It is the holiest site in Judaism; the most familiar view of Jerusalem. It is how every tourist imagines the Western Wall (the ‘Kotel’ or ‘Wailing Wall’), with the gleaming gold of the Dome of the Rock perched above it. It lures them to pilgrimage to ‘The Holy Land’, to the centre of the three great Abrahamic faiths.
But this image of Jerusalem is now banned in the UK. Never again can it be used to promote a holiday to Israel.
Yes, the ASA have instructed the Israeli Government Tourist Office that they may no longer use the image in their promotional literature.
There were no scantily-clad children inadvertently featured; no topless women; no racially-offensive language; no incitement to ‘religious hatred’; no plumes of smoke from cancer-inducing cigarettes; no glorification of mephedrone or other illicit activity.
There was simply the Wall, the Dome of the Rock and the blue sky.
But the picture was accompanied by the words: ‘You can travel the entire length of Israel in six hours… Imagine what can experience in four days’.
The ASA have judged this to be ‘misleading’ and a breach of their ‘truthfulness guidelines’: Temple Mount is not in Israel, you see: it is in East Jerusalem, which constitutes part of the Palestinian-run West Bank and therefore part of the ‘Occupied Territories’.
And how many complaints did the ASA receive about this ‘misleading’ advertisement?
Ten thousand?
Five hundred?
No.
Just one.
Yes, that’s right. They receive one solitary complaint, and acted ferociously to ensure that it can never ‘mislead’ the unsuspecting British public again.
And so the delegitimisation of the State of Israel continues apace.
While the Western Wall is officially over the “Green Line” established in the Old City of Jerusalem after the 1967 War, it is at the outer perimeter of the old Jewish Quarter of the City — a quarter that the Jordanian army took over in the 1948 War of Independence and razed to the ground. In other words, there is not a single building in the old Jewish Quarter which has not been rebuilt in the last 50 years, since Israel regained the City.
While the Dome of the Rock (or the Al Aqsa Mosque) may be the oldest Islamic structure in the world, and was indeed built in the seventh century, it was built intentionally on the remains of the Jewish Temple the Romans had destroyed in the 1st century. The Western Wall is the last remnant of that Temple, and is at least 1,000 years older than Al Aqsa. It is, without question, the holiest of holy places to the Jews, while the Dome of the Rock is only the third holiest site to Muslims.
As part of several written agreements — the last being in 1995 and also signed by the Palestinians — Israel has official (and legal) charge of all the holy sites in ‘The Holy Land’.
Email your concerns and views to:
Advertising Standards Authority, 71 Mid City Place, High Holborn London WC1V 6QT
Telephone 020 7492 2222
& 020 7492 2122
Matt Wilson or Michael Todd Press Office 0207492 2123
E-mail: enquiries@asa.org.uk
smithcr@parliament.uk
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2010/04/advertising-standards-authority-bans.html
