When the privileged classes engage in political virtue-signaling, subtlety isn’t their strong suit. A prime example is Comme Il Faut, the self-proclaimed feminist fashion house—an Israeli company with a pretentious French name—whose jeans cost more than many average citizens spend on groceries in a month.
This week, the label cloaked its expensive couture in a cheap excuse for an ad campaign. The slogan of the sales pitch—“We cannot use food as weapons”—is a reference to Gaza.
More precisely, it’s a woke version of barbaric propaganda according to which Israel is purposely causing a famine in the Strip. But the visuals in this case aren’t the ones that were circulated by The New York Times and other anti-Israel mouthpieces, then subsequently debunked.
Here, the photos are of individual Israeli restaurateurs, staring serenely into the camera, clutching empty pots. Beneath each figure is a caption—in Hebrew, English and Arabic—reading: “Resist starvation.”
The high-end cookware on display isn’t the only reason that the images don’t evoke Charles Dickens’s character, Oliver Twist, asking for more porridge from his workhouse master. No, the real cause is the identity of the people holding the stainless-steel vessels.
Consider Tamar Cohen Tzedek, the chef-owner of Cucina Hess 4. Thisestablishment is no corner cafe or shawarma stand. Diners who enter the place are after delicacies and ambiance.
The same holds for Avivit Priel Avichai, whose Ouzeria is a staple for the trendy set. The Greek-style taverna offers “vegan-friendly” options alongside a treif (non-kosher) smorgasbord of shrimp and calamari.
Then there’s Aviram Katz, a veteran of the scene, with HaBasta, Mifgash Rambam and Morris Bar—all known for more upscale Mideast menus. Add to the mix Michal Levit, a food-culture researcher. She may not run a kitchen, but she dons the foodie mantle like a designer apron.
Talk about a hypocrisy two-fer. Dual marketing for elite haberdashers and Michelin-star-seekers, whose clientele are far more likely to spend their nights out discussing intermittent fasting than forced hunger; you know, such as that suffered by the hostages at the hands of Hamas.
That’s not the half of it. The luxury clothing brand, founded in 1987 by Sybil Goldfainer and run today with her daughter, Romi Kaminer Goldfainer, boasts that it’s about women standing tall against injustice.
Yeah, right. It’s more like phony activism geared to the size-zero set. Which is comme il faut (French for “as it should be”) for “progressive” business prowess.
It’s revealing that the target consumers are those who vilify the government as a fashion statement. These are the crème-de-la crème of shoppers, not the bulk of an overall patriotic society.
The Goldfainer girls and their comrades have created a glossy illusion of righteousness at Israel’s expense. That’s commerce for you.
Nor is the timing coincidental. In the Instagram age, particularly during a war, protest equals promotion. Every billboard is a business deal. It’s thus that the supposed “starvation” of Gazans has become material for affluent Israelis to wear their bleeding hearts on the sleeves of their glamorous garments.
This is limousine leftism at its finest. But it’s nothing new. For decades, Israel’s cultural aristocracy has confused performance with principle—equating selfies with sacrifice and hashtags with heroism.
Ironically, this is why neither the Goldfainers nor their culinary counterparts are likely to experience boycotts. On the contrary, they know their customers.
This doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t expose them as the shams they are: touting moral superiority, while profiting from Israel’s delicate predicament and lying about the culprit behind the Gazans’ plight. From now on, we should rename Comme Il Faut and call it, more aptly, “Comme Il Faux.”
