CYBERSPACE — Israeli operators of adult sites are reporting significant site membership from Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority. Some porn operators are reporting that 2 to 10-percent of their members come from the Muslim world.Nir Shahar, who manages the Israeli porn website, Ratuv (“wet”), said that his company produces clips that have typical Israeli themes featuring female soldiers, female Mossad agents, and policewomen.
It turns out there is a high demand for such politically-charged content even in countries that are defined as enemy states. The most popular video clip on his site among Arabs, “Code name: Deep investigation,” is described as “a parody dealing with the Vanunu affair with agents investigating the affair using erotic means.”
In interviews, Shahar also notes an increase in his audience in Iran and Kuwait. Due to the demand, Shahar even added an Arabic version of the site for his foreign consumers.
“We get hundreds of hits from surfers that live in countries where porn is prohibited,” said Gil Naftali, owner and operator of another Hebrew sex site, SexV. “We don’t have an Arabic version because users log in to watch photos and video clips that require no explanations.”
According to SexV’s site stats, last month there were more than 2,000 hits from Saudi Arabia with the average time a Saudi surfer spends on SexV is 17:23 minutes.
“Israeli and Arab surfers do not communicate on the website. Ideology? No, it’s purely business,” Tzahi laughed. “Porn will not bring about peace but at least we get some money out of our enemies’ pockets.”
