Navigate to News section

Is Bar Refaeli a Threat to Israel’s Image?

The answer, according to the IDF, is yes

by
Liel Leibovitz
March 18, 2013
Bar Refaeli on Italian GQ Cover(IndyPosted)
Bar Refaeli on Italian GQ Cover(IndyPosted)

As a former Non-Commissioned Officer at the Israel Defense Forces’ Spokesperson Unit, I am always proud to see my old military alma mater do good, and was thrilled this week to see the spokesman himself, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, cannily identify a real and oft-ignored threat to Israel’s security and general well-being: Bar
Refaeli.

In what must have been the slowest news week in the IDF’s history, Mordechai took the time to write an angry letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and protest Refaeli’s inclusion in a new hasbara video promoting Israel. The supermodel, wrote Mordechai, didn’t serve in the army, and should therefore be shunned from all official Israeli productions and publications.

“The IDF is actively working, in recent years and in various ways, to promote the virtue of military service and to fight the phenomenon of draft-dodging,” read the letter. “Even though hasbara campaigns are not the IDF’s purview, there is room to consider the negative message such a campaign sends to Israeli society by appointing Bar Refaeli, who did not serve in the IDF, as an official representative of Israel.”

Congratulations, then, to the IDF for taking such a strong and clear-headed position on this important matter. And since you guys seem to be so concerned with Israel’s image, other thing you might want to keep out of any official publication include other beautiful people, the beach, sunshine, hummus, laughter, and democracy, none of which have anything to do with promoting the army’s goals.

Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.