Let's start at the beginning. This is Naftali Bennet, Israel's Minister of Education. He's the leader of a party devoted to expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank and a key member of the current government's coalition.
Last week, the Education Ministry disqualified Dorit Rabinyan's novel called "Gader Haya," known in English as "Borderlife," from being added to the country's high school curriculum.
Worse, Rabinyan's book was specifically rejected because it engaged in “intimate relations” that “threatens the separate identity” of Jews and non-Jews, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
In response to the ban, which some have called racist and several teachers have indicated that they'd ignore, TimeOut Tel Aviv produced a video of six pairs of Arabs and Jews — some gay, some straight, some couples, some strangers, some friends — kissing.
View this video on YouTube
“When the story came out last Thursday we were already working on another big project," TimeOut Tel Aviv deputy editor Nof Nathanson told the Washington Post. "But during our editorial meeting this week we decided that we needed to take action against this decision. We immediately started working on the video."
While provocative to some in Israel, it's not exactly new ground. The video itself is directly inspired by that viral "First Kiss" video from 2014. And in the same year, Arab-Jewish couples took to the Internet to show their disdain for the Gaza War.
But if you want to watch the video from TimeOut's Facebook page, you're out of luck — it's been removed and TimeOut is perplexed as to why. Facebook has already confirmed to Haaretz that it was not behind the video's disappearance, deepening the mystery.
Facebook didn't immediately return a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.