Voting in the Israeli elections with a compass
With elections only 11 days away, it looks like a shoe-in for the Likud party led by Binyamin Netanyahu. But according to polls, there’s about 400,000 voters – which almost 10% of eligible voters – who haven’t yet decided which of the 34 parties running for Knesset to vote for.
You could count me as one of them. Alot of friends and acquaintances are voting for the Green Movement-Meimad ticket, but I fear they’re going to get 90% of the vote among liberal religious Anglo residents of southern Jerusalem neighborhoods like Baka and Talpiot, and 0.2% everywhere else.
Will they cross the threshold of minimum votes to gain at least one Knesset seat and not result in a wasted vote? Their TV ads aren’t very convincing – using Rabbi Michael Melchior giving a speech instead of utilizing one of the young, dynamic members on the list like Alon Tal. Melchior’s fine, but he’s a known entity, and his Meimad party has limited support around the country.
Perplexed, I ended up on this site my wife told me about – the Election Compass - a multiple choice questionaire about different issues related to Israel’s security mostly. Based on your answers, you receive a report with a compass on the political map pointing to the party you should be voting for – or at least the general vicinity.
Launched by the Israel Democracy Institute, the site had nearly 500,000 visitors by Thursday. Questions like ‘Would you be willing to give up Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem for a Palestinian state?’ have to be answered with a ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ checkpoint range.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the model was initiated in the Netherlands for that country’s 2006 elections and was eventually used by 3.4 million people out of 12.6 million voters. The Israeli version was developed by a team of IDI scholars and researchers lead by Senior Fellow Prof. Asher Arian.
“The compass has three main goals,” Arian told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. “The first is to help the perplexed voter find his position within the Israeli political map. The second is to encourage parties to be more forthcoming with specifics regarding their various platforms. And the third is to encourage political participation. We’re very concerned about the low participation rate in Israel, and we thought that this could add a buzz.”
After dutifully answering the questionaire, I awaited the tally and the compass page to find out who I should be voting for. And, my compass pointed to an area populated by – guess what – the Green Movement-Meimad.
Getting Ben-Gurion high, and other TV ads
Filed under: General, Israeliness, Politics, Pop Culture
It’s here – the only redeeming aspect of the Knesset election campaign – the television ads!
Tonight beings the perennial ritual of the screening of the TV ads developed by the political parties running for the Knesset. Instead of airing them whenever they buy the air time, the three main Israeli channels – 1, 10 and 22, group the ads together in preset blocks of time. So tonight for instance, Channel 10 has been given the hour slot begining at 6 pm for those that just can’t wait, Channel 1 will air the aids at 10 pm and Channel 2 gets the late-night 11:15 pm slot.
The ads used to be screened in prime time, but there’s been a waning interest over the years among viewers, so they’ve been relegated to the early and late evening periods, and they’ll only be shown for two weeks instead of the traditional three. Still, the ads are always good TV and provide more laughs than any sitcom on the air.
Following the rich get richer mode of thinking, the amount of time each of the 34 parties receives for commercials is based on how many MKs each party has in the current Knesset, so Kadima will dominate the broadcasts and new parties will barely be seen, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Kadima’s ads are focusing on tearing down Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, who is leading in the polls. One ad depicts a polygraph machine as Netanyahu vowed to oppose the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, while a picture shows him voting in favor of the plan.
The Likud will go after Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, portraying her as indecisive and zigzagging – by supporting the Second Lebanon War but calling it unwinnable, and calling to topple Hamas while giving them money. The Likud slogan – “it’s out of her league” is purposely read by a woman so as not to look chauvinist, says the report.
The religious Shas party is adopting the tactics of President Barack Obama, by featuring the “Yes, we can” slogan, while the Left-wing Meretz-Hatnua Hahadasha ads have candidate Nitzan Horovitz drinking from a toilet to highlight the problem of water pollution.
The less popular the party, the more outrageous the ad, it turns out. The Power to the Handicapped Party will feature disabled people having sex to prove that they are abled, while the Green Leaf Party which favors legalizing marijuana will feature chairman Gil Kopatch smoking a joint on the grave of Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion.
Everyone’s happy now – the ad agencies have their creative juices flowing, the TV viewers have something to watch and talk about the next day, and the politicians are seeing themselves as God-like. Now, if all this only helped the voter decide who to vote for…
The Quiet Within the Storm
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics, War
You have to give Israelis credit; when the chips are down, even the ones who aren’t necessarily suspected of idealism come shining through.
As Israel went to war against Hamas over the weekend, the leaders of the major political parties all decided to suspend their political campaigns for the duration of the operation – which, both Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak said could be lengthy. Barak, who leades the Labor Party, said that he had to concentrate on the operation and had no time for politics.
The Likud, too, suspended its campaign, and has put on hold a radio campaign featuring ads attacking Kadima chief and Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni. Posters that bear the campaign’s tagline – “Tsipi, the job is too big for you” – that have already been put up will be taken down. In a statement Saturday night, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu said that “there is a time for debate and a time for unity, and today is a time for unity,” he said. “If our enemies thought we would not be united under rocket fire, they were wrong. The cannons roar, but we are united.”
With the elections coming just about a month from now – and the gap between the Likud and Kadima narrowing, according to the latest polls – the suspension of campaigning is really extraordinary. It wouldn’t be surprising for opposition politicians, for example, to accuse the government of timing its operation to cynically improve its standing in the polls, giving it a “January surprise” type of bounce that could sustain it until the elections. But no – politicians on the left and the right spontaneously announced (without any coordination, as far as I could tell) that they were holding off on the negative noise we are set to be subject to. Not that any Israeli, given the choice, wouldn’t opt for the noise if it meant that the south was secure. But it does show that our political leaders and would-be leaders are a better caliber than we usually give them credit for being.
(Photo courtesy One Family Fund)
Vote for Sisso
The November presidential elections in the US aren’t the only game in town. Next month will also see municipal and mayoral elections in a number of Israeli cities and towns.
Most of the attention has been on Jerusalem, where incumbent haredi Mayor Uri Lupolianski has been replaced on his party’s ticket by longtime MK Meir Porush. Just a couple weeks ago, former Shas leader Aryeh Deri was barred from competing against Porush because the timeout by law following his 1999 conviction of fraud and bribery hadn’t finished yet.
And of course, the great white hope, secular high tech candidate Nir Barkat is hoping to wrest the mayoralty out of the haredi hands. And on the side, Russian mega-rich businessman/shady character and Betar Jerusalem owner Arkady Gaydamak is also running on a ‘speak English only’ platform.
But lots of other cities and towns are also holding elections for mayors, with equally scintillating scenarios. Take the Haifa ‘burb of Kiryat Yam. The mayor there for the last 15 years has been one Shmuel Sisso. The veteran lawyer and former Israel consul general in New York been considered such a popular – or powerful – mayor that nobody had even bothered to register to run against him. That is, until just recently, Sisso’s younger cousin Alon, threw his hat in the ring.
According to a Ma’ariv report, Alon, who is running on a Likud ticket, was really only interested in gaining a seat on the local council, but national Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu advised the 38-year-old attorney to go for broke. Older cousin Shmuel, who is running under Kadima auspices, is not happy with the clan competition. Whatever the results in the Kiryat Yam mayoral elections, it will be all in the family.
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