Thumbing through that month’s issue of Conde Nast Traveler, I stopped upon a two-page spread advertising Israel. The ad features a lithe female in a tube top stretching her body in a dancer’s pose on the beach in Tel Aviv, sleek hotels and condos in the background. “You’ll love Israel from the first ‘Shalom,’â€? the text proclaims.

The ad is part of a new campaign by the Israel Tourism Ministry to attract visitors to the country by showcasing its society; other versions feature a cowboy on the Golan Heights, a chef in Jerusalem, and an archaeologist atop Masada. So Israel stands for culture, history, adventure, technology. But Judaism? None of the prototypes showcases Israel as the Jewish State or the Holy Land.

If that weren’t troubling adequate, the Israeli government recently co-sponsored an event with the men’s magazine

Maxim—an unabashedly sex-obsessed publication—to celebrate Maxim’s feature on “Women of the Israeli Defense Forces.� The invitation to that event featured Miss Israel 2004 in a spread that would look right at home in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. The ad aroused the ire of some female members of Knesset, with Colette Avital calling it “pornographic.�

I’m glad that Israel is putting funds into promoting itself—it gets far too little help in that branch from the universal media. But it’s a shame that the government is trying so hard to present Israel as just another exciting destination, a hedonist paradise no different from Monte Carlo or Puerto Vallarta. What kind of tourists is Israel seeking to attract? What kind of image is it seeking to present? And at what cost to its Jewish identity?

Original post by Ziona Greenwald