Israeli Cell Phone Company in Hot Water Over Ad Featuring Wall
EmailABC's Simon McGregor-Wood reports from Jerusalem:
It only lasts a minute but has sparked days of argument and controversy.
Cellcom, one of Israel's leading mobile phone networks has produced a TV commercial starring Israel's controversial security barrier with the Palestinian West Bank.
The ad shows an Israeli army jeep patrolling a concrete section of the barrier. Their jeep is hit by a soccer ball kicked by unseen Palestinians from the other side. The soldiers get out and kick it back — yes, you guessed it, the ball comes back over again and an impromptu games begins.
A soldier makes a phone call on his cellphone and more uniformed Israelis show up including attractive female soldiers who cheer their comrades. At no point do we see or hear from the Palestinians on the other side.
The commercial voice over ends by saying "we all just want to have fun."
The ad has caused outrage among Palestinians and left wing Israelis who accuse it of white washing the negative effects of the wall.
The International Criminal Court in the Hague has ruled the Wall illegal as it is built in many places on occupied land.
Many Palestinians have lost land and have been cut off from work, family and schools. They accuse Israel of using to grab more territory.
The commercial was produced by the Israeli office of US advertising agency McCann Erickson. The company has defended the ad by claiming it shows how people can overcome obstacles between them to build freindship.
Have a look and decide for yourself.
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GREAT! WOW! CellCom, I think that your ad speaks the first step to peace..we here in America wishes your company and the people on both sides of the wall peace…
I Love You All!
Posted by: Bobby Griggs | July 14, 2009, 12:13 pm 12:13 pm
This is a step in the right direction and needs to be praised, not condemned. What I would love to see to happen now is a return ad from a Palestinian company showing the ball from the other side.
The 1,000 mile journey begins with one step.
Posted by: Heather Ferreira | July 14, 2009, 12:17 pm 12:17 pm
Now that is a great commercial – I got chills watching it.
The wall cannot and will not separate families, friends or people. Hopefully, there is peace around the corner, soon.
Posted by: Randy N | July 14, 2009, 12:20 pm 12:20 pm
I think the ad is wonderful…and if the politicians would stay out of it….they would be playing soccer for real!
We should have more ads like that!
Posted by: Carole Fagan | July 14, 2009, 12:20 pm 12:20 pm
How would this get the company in hot water? It probably accurately reflects how most average Israelis feel about the apartheid wall.
Posted by: Scott B. | July 14, 2009, 12:23 pm 12:23 pm
The ‘journey’ does not begin with a step backwards. The Wall is a LANDGRAB, plain and simple. To apologize for it– as this ad does– is to deny that fact.
Posted by: Nick Griffin | July 14, 2009, 12:27 pm 12:27 pm
Beautiful and touching. I love it.
Posted by: the doctor | July 14, 2009, 12:29 pm 12:29 pm
This also is knock from an Ad in India (Airtel)w/o the barrier, but barbed fence. Instead used kids.
Posted by: fromIndia | July 14, 2009, 12:30 pm 12:30 pm
OOPS! Sorry! I misread the author of the negative comment I was referring to in my previous post.
Posted by: the doctor | July 14, 2009, 12:31 pm 12:31 pm
This ad is adorable. I would’ve preferred to see the Palestinian players on the other side of the wall, but this is a step in the right direction! Showing playfulness is great – sport is such a universal enjoyment. I think this commercial is wonderful. It shows how cool peace could be.
Posted by: meravi | July 14, 2009, 12:31 pm 12:31 pm
If we put all the extremist on both side (and Politicians) in one place and built a wall around them… we could play soccer all day long… Israel this Palestinians that… Shut up already and just play soccer!
Posted by: Al | July 14, 2009, 12:32 pm 12:32 pm
This is a feel good commercial about two groups that cannot normally coexist without killing each other. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Quite to the contrary, it sends a very good message. The groups/people complaining about it, on both sides, in their hearts, really do not want peace. It is due to these two extremes that the violence persists.
Posted by: Barry | July 14, 2009, 12:33 pm 12:33 pm
Yes, it’s supposed to give you chills. It’s supposed to make you feel good and hopeful about the way things are, like having a picture of a tropical island and lavish beach bungalows on the wall of a sweatshop or of an 8′ by 8′ cubicle. It’s not really hopefully except in the way that antidepressants are hopeful — they help you accept the way it is. Acceptance is the crucial aspect of preempting change.
“I think the ad is wonderful!” I think you, Carole, should stop by the West Bank sometime. The point is that is not how Israeli soldiers deal with Palestinians. If that soccer ball was repeatedly kicked back, they would call in an air strike and US made F-16s given as a gift to Israel and paid for using your tax money would bomb the civilian neighborhood where the soccer ball was kicked from.
I hope next they have a Coke commercial where a CIA interrogator shares a Coke with a hooded detainee during a torture session. I can imagine it now, they just finish electrocuting the guy using wires attached to sponges on one side and a car battery on the other. The detainee (a terrorist, or just a farmer, it doesn’t matter really to anyone) cracks a joke, and the CIA “contractors” crack open three Cokes and they all sit there all smiles having a talk for a while.
I would get chills watching that. I swear!
Americans have been so intellectually disabled that little sophistries, little Jedi mind tricks like this are truly effective. It’s why I love doing business here. You can poison a whole town with cancer making some product at a $1 billion profit and then build a $5,000 memorial to the “fallen” in some war at a local park and 90% of the public will actually threaten violence against their own neighbors if they try to sue you. It’s fantastic. It’s got to be the schools.
Posted by: Chills | July 14, 2009, 12:33 pm 12:33 pm
Oh yeah, encouraging peace despite obstacles is SUCH “white washing”…Puh-lease. At least there is an attempt to reach out instead of ignoring reality. Reality is the wall is the white elephant in the commercial; something that is being ignored by those who know the wall should be removed. I believe the commercial gives a nice, big finger to those who built the wall, not those separated by it.
Posted by: Z. Ismail | July 14, 2009, 12:37 pm 12:37 pm
The term “left-wing” for Israelis who “oppose the wall,” is propagandist. I have Jewish friends who condemn the wall, but voted Republican. I’d hardly call them “left wing.” Your dubbing anyone “left-wing” fits the type media reporting that says our enemies employ dreaded “secret police,” while the U.S. itself uses “undercover agents.” As for the ad, or for that matter the wall itself, I don’t know enough to have an opinion one way or the other. I do have an opinion against biased media reporting in a supposedly objective framework. Sterling Greenwood/Aspen Free Press
Posted by: AspenFreePress | July 14, 2009, 12:37 pm 12:37 pm
Sadly, the post by Barry is absolutely spot on. Americans are so easily duped by money, appearance and triviality. The recent movie “Idiocracy,” which lambasts the decline of western civilization and the devolution of human intelligence, may have been too easy on Americans.
Posted by: Steve Hanes | July 14, 2009, 12:41 pm 12:41 pm
Sam, you are right, I’m not sure that it’s 3 million and it probably is a lot less. But the numbers are big and there is quite an effort to now allow an accurate counting.
When the Coalition Provisional Authority took over the governance of Iraq, the first law they made was that it was unlawful for anyone in Iraq to county civilian deaths. There was no central counting and it was forbidden to have any centralized organized counting.
That’s not the sort of rule that a moral person makes. Even the Nazis counted the dead. I guess modern regimes learned their lessons. You count the dead and you end up with bad press, and if you lose your power, criminal prosecutions.
Posted by: Chills | July 14, 2009, 12:44 pm 12:44 pm
And to think… all this conflict due to the fact that selected groups of people have the ridiculous idea that this land is “holy”.
Perhaps all the inhabitants of said land (and perhaps the rest of the world) should pull their heads out to see the irony of the situation.
Posted by: dale223223 | July 14, 2009, 1:08 pm 1:08 pm
word not work
i get excited and forget how to spell
Posted by: mike | July 14, 2009, 1:31 pm 1:31 pm
by the way i think the ad is great ..
Posted by: mike | July 14, 2009, 1:33 pm 1:33 pm
It all comes down to what side of the fence you are on.
You can spin that ball any way you like.
Posted by: ddg | July 14, 2009, 2:14 pm 2:14 pm
Just to be clear: The ruling on the wall came from the International Court of Justice (the “World Court”), not the International Criminal Court. The ICC’s mandate is limited: It might seek to prosecute people responsible for the wall’s construction, if those people live in countries that are signatory to the Rome Statute. But it doesn’t rule directly on “country-to-country” disputes. BTW, Israel’s own courts have ruled against parts of the wall built within occupied Palestinian territory.
Posted by: Steve Ross | July 14, 2009, 2:51 pm 2:51 pm
palestians are suppose to be laughing and singing. oh wait, u guys know they just took all the arabic signs in israel out and replaced them with hebrew? they should still be laughing and singing thou, it is peaceful extermination, first we bombed u, now we are taking ur language and throwing it in the garbage.
dont deny it folks that story is still on abcnews. read it yourself.
Posted by: ATL | July 14, 2009, 4:29 pm 4:29 pm
The ad is great as far as I am concerned, but if you will remember the last several attacks have been initiated by the Palestinians, so I understand the need for the wall, a lot of the radical Palestinians think about Isreal the way Iraq and Iran think about the U.S. they consider all of us Infidels, and according to the Koran they are charged with eliminating all Infidels from the face of the earth….if you don’t beleive me read their KORAN….and due to the fact that Isreal and the U.S. are nations that worship GOD the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost….we are all consider INFIDELS……so my friends that is the very reason that the wall is there…..so would you take you children into a drug lord infested neighborhood with gangs, and gun violence for them to play in the parks, to attend schools, and say that you are reaching out to make peace with them so they will stop their criminal activity???????? “THINK ABOUT WHY THE WALL IS REALLY THERE”…..”PEACE CAN BRING IT DOWN BUT IT MUST BE PEACE BY BOTH SIDES AND NOT ONLY ONE”…..”ARE YOU AN INFIDEL???? IF YOU BELEIVE IN GOD, ACCORDING TO THE KORAN YOU ARE”…..AS IS ALL ISREALIS ACCORDING TO THE KORAN…”BUT I BEG TO DIFFER”….EACH PERSONS RELIGION SHOULD BE RESPECTED AND NOT SUBJECT TO ELIMINATION BY OTHER RADICAL GROUPS
Posted by: Stan | July 14, 2009, 6:34 pm 6:34 pm
Great AD! Shows a lot of happy people having fun. The first step toward peace is communcations. EVEN PRISONERS DOING LIFE WITHOUT SAY HELLO TO EACH OTHER, eventually, it lead to greater understanding. The WORLD needs to communicate in order to solve problems. 6 BILLION PEOPLE can find a way to co exist. May I say it is great to see such happy ISRAELI SOLDIERS, I am sure they would love to see a planet where all are happy, safe and well.
Good health is also one thing that all sects of ISLAM can agree upon.
A PLANET in good health would have less need for WAR and CRIME.
Posted by: sonofnapalm | July 14, 2009, 7:47 pm 7:47 pm
This is wonderful clip. How sad that those with hate/revenge agendas will not appreciate it. Please do more ads like this one?
Posted by: Bill | July 15, 2009, 1:36 am 1:36 am
You’re confusing the International Criminal Court with the International Court of Justice. It was the latter that ruled on the wall. The ICC has a mandate to try individuals alleged to have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It is a completely independent and separate institution from the ICJ.
Posted by: Eric | July 15, 2009, 3:14 am 3:14 am
The International Court of Justice gave that decision on the wall, not the International Criminal Court.
Posted by: Amy DiBella | July 15, 2009, 4:17 am 4:17 am
It would’ve been a lovely ad IF the wall did not cause misery to a whole nation.
It is a shame to call this a first step when one side is being oppressed!
A first step would be Israelis against apartheid “bombing” the wall with “footballs”, and then maybe both sides can play fairly.
Peace.
Posted by: Dee | July 15, 2009, 7:41 am 7:41 am
The ad is disturbing. It shows us the Israeli IDF in all of it’s humanity and “something or someone” on the other side of a wall. As if they are not even people.
It trivializes the tragedy and as if Palestinians do not exist.
If they showed the reality of the Palestinians or as them as humans?
Posted by: Ellen | July 16, 2009, 4:05 am 4:05 am
How can you say this is a step in the right direction?
this add symbolizes the blindness we have to the other side of this wall.
Posted by: Yuval Adam | July 16, 2009, 7:29 am 7:29 am
That leftists would find this ad depicting Israelis and Palestinians communicating and otherwise having fun together objectionable illustrates that they are extremists, having no interest in peace itself and wanting nothing more than to protest… protest Israel now and most of the time, the US at other times … the UK … Germany … anyone who fits their anti-agenda. Such foolishness.
Posted by: Robert Samet | July 18, 2009, 3:51 pm 3:51 pm
What do you think about a commercial like this?
—
Muslim guys walking near WTC.
A soccerball falls down from a window of the building.
The muslims kick back the ball into the window.
The ball comes back again.
And they start exchanging the ball.
The commercial voice over ends by saying “we all just want to have fun.”—-
Most Americans won’t accept this kind of commercial.
But isn’t this Israeli ad similar?
We need to know how it looks like from Palestinians’ perspective.
Posted by: John | July 19, 2009, 9:01 am 9:01 am
this is NOT the ad that ignited the controversy when it aired. this is the sanitized version. the original depicted a gaggle of aplestinains beaten into the ground and completely subjugated nto literally crawling by a group of Siraeli troops. i cannot fathom whow you allowed yourselves to be stonewalled into beliveing that this spruced up can’t we all just be firends pc version is the one that was originally aired and which made me cry.
you need to practice your investigative reporting
Posted by: Aminah Carroll, West Virginia | December 27, 2009, 7:03 pm 7:03 pm