Extremely Poor Taste

I posted last week about an advertisement for Machane Mitgalgel, based on a fellow blogger's description of the ad. This week, I actually saw a copy of the ad (left) for myself. And it's in far worse taste than I could have imagined. From the copy:

1. The trip begins August 2007 in Israel.
2. After a few days of orientation, we will leave on small yachts to Cyprus, where the British held detention camps for the Jews.
3. Once there, we will spend a few days reliving the experience.
4. We will then backtrack on the yachts to Israel the way the Ma'apilim did 60 years ago, experiencing first hand what it felt like coming to the Promised Land.

Where, oh where, do I even begin? Perhaps with this line:

we will leave on small yachts to Cyprus, where the British held detention camps for the Jews...Once there, we will spend a few days reliving the experience.

Which experience, exactly, will the campers be reliving? This one, from a description of the appalling conditions that these refugees had to endure in the Cyprus detention camps?

Conditions in the camps were quite harsh, especially for mothers of children and babies. The tents and barracks were overcrowded, there was no privacy and families had to share accommodations with single persons. The insufficient supply of water, particularly in the hot summer months, caused sanitary conditions to deteriorate and led to skin diseases and infections

(photo of Jewish Holocaust refugees in a Cyprus refugee camp at right).
Something tells me the only skin ailment these yachting campers will be suffering is a little sunburn.

Or perhaps the line about "backtrack[ing] on the yachts to Israel the way the Ma'apilim did 60 years ago" is what irked me about this ad copy. Just for comparison's sake, here's a description of the conditions the Ma'apilim actually faced on the boats to Israel:

Picture the scene [of those Jewish war refugees seeking entrance to the Holy Land]. This journey extends to 14 days. Fourteen days and nights in vessels which are hardly seaworthy, lying on what amounts to little more than wooden planks. These planks are layered narrowly, placed one on top of the other, so that those lying on them are absolutely unable to reach the sitting position. They are forced to lie flat, looking upwards at the next wooden plank. And here they lie for two full weeks, with little enough food or water, scarcely venturing up on deck, no medical help, and barely enough air to breathe.

"Just the way the Ma'apilim did"? Huh. And in case the differences between the two journeys aren't quite clear enough, the camp provides a picture of a rusting, hulking ship with scores of immigrants amassed, waiting to board, and helpfully contrasts it with an image of a luxury yacht, complete with backdrop of azure sky and cerulean sea. To be perfectly explicit, the images are captioned "then" and "now" (because otherwise, of course, we might not have been clear as to which boat was being advertised as the camp's conveyance of choice).

So does this ad show extremely bad taste in the way it is suggesting that a luxury yacht trip will somehow give these campers a taste of what the journey of these holocaust survivors must have been like? In my opinion, it is. If this is a luxury sightseeing tour, just say so. But don't profess to be allowing these campers to "relive" the experiences of a group of holocaust survivors, fenced into a detention camp with horrible living conditions, barred from their homeland, forced to endure far more suffering and hardship than a yachting trip can ever recapture.

Feel free to put your own take in comments.