Thursday, October 22, 2009

Haredi Group Considers FOX Boycott


No, it's not FOX news, but the Israeli Fox Clothing Company, which has aroused the ire of the Haredi community in B'nei B'rak, Israel by erecting a billboard featuring top model Bar Refaeli.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Rabbi Mordechai Bloi, chairman of the Haredi group Guardians of Sanctity and Education, says the community is considering boycotting Fox. Prior to the billboard, Fox's provocative ad campaigns featuring Refaeli had been limited to Israeli TV and Internet, to which members of the community are not exposed.

"Whether people wish to see this or not is a personal choice, and we don't tell people what to do in the privacy of their home. But they cannot be permitted to poison the public environment," Bloi said. Fox has a big Haredi clientele and a large store in the religious community of Bnei Brak, and stands to lose from a boycott.

A photo of the actual billboard accompanies the article in Haaretz. But the Haredi web site Vos Iz Neias, while reprinting the Haaretz article verbatim, substituted their own version of the photo (above) with the caption "The immodest billboard on highway." Readers will have to decide for themselves if a billboard covered with black ink is immodest and worthy of a boycott. Or maybe they'll just Google it and see what all the fuss is about.

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