Thursday, October 18, 2007

Hot Israeli Babes

Blogger Mark Shea objects to this video, which shows Israeli girls in bikinis, on the beach:



He thinks that this might undermine Israel's support among Evangelical Christians:

This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder how long American Evangelicals (and even some Catholics) can be snookered by the notion that Israel is something other than a secular nation-state. The Golden Calf appeal to Money Sex and Power evident in the commercial is perfectly representative of typically debased postmodern secular culture and has nothing to do with "fulfillment of prophecy". Israel has the rights and responsibilities of any secular nation-state, but to concoct some notion that it gets special privileges as God's Chosen State is rubbish.

Speaking for myself, I don't think that Israel ought to get special privileges as God's Chosen State. Nonetheless, I find it noteworthy that it is simply impossible to imagine any Muslim state using women in bikinis to promote itself. In that sense, Israel is like us in a way that no Arab state is or will be in the forseeable future.

This doesn't mean I support everything Isreal does, and I agree that it has the same rights and responsibilities as any nation-state. And yes, I think that Israel sometimes deserves criticism. But this video makes me more sympathetic to them, not less.

(Both Mike Potemra at NRO and Insty have a similar take, although as a religious believer Potemra is a lot more into the "Chosen People" stuff than I am. To me, the key point is that Israel is a secular state where women can run around in bikinis if they are so inclined.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nonetheless, it's telling that Mark Shea continues to credit the government of Israel as being responsible for the ad, EVEN AFTER it was immediately pointed out that it wasn't .

From Cross-Currents :
>I started making phone calls to friends in Israeli diplomatic circles. They made phone calls to the Ministry of Tourism. It did not take long for me to learn that the Israeli government did not commission, vet, or approve the ad. The Ministry of Tourism never used the ad....

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