Health Ministry sheaths condom ad
Video offering masturbation as alternative to safe sex taken off YouTube after religious artists complain of indecency
A video calling for the use of condoms was pulled out of circulation by the Health Ministry after complaints by prominent members from the religious community offended by the ad’s sophomoric humor.
The video, which was released last week and titled “No Condom, No Thank You,” greeted Israeli web surfers as an ad at the start of YouTube videos.
The 68-second video, part of a larger safe-sex campaign, begins with a man and woman kissing passionately in a bedroom and the man being presented with a condom. The man, who complains about his hatred of condoms, is then presented with a variety of other options in lieu of using a condom such as “dancing with the unicorn,” “choking the one-eyed-beast,” and “rubbing the magic lamp,” clear references to masturbation.
As of Sunday, the video was removed from circulation on YouTube and taken down from the Health Ministry’s channel and Facebook page.
According to Ynet, a number of religious artists, including well-known Orthodox singers Yaakov Shweky and Yishai Lapidot, turned to YouTube to have advertisements with the video removed from content associated with them on the popular video-sharing site.
The artists asserted that the video was inappropriate, particularly for younger viewers.
Although it was praised for its creativity and promotion of safe sexual practices, prominent Mizrahi singer Gad Elbaz, a popular recording artist who is religiously observant, was happy to see the video removed.
“It is sad that no one monitors the content the Health Ministry is uploading to the Internet,” Elbaz said. “I am pleased that [YouTube’s parent company] Google was smart enough to understand this problem and immediately removed this ad.”
Yair Amikam, the deputy director of information at the Health Ministry, defended the video’s message while acknowledging its candor.
“They say this campaign is blunt — I’ll be the first to admit that,” said Amikam.
“For years we have tried to instill the use of condoms and safe sex in the public, and we have not always been successful,” Amikam added. “Our goal was to successfully reach a target audience with a message that would be relevant to them — and we were able to do that.”
Amikam went on further to defend the video, saying, “There is no campaign that doesn’t offend one [religious] group or another, and we knew that. But we have not hurt a single individual — just the feelings of one kind or another.”
