Israeli Politicians’ TV Attack Ads Showcase Societal Divisions

Israelis love a good fight, so it’s no wonder that the hottest item on television these days is campaign advertising.

Ethnic tension, mudslinging and snide jokes are the staple fare in a TV blitz that began last week and will continue until Israelis vote for a new national government May 17.

Like a kaleidoscope, the colorful, American-style ads have succeeded in reflecting every controversy and social dispute dividing the Israeli public. Watch the commercials and you will see religious Jews challenge secular Jews. Russian immigrants take on Sephardic immigrants. The left confront the right.

Three-Way Race for Prime Minister

And of course, there are the candidates in what is essentially a three-way race for prime minister.

There’s the hard-line incumbent, Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking softly and sincerely into the camera about how he’s made the country a safe place for its citizens. There’s opposition leader Ehud Barak, of the dovish Labor Party, thumping his military medals to show that he, too, is strong on security.

And then Yitzhak Mordechai, running a distant third as the head of the new Center Party, chimes in with a one-note theme: Only I can defeat Netanyahu. Until a few months ago, Mordechai was Netanyahu’s defense minister.

The election is seen as a crucial vote that will determine the future of Middle Eastern peacemaking, both in Israel’s current dealings with the Palestinians and in future negotiations with Syria and the rest of the Arab world.

But in the meantime, the show is on television and radio. Under Israeli election law, political propaganda must be limited to two daily 45-minute blocks of air time on television and a similar allotment on radio. The amount of time each party gets depends on how many seats it holds in parliament.

Commentators portrayed the commercials as a showdown between the highly paid American consultants working for the two major parties. Indeed, the touch of James Carville, the Democratic spin-meister hired this year by Labor’s Barak, and Arthur Finkelstein, veteran of Republican campaigns and longtime Netanyahu advisor, is evident. Ads are slick and negative, with concise sound-bite themes.

Ratings are high. Reviews are mixed.

“The broadcasts are a classic Israeli event,” noted commentator Nachum Barnea. “There’s lots of flash and very little substance. They provide the Israeli public with a chance to sit down in front of the television, blow off some steam in living room arguments and decide in the end that the side one was already voting for produced the best endorsement.”

Predictably, Netanyahu, doing what he does best--TV--looks confident, caring and reasonable. His ads hit at his opponents’ Achilles heel by taking credit for a significant decline in terrorism. Neither Barak nor any other candidate has found a response.

“Do you feel safer today than three years ago?” Netanyahu asks. “The answer is obvious. Today we are not afraid to ride a bus, to walk in the streets, to go to the mall.”

Netanyahu, who normally takes pride in his abrasive bluntness, delivers these lines calmly and with feeling as he sits in the warm, golden glow of his study, dressed in a friendly blue sweater, looking like Jimmy Carter giving a fireside chat.

In another spot, he furthers the image of reliable toughness by suggesting that Barak would give away the disputed holy city of Jerusalem to Palestinian control, an unsupported claim that nevertheless plays to Israeli fears.

He invokes the images of early Zionist founding fathers like Theodor Herzl and includes repeated pictures of Jerusalem’s Old City and Judaism’s most sacred sites.

Barak attempts to counter, advertising both his record as Israel’s most decorated soldier and his ability to look statesmanlike. Old footage shows a young, tousle-haired Barak leading commandos in a daring rescue of hostages from a hijacked airline. An older Barak is then shown jogging with his wife and hoisting a baby in the air. The ads blame the sitting government for troubles in the Israeli economy.

“If 100,000 Israelis have lost their jobs, why should Netanyahu keep his?” Barak’s sloganeers ask.

Parties Reach Out to Russian Immigrants

In a sign of how important the “Russian vote” is, Netanyahu’s Likud and one or two other parties used Russian-language subtitles on their ads. Labor’s failure to do so on the first night was met with widespread scorn (“Idiots!” proclaimed television critic Meir Schnitzer); by Night #2, Labor had added the subtitles.

Immigrants from the former Soviet Union now account for about 15% of the Israeli electorate, and their vote is being eagerly wooed.

By far the most dramatic ads came from Yisrael B’Aliya, a party of mostly Russian immigrants led by former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, who serves as Netanyahu’s trade minister.

Only Russian is spoken, with Hebrew subtitles. The ads demand that Russian immigrants be given control of the Israeli Interior Ministry, which handles immigration and the granting of benefits and basic rights to immigrants. Russian immigrants recount the humiliation they have suffered at the hands of an Interior Ministry run by the Shas Party, which, as part of various coalition governments, has been in charge of the portfolio for years.

Shas represents Sephardic Jews--who trace their origins to the Middle East or Africa. Resentment between Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews--who, like Russians, are of European descent--is enormous.

The dire warning contained in Yisrael B’Aliya’s ads has already become the most catchy slogan of the TV campaign, even though it’s in Russian: “Shas kontrol? Nyet. Nash [our] kontrol!”

Aryeh Deri, the powerful head of Shas who was recently convicted on bribery and corruption charges, responded angrily to the Yisrael B’Aliya ads. He told Israeli Army Radio that the Russians have nothing to complain about; hundreds of thousands were allowed to immigrate to Israel, he said, even though “to my great regret, hundreds of thousands were goyim,” or Gentiles, pretending to be Jews.

Most of Deri’s followers in Shas are ultra-Orthodox Jews. Shas, meanwhile, used its ads to glorify Deri, showing him riding on the shoulders of his admirers, even though he has been sentenced to prison.

The ads promote ultra-Orthodox values. Huge families are shown, as well as women, covered, seated at computers. But the voice-overs urging members to vote for Shas speak in a grammatical form that indicates they are addressing men.

An ad from the National Religious Party, which groups Orthodox Zionist Jews, shows a knitted kippa, or skullcap, gradually unraveling as the speaker warns of erosion in basic Jewish traditions. “If religious Zionism is not united, we will have fewer yeshivas, less Sabbath observance, fewer settlements, less Judaism,” it warns.

The secular cause is defended principally by Labor, which promises not to be held “hostage” by ultra-Orthodox groups, and the leftist Meretz Party, which urges the “freedom to choose.”