Desperate charm offensive: Israel luring Oscar nominees

Israel is luring Hollywood into accepting an offer regarding Oscar nominees traveling to the occupied lands, a move being slammed by pro-Palestinian activists as a “propaganda trip”.

Bankrolled by Israel's Tourism Ministry and New York-based travel agency Explore Israel, the trip is valued at US $55,000 and lasts for 10 days.

Consisting of a first-class flight to Tel Aviv and an all-expenses-included stay in a luxury resort, the lavish trip has been offered to nominees for best actor and actress, best supporting and director categories, as well as this year's Oscars presenter Chris Rock.

"Among the nominees who could be touring in Tel Aviv or walking through the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem are Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jennifer Lawrence, Sylvester Stallone, Christian Bale and Kate Winslet," Israel Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in a statement.

The move allegedly aims to win over celebrities and secure their help to rebrand Israel as a tourist paradise rather than a war zone.

This is while the offer proposed by Israel has been vehemently slated by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a pro-Palestine international network that often asks celebrities and singers not to visit Israel in protest at the 50-year-long West Bank occupation.

Desperate charm offensive

Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the BDS movement, condemned the offer as a "propaganda trip."

"We hope Oscar nominees will take the moral path of rejecting this free propaganda gift from the Capitol while its brutal troops and settlers burn and colonize our District 12,” he said, alluding to the fictional universe of The Hunger Games.

"The Academy's association with Israel further tarnishes its image regarding racism and evokes memories of Hollywood's past collaboration with criminal regimes."

Furthermore, Kamel Hawwash, a member of London-based Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and one of the coordinators of the BDS movement in the UK, said that Israel was on a "desperate charm offensive."

He said Israel has “a bad image...and reputation,” and “This trip is just the latest attempt to counter this.”

"They are trying to bribe celebrities with expensive junkets, so that when they go back they'll say what wonderful place Israel is, but the world is well aware of the rising violence in the settlements, and the racism in Israeli society,” he noted.

More than half a million Israelis live in more than 120 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank in 1967.

The settlements are considered illegal by the UN and many countries because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are thus subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbids construction on occupied lands.

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