Avi does the Holy Land is a video blog with a provocative series of satirical videos about Avi, a fictionalized Canadian Jewish woman who travels to Israel on a birthright trip and falls in love with the place, or so she says. She’s hot to trot.
It’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s start with 7 Tips to Get Right for Birthright, an indoctrinating video watching Avi as she packs for her trip to Israel. Avi shares a wealth of expressions. She can practically hear the mangled grunts of generations of Jews who died in the gas chambers calling out to her from beyond the grave “Date a Jew”:
In “Pride v Pinkwashing” Avi enjoys mingling with the crowd enthusiastically expressing “It’s so amazing that the birthplace of Hitler is now bringing forth hot gay men who love Israel with every inch of their sweaty hot dicks. I felt so proud to be in my homeland,” among other things.
During her day of fun in the sun Avi sits down with one of the “belly-aching leftist shitheads” — local Palestinian activist Rami Younis — he plays it straight and doesn’t share her enthusiasm for Israel’s free spirt. Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man interviewed Avi for +972 and reported some of her efforts ventured into “serious attempts at journalism.”
In Avi Does Tel Aviv Pride!! we learn “Germans feel they can make up for the Holocaust f’ing Jewish boys”. Has it ever occurred to you Netanyahu looks like a penis with a combover?
At The Forward Mira Sucharov asks “So is Avi Other? Or is Avi us?”, indicating some people can’t quite figure out if they see themselves in Avi, or perhaps wonder if Avi is on team Israel or not. Hmm.
Some people I’ve shared these videos with think Avi is a liberal zionist, I’m not convinced of that. She interviews debates Peter Beinart, and knocks him around a bit, but check out her latest video, Episode 5 on African refugees where Avi does some “hard core journalist reporting”:
Schaeffer Omer-Man’s interview with Avi is peppered with commentary such as “Jews can’t be racist! We’re the chosen people!” and “Israeli men are amazing because they can kill with their bare hands”. Avi informs but appears to stay in character the entire time:
It’s intriguing that you chose to focus on Pink Washing in one of your recent episodes. It’s a topic that a lot of North American Jews tend to shy away from. You went even further, airing a Palestinian narrative of the issue. Are you worried about backlash from the right-wing, pro-Israel community back home?
No, I think I put that issue to rest. Israel cares so much about gay rights, so maybe if the Palestinians tried more to be gay, people would care more about them.
You just interviewed Peter Beinart, who to a lot of people represents efforts to create a “big tent,” efforts to push the Jewish community into becoming more inclusive of Jews who are critical of Israel. Do you think that there should be a place for diaspora Jewry to think and speak critically about the occupation? About the settlements?
First off, just this week, Tzipi Hotovely, the deputy foreign minister, set the record straight that there is no occupation.
But the biggest issue facing North American Jewry are these new people questioning Israel — and far worse, stopping their donations to JNF. We need to push these people out of the tent. Somebody needs to send them to Jewish re-education summer camps.
Seriously? You be the judge. But remember, Avi is a fictionalized character. More of Avi’s thoughts here.
I honestly don’t know how to take her videos.
They might be satire, and if it works, hey, I’m all for it. But actually living through this crap day by day I struggle to find the humor in it. But this is me personally. Not my cup of tea.
Others might find it a good way to be introduced to the realities of Israel.
Annie,
She is a lot smarter than you.
It’s supposed to be Sacha Baron Cohen style comedy (Ali G, Borat) with reductio ad absurdum humor, ambushing interviewees for their reactions, and lots of vulgarity. From the little I have seen, it doesn’t seem to express any political view or support any Hasbara narrative, and if you’re looking for any political taint, that’s as close as it gets to objective a-political journalism, at least as much as anything about Israel can be a-political…
Here is someone who should be taken seriously. An interesting article.
Simone Zimmerman
American Jewish Millennials Aren’t Disengaged From Israel, We’re Angry
“What we need is for the community to stop willfully blinding itself to the disastrous reality of holding millions of Palestinians under military occupation.
We need the community to stop justifying policies that deny Palestinians the ability to move freely, to sleep safely in their homes without the fear of a military raid, to access water and resources, to live without terror that their homes could be bombed to rubble, and to protest the unjust conditions of their lives nonviolently. None of these policies are moral, and none of these policies make Jews safer.
Moreover, we need the community to stop policing and demonizing those of us who say these truths in public and are fighting for change. We need the community to stop holing itself up behind walls and tanks and guns, as well as behind redlines and standards of partnership.
read more: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.706175
Figures. They are the worst. Satire against some “rightist” cultural traits to save the racial supremacist state and continue the genocide. As 1-ha-adam says, it’s very much like the Baron-Cohen piece of dung –making fun of the weak.