Israel @ 63… The EL AL TV Commercial that made me cry!
When was the last time a TV commercial for an airline brought tears to your eyes? For me it happened yesterday. It was early in the morning when I first saw El Al’s new commercial celebrating Israel’s sixty three years of Statehood. This time of the year, right after Yom Hashoah and standing right at the heels of Yom Hazikaron and Yom Hatzmaut I find myself in an unusual state of mind.
At the end of Nisan and beginning of Iyar we remember who we are, we weep as we collectively revisit the dark moments of history and rejoice in the promise and reality of what Israel represents both physically and spiritually. All in about ten days.
But why am I writing about El Al? Aren’t there many much more urgent and pressing issues when it comes to Israel today? Yes, but this time I would like to point out the obvious. This time I would like to open our eyes to the simple things that we so often notice, but so often take for granted. Has it ever happen to you that you find yourself in a far away land and suddenly as you land in a foreign airport as you see all of the airliners together in the tarmac you suddenly spot an El Al plane? Right at that very moment you feel proud! I know, not a lot of people talk about this and it seems almost trivial but in all honesty, it always happens to me. Somehow, the idea that Israel has its own national carrier translates into one of the ultimate symbols of self-determination. For hundreds of years we were constrained to specific areas of residency in many countries. For decades even during the twentieth century we were not able to freely travel wherever we wanted to go. It seems to belong in the distant past but if you think about it carefully it was not so long ago when we weren’t free to move about the world.
Israel always makes me proud but when I think of what we have accomplished in such a short time I always pause and think that it is truly the embodiment of what it was meant to represent. More than a country, more than land, more than a national home it is the vivid representation of our right to self-determination as a People. I am not on El Al’s payroll, that’s for sure. You have to watch this commercial because I am sure it will have the same effect on you that it had on me. It is not about the perks or the first class service or the super fancy lay down flat seats. It is for sure not about their stellar service. It is not about frequent flyer mile redemption either. It is about our history, who we are, where we are going and believe it or not, what it means to be able to do something as simple and so apparently trivial as flying our own planes.
I wish for all of us a joyous Yom Hatzmaut celebration and a renewed feeling of strong support and unconditional love for our unique, imperfect and absolutely not to ever be taken for granted ISRAEL.