On the eve of President Obama’s visit to the Middle East, Israel’s embassy in Washington rolled out the cartoon red carpet, in the form of an animated YouTube clip apparently designed to make light of reported tension between the two countries’ leaders.
The animation shows Mr. Obama and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, mouthing pleasantries at a news conference and then expressing surprise as they review newspaper reports hinting at tensions “behind the scenes,†before exchanging high-fives and shaking hands. If the two men do enjoy such a jolly encounter when they meet, it will be in stark contrast to the palpable tension that marked Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to Mr. Obama’s office in 2011, when the prime minister appeared to lecture the president in front of reporters.
Then, during the final weeks of last year’s American presidential election campaign, Mr. Netanyahu appeared in an anti-Obama television ad that ran in Florida. As my colleague Alan Cowell reported, the prime minister “was widely perceived in Israel and the United States as having supported the Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.â€
As the American-Israeli blogger Emily Hauser noted, the cartoon released to paper over those cracks includes a regional map that seems to incorporate the West Bank into Israel (and completely omits Gaza, Tunisia and Morocco) and ends with the saccharine tune “Thank You for Being a Friend.†That song, which played over the opening credits of the sitcom “Golden Girls,†is a 1978 pop hit with lyrics like: “If you threw a party/Invited everyone you knew/You would see the biggest gift would be from me,†and “If it’s a car you lack/I’d surely buy you a Cadillac/Whatever you need any time of the day or night.â€
While the animated video might strike some observers of the Obama-Netanyahu relationship as unrealistic, this is not the first time the embassy has tried to make itself heard through cartoon diplomacy. Late last year, the embassy uploaded two similar animated clips to its YouTube channel mocking the Palestinian president’s decision to appeal to the United Nations for membership. In both, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, appears as the driver of a bus full of innocent passengers, careening toward a cliff. The scenario recalls the plot of the movie “Speed,†in which a crazed bomber seizes control of a city bus.
Israel has also attempted to use animation to deal with the complex reality of combat. During the Gaza offensive, Israel’s military was criticized by the United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees for part of its social media campaign, which used an animated video to show Hamas militants launching rockets from a United Nations school.
The original video posted on the official YouTube account of Israel’s military is no longer available, but at least one copy remains on that site, and another was posted on LiveLeak.
Shortly after the conclusion of the fighting in Gaza, Israel’s foreign ministry drew attention to a cartoon, “Terror in School,†which depicted Israelis as the blameless victims of bullying by Palestinians. In a Twitter message, the foreign ministry advised its 19,000 followers to watch the cartoon, shortly after it was posted online by its producers at the Israeli advertising firm Srutonim, or Scratch.
Children - and countries - have a right to defend themselves. http://t.co/3uhTuOiH #Terror
When that video was posted on Facebook by the producers, they described it as an attempt to change the perception of Israel and “fight anti-Semitism.â€
Earlier in 2012, the same firm was reportedly hired by the leadership of the Israeli settlers who live on West Bank land that Israel has occupied since 1967 to make a cartoon called “Protecting the Settlements From Pirates.†In it, Mr. Netanyahu was mockingly portrayed as the captain of a ship being bombarded by a pirate ship who “tries to save the ship by politely asking the pirate to stop.â€
