Vice ran essentially the same photo spread twice, sexing up the Israeli Defense Forces.
For the second time in the last five months, Vice has run a bizarre, titillating photo spread of “girlish,” “teenage” Israeli soldiers that manages to be obtuse and borderline creepy at the same time.
- Photos From the Everyday Lives of Young Female Israeli Soldiers (3/15/16)
- The Defiant Femininity of Israel’s Female Soldiers (8/29/16)
It’s unclear what’s “defiant” about serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, but the breezy blurb accompanying the Mayan Toledano photo spread has some ideas:
As paradoxical as it may sound, Toledano’s photos reveal that what seems like these girls’ indifference is actually an expression of their autonomy. In a way, it’s their girly, teenage boredom that reflects a passive, sleepy protest against violence.
What this means is never made clear, but it would probably come as a surprise to those in Israel who actually refuse military service that serving in the IDF is a form of “protest against violence”—so long as one has pouty lips and “girly, teenage boredom.”
Vice‘s IDF photospreads: a “hipster reboot of laddie mag apartheid propaganda”?
Some observers of the Israel/Palestine conflict have found these glamorous spreads offensive, saying they both normalize and glamorize a military that levels daily humiliations and violence aimed at Palestinians. Author and activist Steven Salaita said, “Vice again provides a hip, glamorous appeal to those who enforce Israeli settler colonization.” Journalist Zab Mustefa tweeted, “Another Vice story trying to normalize Israeli occupation by romanticizing female IDF ‘defiant’ soldiers.”
“It’s the hipster reboot of laddie mag apartheid propaganda,” added Max Blumenthal, author of Goliath.
What raises a red flag about these spreads is the similarities to previous pro-Israel marketing efforts, including one almost ten years ago when the Israeli Foreign Ministry paid for a photo spread in “men’s magazine” Maxim to improve the country’s public image (Jerusalem Post, 3/22/07):
“All the surveys we have done show that the biggest hasbara problem that Israel has is with males from the age of 18–35,” said David Saranga, the consul for media and public affairs at Israel’s consulate in New York. “Israel does not seem relevant for them, and that is bad for branding,” he said. “In order to change their perception of Israel as only a land of conflict, we want to present to them an Israel that interests them.” Which is where good-looking women in skimpy bikinis come in.
Maxim on IDF solidiers: “They’re drop dead gorgeous and can take apart an Uzi in seconds.”
It’s unclear whether the Vice spreads are part of any subtle effort at “hasbara”—the Hebrew word for “explaining,” used to refer to Israeli PR or propaganda. The Maxim message (9/13/07) was typically unsubtle: “They’re drop-dead gorgeous and can take apart an Uzi in seconds. Are the women of the Israeli Defense Forces the world’s sexiest soldiers?” the copy read, under the headline “The Chosen Ones: Israeli Defense Forces.” But the impact of the Vice photospreads would seem to be similar–albeit with more of a hipster veneer.
The Israeli Defense Forces previously publicized their use of Instagram to sex up their image and present a youthful, relatable fighting force. As Benjamin Doherty of Electronic Intifada (12/26/12) wrote at the time:
During “Operation Pillar of Defense,” Israel’s eight-day bombing campaign on Gaza in November, which killed more than 170 Palestinians, including three dozen children, the Instagram outlet was exploited to disseminate photos of soldiers and square infographics specially formatted for Instagram.
Major media outlets, including BuzzFeed, MSN and CBC, published photos from individual soldiers’ accounts, which were ostensibly personal.
In April 2016, Mondoweiss’ Dan Cohen (4/29/16) criticized Vice for passing off Israeli propaganda about IDF soldier Elor Azarya’s execution of a Palestinian as a “leaked report.” Vice (4/28/16) uncritically repeated claims that Azaraya was a one-off zealot while downplaying his popular support among Israelis.
Vice, it should be noted, also runs coverage sympathetic to Palestinians, or at least from a Palestinian perspective.
The last major offensive by the Israel Defense Force, Operation Protective Edge in 2014, killed almost 1,500 Palestinian civilians and wounded 10,000 more. In the same conflict, seven Israeli civilians and 66 IDF soldiers were killed.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
Messages to Vice’s editor can be sent to editor@vice.com (or via Twitter: @VICE). Remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
They look attractive to me. You guys try any angle to make Israel look bad when all over the world we see the consequences of radical Islamic society on non-Muslims and Muslims alike. If the Palestinians really want peace they need to get rid of the embedded violence in their society and remove the power from those with guns who move around inside their country doing anything their guns will let them while outside forces like Iran supply, train and goad them on.
Really … this article is pathetic. It just goes to show how Israel is united in its own defense.
How about western nations stop invading, bombarding, opressing, stealing resources from arab countries for a change? I bet things would be radically different!
I’m curious what you think of the BDS movement then @BruceK. I’m also against violent resistance to Israeli occupation, but the largest Palestinian protest happening right now is not violent at all- it’s centered around boycotting Israeli exports and businesses from the occupied territories. Isn’t that an example of Palestinians ‘getting rid of the embedded violence in their society?’
No, it’s not a case Palestinians ‘getting rid of the embedded violence in their society?’ It’s a case of Palestinians adding a non violent weapon to their arsenal of violence.
That’s an interesting argument. You could just as easily make the same claim against Nelson Mandela, who only turned to non-violent protest out of pragmatism when violent resistance to South African apartheid was failing.
(And who, coincidentally, also supported the Palestinian resistance movement)
“Really … this article is pathetic”? You didn’t say anything about the article.
Like most defenders of Israel you’ve got it backwards not to mention massively double standard.
It seems odd that you can justify a nation that recieves billions of dollars of “aid” in the form of modern US weaponry every year which they use to carry out a daily campaign of violent oppression (aside from periodic “mowing the lean” operations) and violence against what is essentially a refugee population, cast out of their homelands, yet somehow the Palestinians shouldn’t have any guns and should get rid of the embedded violence in their society!
Breathtaking hypocrisy!
Thanks for proving the article’s claim about the existence of Hasbara trolls.
Israeli hasbara descends to a disgusting new low.
Girls just wanna have guns
Oh my gosh! These gals are scrumptious!!
I vote the women of the Israeli Defense Forces the world’s sexiest occupiers of another country!!!
Why not a pictorial of some of these lovelies cavorting in one of the new homes built on Palestine land, on sites stolen from the residents? Maybe, just for giggles, include pictures of the previous homes and orchards being destroyed by those lovable Israeli occupiers?
Bad taste seems to be a universal quality.
Steve, Here is what you need to deal with: Jews, can’t fuck around with them anymore.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/86/54/6d/86546d931a27015257ea632789638c49.jpg
“Defiant femininity” is an oxymoron if ever there was one. Explain what exactly is challenging or defiant about femininity? If it were about defiance, men would be doing it. These women look colonized, sexualized, (and no, it doesn’t make any difference to me if they chose to self sexualize in order to garner male approval) posed in ways men have defined under patriarchal culture as “sexy”–in other words, weak, silly, made up, impossibly young, flawlessly airbrushed, (imagine a man looking this way and you immediately see how submissive and sill femininity is) eager for a male to do whatever he want to them, etc. This always seems to be the role women are assigned in men’s wars or “revolutionary” actions: that of f*ck object. It may be many things, but defiant is not one of them.
So, are there photos of the two women in the second photo, like, making out, or something? Because that would be terrible, definitely terrible! But you should totally show them, in the interest of “completeness”, or whatever.