http://indymedia.org.il
Mistakefully on purpose...Saturday 21 Sep 2002
author: Bryan Atinsky (bryan@indymedia.org.il)
Shabtai, you write that "The mistake was corrected."
However, I am not so sure that it was a 'mistake' on the part of the advertising agency or the real-estate company that requesitioned the advert. My sense is that the double-meaning was known and meant to catch the eye. It is too obvious to have not been seen.
Perhaps...Ha'aretz workers have too little time to be watchful of the adverts they sell space for, and this one slipped by. However, we are talking full page ad here.
The only mistake here was in their collective thinking that no one would find this type of commercial use of racialist tendencies to be highly inappropriate.
And this fact reveals, as stated in the original article, how the transfer mentality has truely permeated so deeply into the Israeli collective conscience, that an advertisement such as this could be conceptualized, created and implemented without even a second thought about the racial implications of the content.
I have seen the 'new improved' version of the advert in the form of a animated gif banner on Ha'aretz's Hebrew site. I still feel, however, that the order of the advertising, first showing the ambivalent statement alone, then moving to the next frame which holds the 'mortgage' meaning, is meant to leave the (not-so) subconcious impression of racial baiting. The new vowels do little to change this.
Perhaps, if the advert began with the mortgage sentence, then moved to the ambivalent sentence, they would have an excuse. But the opposite is the case...