If Tablet Magazine is to be believed, the Jewish world has come a long way baby because the gay porno industry has made the first pornographic film with an all-Israeli/all-Jewish cast. As strange and disturbing as I find this article on many levels, it is this passage which disturbs me most:

This week, Michael Lucas is making what he calls “a bold move to promote Israeli culture and tourism.” His website extols the virtues of a country rich with natural wonders, intriguing museums, liberal politics, and friendly locals. More than a biblical theme park, Lucas’s Israel is a tourist destination, a place where lovely beaches beckon and muscle-bound men have sex with each other.

Lucas—a porn actor and director, and founder of the New York-based gay porn production company Lucas Entertainment—sees his new film Men of Israel as a tool, if you will, to promote tourism, at least among gay men.

Make no mistake, this is not a one-off promotion by an odd-ball Jewish gay pornographer. This is part of an orchestrated hasbara campaign spearheaded by groups like Stand With Us, who promoted Israel during the latter’s Gay Pride Festival as a natural ally of gays around the world. The angle for SWU (and there always IS an angle with groups like this) is to trumpet the alleged homophobia of Palestinian/Arab society compared to the alleged freedom and tolerance of "western" Israel towards a gay lifestyle. Never mind that Israel is less tolerant of gays than the average western country. That matters little for the hasbaraniks of SWU.

Articles like the one in Tablet make clear the danger of choosing such bedfellows for Israel. Remember the last major ‘heartthrob’ Israel embraced? Those evangelicals like John Hagee, who supports a nuclear attack against Iran and claims the Holocaust was a message from God to Jews to become Zionists?

Does anyone in their right mind think that Israel will benefit from a close association with the gay porn industry? And what was the Tablet editor who commissioned this article thinking? This is a newsworthy story? Bizarre, disturbing–yes. But newsworthy? But hey, I’m not complaining. My blog thrives off chronicling the bad judgment of some of my fellow Jews.

Interesting to note that the film has been promoted by those connoisseurs of the gay lifestyle, Jeffrey Goldberg and TNR’s James Kirchick (who Eric Alterman calls Marty Peretz’s "mini-me"). Goldberg takes the typically hasbarist line of comparing Israel’s supposedly tolerant attitude toward gays with the Arab world’s supposedly homophobic approach (I Bet Ahmadinejad Wouldn’t Let This Happen in Iran). This is why Goldberg is the Israeli foreign ministry’s favorite "liberal" (I use the term VERY loosely) Jewish journalist.

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Imagine for a moment you’re a general about to embark on a decisive military campaign and your intelligence service secures a copy of your opponent’s entire campaign strategy. You open it and you see his battle plans laid out before you, key forces, weaponry, lines of attack, points of weaknesses, etc. You suddenly understand just how weak his forces are and precisely how to mercilessly attack and eviscerate him. The plan makes you understand that his forces are largely based on artifice and sham. It gives you confidence that you are entirely on the right course and tells you how to stay on that course. Victory is assured, your enemy’s defeat certain.

Douglas Bloomfield and Newsweek have done pretty close to that against the Israel lobby. Specifically, they’ve exposed a secret hasbara handbook written for The Israel Project by star Republican marketer, Frank Luntz.

The oddly-named Global Language Dictionary (pdf) is a veritable goldmine of arguments, strategy, tactics. At 116 pages, it’s not for the faint of heart. But anyone who wants to get inside the head of the Israel lobby must read this document. I know my enthusiasm will mark me as a real I-P wonk, but this is the real deal and worth spending some time parsing and deconstructing.

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