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Sept. 7, 2012
Compromising images
Israeli buses will feature only faceless adverts.
FELICE FRIEDSON THE MEDIA LINE
Israeli public bus cooperative Egged has ordered the company handling its on-bus advertising to stop running ads with pictures or representations of either men or women. The policy aims to side-step head-on collisions with Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox community.
As of Aug. 1, the “faceless” policy became the bus company’s latest solution to the costly vandalism that has been aimed at buses carrying advertisements that include images of women and a way of avoiding potential charges of discrimination if only images of men appear.
The vandalizing of public advertisements that feature images of women is not a new issue in Israel. Going back decades, bus shelters frequently have been damaged or destroyed. More recently, broader issues of discrimination against women in the public sphere have become headline affairs.
The conflict over bus advertisements came to a head earlier this year when Yerushalmim – a non-governmental organization advocating for a pluralistic Jerusalem – sued in Israel’s High Court of Justice to force Canaan, the exclusive ad agency for the Egged bus company, to run its Women of Jerusalem campaign. The legal effort was supported by the Ministry of Transportation, which objected to the censorship.
After the court’s ruling, it seemed that the matter had been resolved and the ads, replete with photos, would continue running on Egged buses, according to Yerushalmim’s chief executive officer, Rabbi Uri Ayalon. He said the understanding fell apart, however, when the discussion turned to the specific images submitted by his organization to the ad agency for the buses to carry. Specifically at issue was the length of the models’ sleeves. Yerushalmim insists that when it agreed to lengthen the sleeves of the models, a new request was made to replace T-shirts with long-sleeve blouses.
During this back and forth, Egged changed its policy altogether, banning Jerusalem advertising that contained human images of any kind. Canaan told Yerushalmim it would honor its commitment to run their advertisements for a 10-day period, however, after which time the agreement would lapse – but the ads did not run.
In an interview, Ayalon said that his organization submitted its ads in a timely manner but Canaan has refuted this claim, saying that the NGO failed to get the ads in before the contract expired.
Jerusalem residents advocating a pluralistic city established Yerushalmim in 2009. The organization opposes the exclusion of women from the public sphere, and kicked-off its campaign one year ago in response to attempts to censor an ad campaign featuring women. The campaign included ads displayed on balconies and street stands throughout Jerusalem. Yerushalmim charges that, in actual fact, bus advertisements have been free of images of women for the past eight years; five years, in the case of posters.
Nissim Zohar, director of marketing for Zohar advertising company, told this reporter that “for years” his agency had been attempting to place ads in the city of the Jerusalem that include images of women. Zohar credited Mayor Nir Barkat with raising the issue last spring, efforts that resulted in media coverage of the issue and, subsequently, more than 500 posters being displayed around the city.
Advertisements that feature women have, at times, found a home on Jerusalem bridges, however. Uri Neter, chief executive officer of Rapid Vision, a franchise-holder for billboards affixed to bridges in Jerusalem, explained: “We divided advertising on bridges in large formats across the platforms. Currently, we don’t have any ads with women, but [when we did] we didn’t have a problem because it is hard to get to the bridges and cause damage, because of the height.”
Canaan head Ohad Gibli said that the “faceless” policy instituted by Egged – that he claims was prompted by the Yerushalmim fracas – has cost him his Jerusalem offices. Canaan recently closed there, citing losses of more than $60,000 per month. Gibli said that Egged’s decision to change their official policy was made in response to the financial costs the bus company has sustained due to repeated acts of vandalism.
Ayalon, however, said his organization will continue to pursue the issue. He believes that failing to publish human images in Jerusalem while allowing them elsewhere in Israel can also be seen as an act of discrimination.
The group’s attorney, Aviad Hacohen, explained: “It’s not only an act against women, but it’s an act against men – it’s against freedom of speech and equality.”
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