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Bar Refaeli makes securities This week, she was described as "racist" and "Islamophobic" for her role in a video advertisement for the Israeli sports society "Hoodies".
The campaign, entitled "Freedom is fundamental," begins with a close-up of a woman's face wrapped in a niqab. When the camera zooms out, the woman tears the black niqab and turns out to be Bar Refaeli, dressed in a colorful short hoodie and tight leggings, which makes her hair flip over her shoulder.
After being published on Bar Refaeli's Facebook page on Monday, the reaction has grown like a tsunami. Thousands of people have criticized the brand and the model on social networks.
What was problematic with advertising was not just blatant Islamophobia – but the idea that women who cover their bodies in informal bags are inherently oppressed.
The thing with freedom is that it requires the ability to choose. In a place like Israel, where people are free to dress as they wish, the choice to wear a niqab or a short hoodie should not be derided; it should be adopted instead.
On the other hand, in Iran, such freedoms do not exist. There are laws that require a woman to cover her hair in hijab. Looking at this specific angle, advertising is not Islamophobic as much as it is phobic in Iran; a punishment, if you will, to impose a dress code on the population.
The words of the campaign – "Is it Iran here?" – indicate that the intention of the campaign was to criticize Iran specifically, not Muslims in general. Israel and Iran have been engaged in a proxy battle for decades. Iran has been channeling money to terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah in an attempt to destroy Israel, while Israel would have sabotaged the Iranian nuclear attempt. But the problem is that the words are lost in the powerful imagery of Refaeli tearing the niqab. The message that is broadcast does not say that Iran is bad, but that the niqab is bad – Islam, practiced by 20% of Israelis, is bad.
That's why the reaction was so immediate and so fast, spreading through social media like wildfire. That's why Refaeli and Hoodies have removed the video on their respective Facebook pages. That's why Hoodies official Facebook account has disappeared. Because freedom is not dictated by the extent to which a person chooses to cover his body; is that a person has that choice to start. And this criticism must not necessarily denigrate an entire population – some of whom are Israeli citizens – who choose to hide everything with a niqab.
Michelle Honig is the style editor for the Forward. Contact her at [email protected]. Find it on Instagram and Twitter.
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