Reluctantly taking down monstrous orientalist video, college union in Israel protests that it got ‘1000s of positive reactions’

Not much to say about this except: Watch the video, produced by the College of Management outside Tel Aviv to promote its annual student party on the beach Funjoya. (Thanks to Max Blumenthal.)

Here’s news coverage of the matter. From the Times of Israel: “College removes ‘racist’ video.” Not sure why they put racist in quotes?

The four-minute clip shows a group of attractive students on a bus heading to the party in Eilat. After taking a wrong turn on a desert road, they encounter a threesome of lecherous Arabs with terrible teeth and unibrows who order them off the bus. … [Etc]

The student union’s Facebook page also filled quickly with complaints. Critics claimed that while the students were portrayed as attractive, the video presented Arabs as ugly and brutish. They also contended that the clip was offensive to homosexuals…

The clip was quickly taken down by the student union, which said it would exercise more caution in the future while insisting that the film had been taken out of context and blown out of proportion.

“The clip is meant for comedic purposes only, and it was only meant to entertain while getting the students excited about the traditional vacation in Eilat that will take place this weekend,” the union said. “In less than one day, the video received thousands of positive reactions alongside criticism. We had no intention of hurting any population, and if someone was offended from the video directly or indirectly we sincerely apologize.”

Larry Derfner at +972 is appropriately concerned about attitudes in his adopted country. And he scorns the apology above.

I wish I could say that the young Israelis who made this film and the “thousands” who immediately gave “positive reactions” to it were marginal in this society – that they were “hilltop youth” in the West Bank, or slum-dwellers growing up amid severe poverty, ignorance, violence and crime. But they’re not. They’re college students in their early twenties from the heart of the country, from the College of Management Academic Studies in Rishon Lezion, outside Tel Aviv. And the ones who made this little film aren’t marginal on their 12,000-student campus, either – they’re in the Student Union, they’re involved, they’re the leaders of tomorrow, as people like to say of such young adults.

I am very relieved to read there was an outpouring of protest against the four-minute film from other students at the college….

I don’t know which is more stupefying in its moral numbness, the movie or the “apology.” They were just having some good clean fun. They didn’t mean to hurt anybody. It was taken out of context, blown out of proportion. And my favorite – if anyone was offended (which they still can’t understand why that should be, but, being the noble, humble people they are, then by all means) they apologize.

They honestly don’t know what they did wrong. They’re genuinely stumped that anyone could find what they did not funny, but ugly, sickening, vicious, sadistic.