100,000 Arabs hitting on X-rated Israeli website: piece in the Middle East

Apparently, an X-rated parody website that features zaftig Mossad agents stripping off their kit in a classic honey trap is getting hit on by Israel's more sexually repressed neighbors in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and the like. (This startlingly blue news comes to us courtesy of the Hornet, who flits in and out of Jerusalem.)
The Israeli webmaster for Ratuv.com--the name is Hebrew for "wet"--says the next step will be

to make movies with Israelis and Arabs performing together, in order to foster more intimate relations between the two peoples.

Yeah right. Just one more way to get screwed, I can hear both sides muttering already. The site features plenty of skin shots and is not particularly subtle. Six-pointed porn stars are not truly essential for peace in the Middle East. But nothing else seems to be working at the moment. (See one of the comparatively restrained photos from the site, above.)
Well, the renegade author Salman Rushdie takes a rather longer view of all this. He contemplated porn and Middle Eastern society in an essay called "The East is Blue"
"Pornography exists everywhere, of course, but when it comes into societies in which it's difficult for young men and women to get together and do what young men and women often like doing, it satisfies a more general need; and, while doing so, it sometimes becomes a kind of standard-bearer for freedom, even for civilization," Rushdie wrote.

Because the enterprising webmaster, Nir Shahar, has posted an all-Arabic version, he has significantly increased the size ..of his web-traffic. Even though they cannot download porn flicks because of restrictions, some 100,000 Arab-speakers have clicked in on the pictures. He told the Hollywood trade paper Variety

The most popular movie on the site is "Code Name: Deep Investigation," an X-rated parody of the arrest of dissident Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, who spilled the beans on Israel's secret nuclear weapons program in the 1980s. He was eventually caught by Mossad agents, who sent a beautiful female agent to trap him.

"Arab people usually see female Israeli soldiers in a bad situation, so there's a lot of curiosity to see what Israeli girls look like without any uniforms," says Shahar. "We don’t make regular porn films. Our films parody the situation in Israel, so we look at issues like the elections here and Mossad. There is a lot of relevance to the Arab-Israeli situation."

Given that Israeli law precludes Shahar from accepting credit card payment from some Arab countries, he plans to set up a site registered in either Europe or the U.S.