What’s next, the Gaza Strippers? CFJS and Sex Dave Gordon - Saturday, 6 March, 2010 (3094 views, Comment on this article)

 We all know that sex sells — blue jeans, beer, sportscars. And now it’s also being used to sell a country — Israel.
Toronto-based Canadian Federation of Jewish students wants you to think of Israel as a sexy place to be, as an unusual response to Israeli Apartheid Week.
        CFJS began a web-based Israel advocacy campaign three weeks ago called Size Doesn’t Matter. The centrepiece, a You Tube video, features a man and woman lying in bed, suggestively discussing his equipment — but, when the camera pans down to a map of the Jewish State between his legs, we understand the double entendre of the small size of Israel. Ho ho ho.
    The CFJS-run website www.sizedoesntmatter.ca, furthermore, offers listings of events from over 20 Canadian university campuses: films and speakers that highlight the accomplishments of Israel in fields such as in medicine, technology, science. The site also, as it happens, is replete with photos of bikini-clad beach models of both sexes. Oh, and the campaign also includes distributing condoms throughout many Canadian campuses with the words Size Doesn’t Matter on the package.
    The premise is: answering lies, demonization, and hatred with … penis jokes and Victoria Secret swimwear. Very gutsy, eh?
It strikes me that using sex as a marketing tool is always an appeal to the lowest common denominator and all the moreso on such a serious, nuanced political issue.
    I am aware they’re trying to be cutesy instead of intentionally “dirty,” but it hardly matters, as clever as they think it is.
I expect this from American Apparel or Lindsay Lohan — neither having deep, political or cultural messages to bestow on anyone.
    Some seem to think this campaign’s a sweet idea. The Canadian Jewish News’ recent editorial offered effusive praise for the project. The reporter who wrote on the project, however, failed to include any voices critical of the move. One wonders how much can be read into the single (cherrypicked?) quote from a student who found the campaign “refreshing.”
    The editorial implies the folks at CFJS are marketing geniuses that have broke new ground of McLuhan-esque proportions. The campaign has been described by the CJN as “sleek” and “sly”. (Missing are words like “smart” or “poignant.”)
    “Let’s admit it — for people well past their student days, perhaps [it is] even uncomfortable,” the CJN writes. Though, it’s not just “uncomfortable” for older fogies who just don’t get it. In fact, The Jewish Tribune reported some of those actually in their “student days” who feel as though the attention-getting ploy has no place, and is just plain off-putting. I’m in my late-30s and am inclined to agree this isn’t about being an out-of-touch old fogie. Stupid is stupid.
        The CJN editorial continued: “The CFJS may not have used the language or the methods of their parents” May not? Definitely not. That’s why this campaign is getting the attention it’s getting. It’s because only post-adolescents could pull this shtick. I know they know this campaign was Sex and the City meets fratboy humour.
    The editorial insists the campaign works well. Just how well? No one’s taken a poll or a long-term study — just an unverified twenty thousand website hits of indeterminate length, for the time being. That, and CFJS touts it as the best. campaign. ever. Just because people have visited the website does not mean that they’ve been convinced by its crude messages.
    The chair of Israel affairs and advocacy for the CFJS Rebecca Cherniak explained the crux of the campaign to the publication Shalom Life: “We think students are more critical and want to understand more than the typical slogans they see.” By ‘critical’ she must mean pertaining to criticism; since, surely, this campaign has no one putting on their critical thinking caps. How this campaign’s shallow, ephemeral quasi-message is any different from typical slogans, I have no idea.
    What’s the secret to promoting Israel? For the CFJS, it’s double entendres, juvenile humour. Naturally. This must be, they assume, the lingua franca of the 20-year-olds of the ADHD Generation.
        But this is an issue where the stakes are too high. We send our kids to university to raise the level of debate; to give them knowledge and the ability to be articulate. I think that given how contentious this issue has become on campus the last few years, CFJS has taken the wrong approach. When campus quasi-intellectuals are actively demonizing Israel in a one-sided debate, we need to be more articulate in our responses. Israel has so much moral high ground and does so much good. We needn’t resort to bad jokes and Maxim photo shoots, however slick.
    Alas, in the marketplace of ideas, CFJS decided to compete with toilet humour. So what’s next, Gaza Strippers?