Bibi and Abu Mazen Kiss

Image by courtesy of unhate foundation

Gal Beckerman November 17, 2011

One can always dream, right?

This photo(shopped) image has been making the rounds and it’s hard to tear your eyes away from that pucker. It’s one of a series from a new ad campaign from Benetton that harkens back to the days when they were regularly producing wonderfully subversive ads that demanded a double take (I’ll never forget seeing this one). The series includes Barack Obama smooching Hugo Chavez and the Pope making out with Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb, Imam of the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, and it is branded with the tagline “UNHATE,” which is also the name of a new foundation Benetton has started to combat intolerance.

According to Benetton “These are symbolic images of reconciliation — with a touch of ironic hope and constructive provocation — to stimulate reflection on how politics, faith and ideas, even when they are divergent and mutually opposed, must still lead to dialogue and mediation.”

I just think this is screaming out for a caption. Please help us. Offer your suggestions in the comments section and I’ll post the best one.

Gal Beckerman was a staff writer and then the Forward’s opinion editor until 2014. He was previously an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review where he wrote essays and media criticism. His book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Bookforum. His first book, “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” won the 2010 National Jewish Book Award and the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, as well as being named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and The Washington Post. Follow Gal on Twitter at @galbeckerman

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

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