JERUSALEM — What image comes to mind when you hear the word “settler”? A lithe model strutting down the stage in a miniskirt?
Didn’t think so.
A stunning and secular head-turner is, however, just the image settlement leaders hope you will have, once their new campaign gets under way.
The Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip — also known by its Hebrew acronym, Yesha — has asked several fashion models, including last year’s Miss Israel, Yamit Har-Noy, to star in a promotional campaign for the settlements. Har-Noy, a resident of the settlement Oranit, has not yet responded to the proposal.
The move is part of a Yesha Council advertising campaign slated to begin soon. Its goal: to win over the hearts and minds of the public by “showing Israelis that we residents of Yesha are no different from them,” says Ezra Rosenfeld, a Yesha Council spokesman.
“Of the quarter of a million people living in Yesha, there is a certain percentage who wear kippot, carry M16s and have 10 children. But half the people in Yesha are secular and include among them former beauty queens like Har-Noy and fashion model Shirli Bouganim. [Bouganim, of Alfei Menashe, recently appeared in a swimsuit spread for Cosmopolitan magazine.] We thought it was important to get this message across to the general Israeli population, and the world, much of which regards settlers as ‘crazies’ with guns slung over their shoulders,” Rosenfeld explains.
Another facet of the campaign calls for renaming settlement outposts after universally admired Israelis, such as astronaut Ilan Ramon or Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. At present, most outposts are named after slain settlers.
“We’re choosing names which ordinary people can connect with,” says Rosenfeld. “The idea is to make the average Israeli realize that Yesha is not the moon, not a different planet, but just like their city. If there is a community in Rehovot or Haifa named after Ilan Ramon, or [former Prime Ministers] Levi Eshkol or Golda Meir, then why not in Yesha too?
“The goal of the campaign is to shape public opinion.”
Why now?
Rosenfeld maintains that the campaign has been in the planning stages for a long time. But he admits that the imminent presentation to Israel of the U.S.-backed “road map” for Middle East peace “is undoubtedly in the background.” That plan calls for Israel to freeze settlement construction and dismantle settlement outposts established after March 2001.
Others put it more bluntly.
“This is a critical juncture for the settlements,” says Professor Yossi Katz, head of Bar-Ilan University’s department of geography and a longtime resident of the settlement of Efrat in Gush Etzion. “Critical because of the ‘road map,’ which is about to be presented, and critical because for the first time we have a right-wing prime minister, who says he is in favor of a Palestinian state.
“If there is a referendum on removing settlements, then there must be an effort to mold public opinion in advance of a decision. This campaign is a strategy to ‘settle’ within the hearts of the people in advance of a decision,” says Katz, a settlement expert.
The campaign, not surprisingly, has been met with ridicule by Peace Now, which fervently opposes settlement beyond the Green Line.