I usually don’t go slumming through the darker passages of the demimonde, as I’ve passed what Shakespeare called my “salad days.” But Omer Gershon, you forced me to. I swear this guy is amazing. He’s been called an actor and a marketer, which gives him far too much credit. What he really appears to be is a slightly degenerate club promoter and hypster who dabbles in this that and the other just tryin’ to make ends meet. How he got mixed up in an Israeli government plan to smear the Flotilla with a hoax video is anybody’s guess. My wild guess is that Guy Seeman, a U.S. born intern in Bibi’s office who first tweeted the Gaza video, met these hooligans in some Tel Aviv club and the rest is history.
The Lede published an update on Gershon by Dina Kraft and you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried:
Dina Kraft, a freelance journalist who has contributed to The Times, writes from Israel to point out that she has interviewed Omer Gershon in the past and tried to call him on Tuesday, but was unable to reach him. Ms. Kraft interviewed Mr. Gershon in September, 2009, as part of her research for this Times article about Tel Aviv. At the time, he was helping to run a popular nightclub in the city called Zippy Trippo.
In that article, Ms. Kraft pointed to Zippy Trippo as an example of “Tel Aviv’s ability to reinvent itself.” The underground club, she explained, had been just one year earlier, “a listening post for the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, dubbed by its workers as the Facility.”
Dena Shunra corrects this report (and thanks for her research as well), noting the correct name of the club as “Zizi Trippo” (but Zippy Trippo has a nice ring to it). The club’s former life as a Shabak spy nest has so many delicious satiric possibilities. Like perhaps they made the hoax video in the club and uploaded it to the web on Shabak equipment. From there it went viral on the government computer network and was picked up by Guy Seeman, working as an intern in the PM’s office. Who knows? If you’ve got a satiric theory why don’t you add it to the comment thread. The sky’s the limit.
By the way, if you read Hebrew and want to read a hilarious send-up of the video which skewers all its obvious fakeries, go enjoy. The post at the Cold Fusion blog has the brilliantly awful title: In the Next Hasbara Video: “Linda,” “British” “Activist” from Holon, will be Raped at the Hands of “Arabs” from “Biliin,” Which is in Netanya.
Now on to Omer Gershon’s next unbelievable adventure. He and his video pal, Elad Magdasi produced this entirely degernate video on behalf of Puma shoes which, in addition to selling shoes, posits the questionable theory that jumping on a mattress while wearing Puma shoes leads inexorably to lesbian sex, twosomes, threesomes and God knows what else. I feature the video here solely for sociological research purposes to witness the depravity of the Tel Aviv club scene, or at least some of its less palatable figures. And you don’t need to know any Hebrew to watch it because there is none. This is sheer naked merchandising in the most perverse, disgusting manner.
Finally, Mr. Gershon has the distinction of having helped produced another video for AIDS Israel which markets itself in the following way:
…It is a viral campaign, “to have the whole country infected.”
I guess when you take as many drugs as these people appear to be taking something like that appears to be funny. Or maybe I’m just an old fogie who appreciates out of date values like candidness, truthfulness, and transparency.
Omer Gershon appears briefly in another video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW1cX7UFP-k This promo for XL Energy Drinks shows a man beating a person in a burka, which is to say beating a Muslim woman, with a (soft) stick or bat. Gershon is visible just for a flash at the beginning. Later in the video, he’s performing a kind of tango maneuver where he licks down his female dance partner’s leg.
I don’t dwell on the details of these videos. Youth all over the world distinguish themselves from the older generations by offending and disrupting moral and aesthetic sensibilities. It’s not a universal phenomenon, but it is a global one.
Yes, but I think there’s a sort of slick degenerateness about Gershon’s behavior that is very Tel Avivi & very indicative of a society corrupted & morally anaesthetized by its “predicament.”
It looks like a man under the burka, but the “bat” is some sort of stuffed mace with little stuffed spikes.
The ad has a real Weimar 1932 quality about it.
Might the new flotilla’s organizers be persuaded to call a press conference and offer Tel Aviv an ironclad quid pro quo? The entire world faithfully promises to recognize Israel’s right to exist within its pre-1967 borders, if Israel recognizes the flotilla’s (& indeed all Good Samaritans’) right to exist.
I recommend Yonatan Schapira as bearer of these good tidings.
or they just pay him as an actor…
But the worst part is that one day he might be FM or PM of Israel following in the steps of the club bouncer and no doubt his idol, Lieberman.
Since anyone can be PM or President in Israel: terrorists, rapists…Begin, Katsav…hey, there’s hope for this guy too!
Richand,
How is a stupid Puma campain is translated into:
“to witness the depravity of the Tel Aviv club scene”
This has nothign to do with Tel-Aviv club scene and everything to do with Puma.
Since Puma is a German company you may claim it to show the “depravity of the Berlin club scene”.
But hey, if you think that a couple of teens jumping on mattress is a “depravity scene”, so please have fun with it. All the other people, the degenrate people who like to have fun, come, visit Tel Aviv and have fun.
You can be hetro/homo or xeno, as long as you want to have fun, come over.
How much do you want to bet that those featured in this wonderful bit of depravity are Gershon’s & Magdasi’s friends fr. the Tel Aviv club scene where they are so prominent? And these people were NOT teens. If you spent any amt of time around teens you’d know that these people are older than that. In fact, Gershon, who’s featured briefly is I believe 24.
You can be paleo too as in paleo-Zionist. But you definitely can’t be Pali, as in Palestinian. Because Palestinians, unlike girls (tip of the hat to Cyndi Lauper), just don’t wanna have fun.
Actually I have seen many young secular Arab Israelis in Tel Aviv clubs. They seem to love it. Richard, you cannot be serious in thinking this is unique to Tel Aviv. Do you have any idea what goes on in the nightlife of New York? Or in places like Ibiza? See for yourself footage from a typal Ibiza night club http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-cbUKkS4Lk&feature=related
Since you are a citizen of a country which has the biggest porn industry in the world, if you have a problem with sexually explicit videos you might want to start right at home. Seen MTV recently? Your hypocrisy and selective venom at Israel is totally absurd.
What do I care about Israeli Palestinians in Israeli clubs? That’s a non sequitur & completely off topic.
I never said that a degenerate druggy club scene was unique to Tel Aviv, but T.A.’s scene is particularly unique to Israel & any Israeli who’s ever been in one of these clubs would recognize the club promoter Gershon & the actors, models or whatever you want to call them in the video. Right out of the T.A. demimonde.
And as for porn industry’s around the world, again fully off topic & non sequitur which you seem especially good at.
The point was that Gershon comes right out of that scene & that his truthfulness & credibility in the fake Flotilla video can be measured by the content & quality of his other “work.”
I don’t know how anyone in Israel can have fun especially this kind of “fun” when next door people are suffering as a direct result of Israel’s oppressive policies against them and throwing them out on the street and stealing their homes and land.
I’m sorry, I just couldn’t have fun in a country that’s doing this to people on whose land they’re having “fun”.
In a comment on Gershon’s flotilla video on Mondoweiss site I left this comment:
—-Gershon says “be careful who you go to bed with. It could be Hamas” Next thing you know Netanyahu will send in prostitutes who will complain they are not being allowed to go to bed with any one on the flotilla.—-
http://sajepress.com
lol
Netanyahu may well do that..sounds just like his sort of “hasbara” 🙂
If the choices are the social degeneracy of Tel Aviv vs. the Theo-Fascism of Jerusalem, all things being equal, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.
Or as W.C. Fields once said, “Two weeks in Philadelphia.”
Yes. Exactly. I knew I heard that somewhere, but for the life of me I just could’nt remember where. Mea Culpa Mr. Fields.
The original joke goes something like this for those who don’t know or remember: “You’ve won 1st prize, a week in Philadelphia! And you’ve won 2nd prize, TWO weeks in Philadelphia!” The inimitable W.C. Fields.