Here’s Why Oscar Nominees Are Getting Free Luxe Trips to Israel

From the Forward:

Just as it looks good for a vape company to have Leonardo DiCaprio sampling its product, it looks good for Israel to have Leo walking around the streets of Tel Aviv. It’s great marketing, because it implicitly ties Leo’s brand to Israel’s. It telegraphs to the world that our cultural elite sees nothing wrong with Israel — a message that the country desperately needs at a time when artists are increasingly being called upon to boycott it.
While it’s easy to imagine Leo taking Israel up on the offer (even if it’s just to try to find Bar Refaeli 2.0), it’s harder to imagine others jumping on the bandwagon — or El-Al flight. As Haaretz points out, Best Supporting Actor nominee Mark Ruffalo, who tweeted his support for the people of Gaza during the 2014 war, will probably sit this one out. He might even tweet criticism of the swag bags under the hashtag #Oscarwashing.
But the Israeli marketing move may well appeal to some of the fence-sitting nominees whose politics lie somewhere in between those two actors’. Even if it attracts just a couple of them, that will make it “worth it” from Israel’s point of view.