there as they are in Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries.
The hypocrisy of the pious. I have never known a conservative religious society that did NOT have a problem with prostitution, drugs, exploitation of women and children, and other illicit activities against the prevailing moral code. In fact, last time I was in NYC with my husband, a good ten years ago, I was openly ogled on St. Marks Place by a pack of Chasidic young men who had just gotten out of a car on 3rd Avenue and were clearly there to pick up chicks. They hadn’t figured out yet that gentrification had hit 3d and St. Marks and not every woman at that intersection was a whore. As is typical of men from sheltered, overly conservative societies, they couldn’t or didn’t care to distinguish “respectable” women from streetwalkers. I guess if you weren’t dressed like a Chasidic woman then you weren’t respectable. We see the same behavior in young men breaking loose from conservative Islamic societies.
My point – even the Taliban had members who were acting out with sex and drugs, I guarantee you, and I am sure the Haredi do, too. Repression makes these behaviors much worse.
@Leila Abu-Saba: It grieves me to say this but the reason is the children are Palestinian and not Jewish.
During my my first academic year in Jerusalem, my Columbia roommate wanted me to meet a female American friend of his who also attended the Hebrew University. Before I could do so, I was riding on a Jerusalem public bus and witnessed a woman get up and say something irate to the Haredi man sitting next to her as she stormed away fr her seat. I later learned that this was my roommate’s friend and the man sitting next to her had groped her. Welcome to the world of the Haredi. This is what happens when you deny human instincts.
Another person I met recently told me a story about being sexually abused at a Haredi orphanage and of course no one took his complaints seriously. I’m not saying that these things only happen among the ultra Orthodox. But I am saying that they happen when you either ignore or repress or express shame about human urges.
richard,
the real travesty here was that gossip reporter having the absolute tastelessness to ask niki, “are those boobs real?” israel, the state where you can’t even find a classy video about a topless dj party for a deodorant.
i’m guessing that axe has been slipping a few shekels to this rabbi papenheim, because the publicity they are getting is just priceless.
so when are you richard going to get past taking these haredi boobs seriously? oops i’m punning again.
Ben & Jerry’s is a Unilever product (I only know this because I used to work with Ben!).
In May Ben & Jerry’s came out with a new flavor, which drew the ire of the Israilers. The flavor is called “Imagine Whirled Peace.” It’s a tribute to John Lennon. The problem is that the flavor (via the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation) raises money for two nonprofits, one of which brings Israeli and Palestinian kids to the US for camp. In response, a “conservative” columnist has been tearing into Ben & Jerry’s for promoting “moral equivalency camps.” (In case you don’t know, “moral equivalency camps” are summer camps that bring together Israeli kids and the children of “terrorists.”)
A Conservative Columnist works herself into a frenzy over this. If I recall, she even refers readers to her old blog postings about Ben & Jerry’s, in which she oh-so-bitingly suggests new flavors like Hamas Caramel Crunch. Apparently, she’s had it in for Ben and Jerry since she found out that they supported the uber-jihadi Cindy Sheehan.
@tzvee: Yeah, that question was about the maturity level of a 14 yr old. And then the answer: “Yes.” Like she’s going to answer, “No, Dr. Eggeshehereh, best plastic surgeon in Buda!”
This subject invites punning.
@Linda: That sounds like a juicy story to blog about. If you find any links to the conservative columnists blog posts let me know. I love making fun of narischkeit (“foolishness”) like that.
I remember hearing about Orthodox? Jews in Israel stoning the cabs driving through their neighborhoods because their drivers were working on the Sabbath.
My first thought was, wouldn’t hurling rocks be considered “work” as well?
I agree with Leila that the the obscenity of death and destruction inflicted upon the innocent is a far greater priority. The cultural disconnect she mentions also reminds me of hearing about Amish/Mennonite youth meth/crack dealers. Seems that piety tends to privide cover for a multitude of “sins.”
Don’t they have nude beaches in Israel? They used to.
One of my archaeologist buddies once encountered a Haredi flasher, in the streets of Mea Shearim.
Zhu Bajie
Yes, I think parties such as these are exactly what Herzl, Ben-Yehuda et al envisioned