Art Director/Designer: Leonard Sirowitz Photographer: Dick Richards Copywriter: Robert Levenson Agency: Doyle Dane Bernbach, Inc. Client: El Al Isreal Airlines
MY NAME IS ISREAL. I AM 20. Good people died that might be born in a land called home. I have heard the stories and seen the graves. But now we are here and the land is ours. Not all milk and honey, but ours. We shared a name, the land and I--Isreal. And we share a birthday. Twenty years. For me, a long time. For my people who waited thousands of years, almost nothing. But we have made something of that nothing. Now the hills of rocks are hills of trees. Fifty million trees. Jerusalem pines, planted one at a time. Cities thrive where nothing thrived Orange trees boom where nothing bloomed. An almost dead language is alive again. We read the Dead Sea Scrolls as easy as you read this magazine. We mine copper where King Solomon mined copper. We make fresh water from the sea, and we share what we have learned with other nations. We build airports and schools in Asia, sell baby chickens and farm equipment in Europe, and exchange our students with even younger countries in Africa. How do we go to so many places? Easy. We have our own airline. El Al Isreal Airlines. You don't know what El Al means? It means "to the skies" in that almost dead langue. It also means that our jets are welcome in 17 different nations. Yes, we have everything now: Universities, symphony orchestras, great museums, politicians, dropouts, traffic jams, a little air pollution--everything. We are of this century, with all the strengths and weaknesses and problems of people everywhere. We will survive. Because, above all, we are here. Alive. In a land called home. -- Gunnar Larson xNY.io - Bank.org 917-580-8053
