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Posters for Mockingjay Part 2 are censored in Jerusalem for fear of religious extremists
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| 19th November 2015
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| See article from haaretz.com |
Posters for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, featuring the film's female lead Jennifer Lawrence in the role of Katniss Everdeen, have been hung prominently throughout Israel. Except for in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak There, the posters only
display the fiery crow that forms the background of the poster. The foreground of Jennifer Lawrence with a bow and arrow has been excluded. The movie's Israeli PR firm acknowledged that the poster had been sanitized for the ultra-Orthodox
audience. A spokesman said: We discovered that public posters with the image of a female are often torn down in Jerusalem, while Bnei Brak does not allow posters with female images.
The Bnei Brak
municipality said in a statement that a municipal regulation prevents the hanging of posters of women that might incite the feelings of the city's residents. The Jerusalem municipality said that it does not limit the appearance of female images in
posters, but Liron Suissa, VP marketing of the company responsible for the posters, Nur Star Media, said: Unfortunately we are subject to unofficial coercion that forces us to be more careful, Suissa said. We have had
endless vandalization, and clients prefer not to take the chance. We allow everything, but we recommend hanging another visual when necessary. The decision is the client's.
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Film poster de-womaned in Jerusalem
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| 24th July 2012
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| See article from metafilter.com
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Two actresses have censored from advertisements for the Israeli movie The Dealers , displayed on billboards in Jerusalem. Other ads for the film, a comedy about friends from Jerusalem looking for a way to make money, feature four men
and two women. As a result of the exclusion, some protesters have threatened to boycott the movie. Critical comments posted on the Facebook page of film distributor United King Films included: The movie is
boycotted until you fix the advertising in Jerusalem If you continue to exclude women, we will exclude ourselves from your movies!
United King said the company that operates the billboards had asked
for the actresses to be removed from the ad: Unfortunately, the censorship of women's images from billboards is the result of a decision we consider unacceptable, and is not in our interest. In the past two years we
have unsuccessfully struggled against this unacceptable directive.
Previously the Jerusalem International Film Festival, held earlier this month, had its posters defaced all around the city after choosing a woman on a bicycle as its
symbol. Many in Israel's secular majority, in Jerusalem and elsewhere, have reacted indignantly. In a Haaretz article a PR person is quoted as saying: It is not surprising that the middle class and young secular people
are abandoning Jerusalem. What remains of this charming city that should have been a magnificent city is injustice and dreariness and the repression of women.
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1st March 2012 | |
| PCC asked to adjudicate over a press article about discriminatory haredi/charedi jews saying that they are discriminatory
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See article from
thejc.com
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The Press Complaints Commission has rejected claims that a Jewish Chronicle (JC) column by Professor Geoffrey Alderman breached accuracy and discrimination rules. His article about the segregation of men and women, published on October 29 2011,
included the claim that it is well known that Charedi men are notorious harassers of the opposite sex . According to one complainant the reference could not be substantiated and was inaccurate. But the PCC found that because the column was
written from Professor Alderman's perspective, it was clear to readers that the content reflected his views and experiences. The PCC also cleared the JC over the claim that it was discriminatory to suggest that Charedim were notorious for
committing such acts . Chris Paget, a complaints officer at the PCC said: The article did not make a prejudicial or pejorative reference to the religion of a particular individual, but rather expressed the
columnist's views on Charedi men in general. To come to an inevitably subjective judgment as to whether such material is tasteless or offensive would amount to the Commission acting as a moral arbiter, which can lead to
censorship.
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20th November 2011 | |
| Jerusalem's mayor joins battle against religious vandals seeking to eradicate public images of women
| See article from
guardian.co.uk
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Jerusalem's secular mayor, Nir Barkat, has pitted himself against the city's swelling ranks of ultra-orthodox extremists by demanding that local police enable women to reclaim their position in the public domain. Over recent months, women's faces
have disappeared from billboards across the city amid mounting pressure applied by the powerful ultra-orthodox lobby, who find the female image offensive. Advertisers that do not fall in line with the standards of the extreme ultra-orthodox have
frequently fallen victim to direct action. Across Jerusalem, female figures have been blacked out of billboards with spray-paint, or vandalised with graffiti branding the image illegal . Other posters are simply torn down. On Sunday, Barkat
wrote a letter to district police commander Niso Shaham in which he said: We must make sure that those who want to advertise [with] women's images in the city can do so without fear of vandalism and defacement of billboards or buses showing women.
The battle over Jerusalem's billboards is only one manifestation of an alarming trend towards gender segregation across Israel driven by the religious right. Activist Hila Benyovich-Hoffman was spurred to take action by reports that nine male
cadets in the Israeli Defence Force had walked out of an army event in September because women were singing. Four were expelled from an officer's training course for refusing to apologise. Benyovich-Hoffman said: This
was the final straw for me, that these cadets could humiliate female soldiers because some rabbi has told them that a woman's voice is indecent. The army used to be a source of pride because women served alongside men as equals. But more and more, rabbis
are influencing army behaviour.
She organised a series of demonstrations last Friday in which hundreds of women gathered for singalongs in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Beersheva to demand their right to a public presence. She
says much more needs to be done.
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6th November 2011 | |
| Jerusalem women fight back against the religious ban on women in advertising
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See article from haaretz.com
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Six women met in Jerusalem to be photographed so their pictures can be hung from balconies throughout the city to counteract what appears to be the attempt to keep women out of advertising in the capital. A group that calls itself Yerushalmim (
Jerusalemites ) and focuses on issues of pluralism is behind the initiative. The idea is to return the city space to its natural state and turn the appearance of women into something boring, that no one notices, one of the originators
of the idea, Rabbi Uri Ayalon, a Conservative rabbi who created a Facebook page called uncensored, through which the women signed up to be photographed. The six volunteers met at the Jerusalem home of activist Shira Katz-Winkler. One of
them, Idit Karni, says: A minority can't take over the city and cause women and girls to disappear. I have four daughters, and I don't intend to leave them a city that has lost its sanity. Another of the volunteers, Tzafira Stern-Asal who
is the director of a dance school, says she has had personal experience with the difficulty of putting women in advertising in the capital when trying to advertise her school. I finally had to limit myself to a shoe or some sort of fluttering
material, which certainly reduces the attraction of the ad, she says. In the first phase of the project, 100 posters of the women will be hung throughout the city, focusing on the downtown area. The women believe the problem lies with
advertisers, who self-censor out of fear of the ultra-Orthodox. Now we'll see the skies won't fall. I don't say it will pass quietly, but people will breathe easier when they see pictures of women returning to billboards.
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