Israel remakes its image at age 60
By Veronica Zaragovia

A tourism official for Israel sighed when she thought of the image on the front page of The New York Times last month on April 17.

It featured two wounded Palestinian youths who had fallen from their bikes near the car of Fadel Shana, the Thomson Reuters cameraman killed by an Israeli missile attack in Gaza.

“Israel is a problem destination,” said Michal Itzik, the northeast region director of the Israel Ministry of Tourism in New York City. “We can’t ignore that, and that’s what we’re here for. We want to show people that Israel is not just the violence on CNN and the news but it’s a fun place to tour.”

Itzik is part of an effort to remake the image of Israel as the country turns 60 this month. She’s spearheaded a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that launched in 2007. The ministry spent almost $12 million on the ads in such outlets as The New York Times Magazine, Travel + Leisure magazine, billboards, bus shelters and Web sites, like Orbitz. 

One of the 2007-2008 tourism ads of the Israel Ministry of Tourism.

Sixty years after declaring its independence in May 1948 – an event that led to a war with several neighboring Arab states – Israel is rebranding its image to appeal to people across the religious and political spectrum. As a player in a decades-long conflict and a country poor in natural resources, tourism and culture are ways to attract interest from the broader public.

On May 4, the Israeli Consulate in New York and the Salute to Israel Parade launched the “Faces of Israel” campaign, comprised of banners along Fifth Avenue, from 47th to 96th Streets, on which the faces of 60 Israelis are displayed for one month. To make this possible, they received permits from the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, the Department of Transportation, and the Patrol Borough Manhattan North and South, among many others, said Dina Leader, the parade's executive director. The parade will take place June 1, 2008.

Derrick Sharp is one of Israel's faces. He’s an African American Israeli citizen, originally from Orlando, Fla., who is the captain of the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team. Others include Rania Jubran, an Arab-Israeli diplomat in the Foreign Ministry and Grammy Award-winning violinist Miri Ben-Ari, who has collaborated with such artists as Kanye West and John Legend.

“The occasion of the 60th anniversary is a platform from which we can show the different faces of Israel, and we’re using this hook in order to pitch these stories to the media,” Saranga added.

When people visit the Israeli Consulate's page on Facebook, the popular networking site, the first thing they see is a serene image of the view of Tel Aviv from a grassy ledge in the neighboring city of Jaffa that resembles a beach vacation postcard. The crystalline waters of the Mediterranean Sea crash softly on the sand, and nearby, tall white buildings – mostly hotels – dot the shoreline.

Facebook is one way to spread the image of Israel as a modern, multicultural nation, one that is home to 100,000 Ethiopian Jews and about one million Israeli Arabs and one million Russians. Non-Jews comprise 25 percent of Israel’s population of about 7 million. Since 2007, the consulate also administers two blogs, isRealli and IsraelPolitik, and MySpace and YouTube pages.

The Israel Ministry of Tourism's advertisements, created by an advertising company that took the pictures in Israel, illustrate the stories of Israelis, like a successful chef, a dancer, an Olympic sailor, a cowboy and an entrepreneur. Each one has the same slogan, “You’ll love Israel from the first Shalom,” which uses the Hebrew word that means hello and peace. Recently, a banner was added to the bottom of these ads that mentions Israel’s 60th anniversary.

Another ad of the Israel Ministry of Tourism.

In January 2008, the number of tourists in Israel was 182,000, a 57 percent increase from one year before, when 116,000 people went. In February 2008, about 200,000 tourists visited Israel – a 46 percent increase from 2007.

When the ministry doesn’t air the ads, the number of visits to their site, goisrael.com, drops. So do the number of incoming calls. In February 2008, when the ads weren’t displayed, the site got 71,721 visits and 689 people called. But they were displayed in October 2007, when visits to the site reached 115,329 and calls slightly exceeded 900.

Most non-American tourists hail from France, England and Russia, from which tourism is “picking up because people have money now and are looking to travel,” Itzik said. 

“The flux to Israel has improved,” said Raffaella De Luca, the manager of the sales development division of Isram World of Travel. “Definitely tourism has improved both because of the tourism board’s efforts and the 60th anniversary. Clearly there are many Jews traveling to Israel but there’s also a Christian market and a big Catholic market.”

The Ministry of Tourism also has a separate ad campaign for its Christian tourists, which it also launched in 2007 in Christian media outlets such as radio stations and Web sites.

Other efforts to show images of Israel include the Manhattan Jewish Community Center’s retrospective film festival this month and its guest speakers, including Sayed Kashua, an Arab Israeli who writes a column for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. In the column, he “brings up subtle criticisms of Arab life in Israel and criticizes all perspectives,” said Isaac Zablocki, director of film and literary programs at the center.

“If we have a lot of cultural events taking place here in New York it makes our work easier,” Saranga said. “All these activities that are Israel oriented – at the end of the day, they contribute to Israel’s image.”

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