Cover of Benetton catalog features Jewish-Arab kiss

JERUSALEM, March 10 (JTA) — A young Israeli Jewish woman and a Bedouin man locked in a passionate kiss. That’s the cover of the latest catalog from the Italian clothing manufacturer Benetton, which takes on the stereotypes of the Middle East. The catalog, called “Enemies,” features Israelis and Palestinians happily playing and working together. The models are real people — friends, colleagues and members of mixed-marriages. The catalog is the latest brainchild of Oliviero Toscani, Benetton’s controversial creative director, who has created uproars with previous campaigns featuring dying AIDS victims and a priest and a nun kissing. The most shocking thing about Toscani’s photographs, writes A.B. Yehoshua, an Israeli novelist, in an introduction to the catalog, “is that in many cases, I am unable to distinguish the Arab from the Jews.” The physical features of the Israeli Jewish models, shaped in part by the country’s population of Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent, blend almost seamlessly with the Palestinian models. Even the catalog producers got confused, mistakenly listing cameraman Issa Freij as Jewish and his colleague Nili Aslan as Arab. By humanizing the conflict, Toscani seeks to challenge what he calls a “monopoly” on truth held by journalists, politicians and religious leaders, which he says has complicated the conflict by perpetuating stereotypes. “Somehow, we had to come up with another angle that hits the real problem,” he said. Indeed, the photos present true stories of coexistence rarely seen by outsiders. Behind a deadlocked peace process and a seemingly endless cycle of violence, many Israelis and Palestinians live peacefully. The catalog captures this fact in a photo of a Jewish barber shaving his Arab customer, neck trustingly exposed to the razor. Many scenes were shot in Jerusalem, the holy city that is the flashpoint of violence and the heart of the political conflict. Yet while the subjects are real people, many do not live in mainstream society — some reside in Neve Shalom, or Oasis of Peace, a community in Israel near Jerusalem that is run jointly by Arabs and Jews. Toscani calls them “a minority within a minority.” Benetton described the catalog as a “realistic reportage.” But other parts of the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as supporters of radical Islamist Palestinian suicide bombers who have killed scores of Israelis, are nowhere to be found. Nor are there examples of the extremist Jewish settlers who frequent the grave of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli settler who killed 29 Palestinians in 1994. Underscoring this reality, several Palestinians who modeled for the catalog were prevented from reaching Jerusalem to participate in the official launch of the publication because of Israeli closures of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Indeed, the Jerusalem Link, a Palestinian-Israeli women’s peace group, criticized Benetton for conveying a “simplistic, romanticized view of a reality that is complex and violent.” Despite the criticism, Toscani received support at the launch of the catalog from Jewish and Arab students who have been participating in a dialogue program. Yechiel Rechtschaffen, a young, black-kipah-wearing rabbi and law student from Tel Aviv University, came to the launch with some Arab friends. The real wall between Israelis and Palestinians “is what you don’t know,” he said. “When you never meet an Arab, you don’t know what an Arab is.” For his part, Toscani is proud of the campaign’s simplicity. This “simplicity could be very subversive to those organized strengths and powers called press, politics and religion,” he said. And if the catalog does not lead to peace, he hopes that at least it will sell more Benetton sweaters in Israel.