Advertising Standards Authority bans Wailing Wall from Israel advertisements
From Cranmer
It is the holiest site in Judaism; the most familiar view of Jerusalem. It is how every tourist imagines the Western Wall (the ‘Kotel’ or ‘Wailing Wall’), with the gleaming gold of the Dome of the Rock perched above it. It lures them to pilgrimage to ‘The Holy Land’, to the centre of the three great Abrahamic faiths.
But this image of Jerusalem is now banned in the UK. Never again can it be used to promote a holiday to Israel.
Yes, the ASA have instructed the Israeli Government Tourist Office that they may no longer use the image in their promotional literature.
There were no scantily-clad children inadvertently featured; no topless women; no racially-offensive language; no incitement to ‘religious hatred’; no plumes of smoke from cancer-inducing cigarettes; no glorification of mephedrone or other illicit activity.
There was simply the Wall, the Dome of the Rock and the blue sky.
But the picture was accompanied by the words: ‘You can travel the entire length of Israel in six hours… Imagine what can experience in four days’.
The ASA have judged this to be ‘misleading’ and a breach of their ‘truthfulness guidelines’: Temple Mount is not in Israel, you see: it is in East Jerusalem, which constitutes part of the Palestinian-run West Bank and therefore part of the ‘Occupied Territories’. Read here
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