Mysterious page in today's newspaper

At first glance it looks like an ad, but it couldn't be. (for those who don't know, Israelis are forbidden to enter Syria, so there's no chance an Israeli newspaper could or would advertise tourism to Syria)
So what is this?

Feel free to vote or add your own suggestions:
1) An ad for advertising space (this is how desperate we've become)
2) Left-wing propoganda
3) Two Israelis made a bet in which the loser had to place a funny ad

other ideas... ?!

our Birthright and our freedom...

Last night I saw my dear childhood friend Jackie who is here on a Birthright trip. It felt like pure happiness just to stand next to her. We went to a classy bar-restaurant in the Tel Aviv port where we ate at the bar and the bartender spoiled us with free drinks to "start us off on the right foot" throughout the night. We were seated next to three non-Jewish Irish businessmen who work at Intel here and it was interesting to hear their perspectives about living in Israel. What was funny and frustrating about my time with Jackie was that she had a curfew - the Birthright participants were restricted to staying within the Tel Aviv port area, and they were threatened with being back at the bus by midnight on the dot (or else). Being 26 years old and with high-powered New York City careers, the participants were not amused by these rules to say the least. At the end of the night when I walked Jackie and her friends back to the bus, and I saw their typically American-anal counselors with name tags around their neck freaking out about how so-and-so was missing and the bus was going to leave without them, I just had to laugh to myself. Here was a group of adults, my age, who were being guarded like a bunch of prisoners that if let out of sight for a minute something terrible would happen -- while Israeli children are let loose to run wild across the country as they please. I have taken long walks through Tel Aviv and seen ten-year-olds beside me the whole way, unsupervised and unfazed. It's just funny how different the American and Israeli perceptions are of "what's safe" in Israel. But I understand Birthright. What they are doing is incredibly important, and Gd forbid the minute one bad thing happens to a Birthright participant, their reputation will be forever tarnished. And we can't afford to let that happen. So in a way I respect and accept Birthright's unbelievably anal rules- but as I walked away from my peers boarding that Birthright bus, I couldn't help but think to myself how grateful I was to be walking free through the Tel Aviv streets.

געגועים

No matter how far away the world is
or how much we try to forget
we'll always dream at night
and the past stays alive
and the people, dead or alive,
will never die
the world only gets bigger and bigger
and the wars we fight
just come closer and closer to our home.

Here in Israel
everything feels normal, if I let it
the sand of the beach is infinite
no matter how many thousands of bodies walk off with it
it doesn't recede one inch
and we are confident in everything we do here
so confident,
that even our small lies aren't lying,
it's how we socialize
it's the difference between life and a game.

And sometimes when I sleep in Israel
I get to go back
I get to be with my loved, loved friends
who feel like sisters I forgot I had
forgot to call
and I forgot how good it feels,
until I wake up
and then it's like I'm here, and everything seems normal,
until I remember I left my stomach
still digesting dinner at the kitchen table in Boston
and the highways run through my mind
like they'll never be forgotten,
like I'll never leave them
even as I sit here on the אדמה of the holiest place on our planet
I'm still riding the border of North America
and even as I'm being sung to in the holiest language of our history
I'm hearing my past
in my ankles and my elbows, aching up my back
in a whisper to me
where are you
where are you supposed to be
whose land is this really.

What's real suddenly seems so simple.
I miss my friends.

My friends, my friends, my friends.

And I don't know what's worse;
that none of you Israelis know how it feels,
or that none of my friends do,
or that there's no one place to be
to have everything you love all at once.