Foto Friday – Post-Election Fun
Filed under: Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Politics, Pop Culture
This just in: President Shimon Peres has tasked Benjamin Netanyahu with forming the government. And so, the coalition-building process begins. Against the background of political posturing, jockeying for positions and a moment before disillusionment sets in, Tomeriko, photographer, photo editor and informal archivist of Israeli press photographers, has posted a new series of images on his Israel Press Flickr photostream. Entitled Elections 2009, it provides a humorous behind-the-scenes peek at the recent elections.
Photo by Koko, courtesy of Israel Press
The series, contributed by any number of Israeli press photographers working for various media outlets, deals with the run-up to election day, including things that people living outside Israel might not have known about.
Photo by Koko, courtesy of Israel Press
For example, Kadima party head Tzipi Livni on the cover of womens magazine La’Isha. When she was a little girl, could she ever have imagined this day would come?
Photo by Idan Kenan, courtesy of Israel Press
Inevitably, there are instances of campaign poster abuse…
Photo by Aviad Herman, courtesy of Israel Press
With some enthusiastic party workers perhaps taking the “green” message a tad to far…
Photo by Tamar Matsafi, courtesy of Israel Press
There are those who use election day to promote their own personal agenda…
Photo by Adi Yisrael, courtesy of Israel Press
And some who just tag along…
Photo by Alex Kolomoisky, courtesy of Israel Press
But the big question remains: do we know which way we’re actually going?
Photo by Adi Yisrael, courtesy of Israel Press
New Knesset elected, coalition talks underway
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Politics
The results are in. The election is finally over. Even though the Bibi Netanyahu-led Likud party was well ahead in the polls a few weeks ago, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima garnered one more seat than Likud in a stunning photo finish, explained by Haaretz thusly:
Livni forced Netanyahu to treat her as an equal, despite his negative ads claiming the job is “too big for her.” From that point, he lost the advantage of experience. Livni proved to be an expert campaigner who saved enough energy for the final and decisive round.
Several fascinating statistical and graphical breakdowns of the results can be seen here, while a breakdown of the number of seats per party, along with plenty of analysis and victory speech soundbytes, can be seen here.
Perhaps because the left has splintered into several newer and smaller parties, many of which did not garner enough votes for even one Knesset seat, the mainstream left-wing Labor, led by Ehud Barak, will only hold 14 seats, leaving its leadership disillusioned and vowing to sit out of coalition talks.
Avigdor Lieberman’s hardcore right-wing Israel Beiteinu managed to crystallize Israel’s right-of-center undecided, which, in essence, ended up detracting from Likud’s support among hard-liners, which, in turn, gave the relatively centrist (but Ariel Sharon-founded) Kadima a proportionate edge (causing the world to wonder where this leaves us in terms of options for diplomacy with the Palestinians).
However, it’s Israel Beiteinu that’s going to make or break any coalition which Livni has already hit the ground running trying to form, so Lieberman’s agenda hasn’t backfired completely. Let’s not forget that this is Livni’s second chance to try and form a coalition, with the first time around, this past fall, not yielding any results at all.
So yes, it does seem that public opinion here has moved towards the right, and it’s parties which sit decidedly on the right which have the power to make or break a government. But at the same time, the Likud’s failure to seal the deal says quite a bit about the strength of the middle ground (whatever that may or may not mean).
Image courtesy tzipilivni2009 from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Knesset poster decay
Filed under: Art, General, Israeliness, Politics, Pop Culture
Meet the news boss, same as the old boss.
Little by little, the campaign posters for the 613 parties running (ok, it’s only ???) are starting to appear on busses and billboards, and the media moguls and spin doctors are gearing up for the always entertaining TV ads which begin airing later this month.
But if you’re waiting for it all to be done and finished, at least one political observer is on your side. Rafi Mann, a veteran journalist for Hebrew paper Ma’ariv, and currently their oped page editor, loves to take photographs of campaign posters – but months and years after they’ve been posted, when they’ve been torn, faded, and petrified by the elements and grafitti artists.
Mann’s been shooting these pieces of ‘art’ for over 12 years, and now, ahead of the February 10th elections, he’s putting on a photography exhibit of some of the best posters – called appropriately ‘Poster Mortem’.
“Sometime after the 1996 elections, I saw some election posters that were still on billboards, pasted one on top of each other, and it was fascinating what happened to them, how they deteriorated and blended together,” Mann told me this week.
“I took some photos, and since then I carry a small camera around and when I’m traveling around the country, whenever I see an interesting old poster still up, I take a picture.”
Poster Mortem promises to be a fascinating look at the political culture in Israel – where Ehud Barak’s face on one poster blends into Bibi Netanyahu’s on the poster beneath it to create a kind of Bela Lugosi hybrid only someone like Tim Burton could think up.
“My sense is that the way the posters look after the elements and time have gotten to them is kind of a metaphor of what happens during elections and the promises that are made,” said Mann.
Let’s hope this year it’s different. But don’t bet on it.
Poster Mortem opens on Thursday evening at Beit Sokolov in Tel Aviv, and will be on display through the elections.
Yes we can? Really?
It all started when Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu completely ripped off Barack Obama’s website. And when I say completely, I mean completely. Not just the idea of integrating social media – but layout, graphics and color scheme as well. Purely shameless. That was just the beginning. Bibi, Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni and even Shas (also using Obama’s “Yes we can” mantra) have twitter accounts. Some really have the campaigns behind them, others do not. We’ve also seen, for better or worse, the introduction of “Livni Boy” a blatant rip off of the enormously popular (and hot) Obama Girl as well as “Asulin Girl,” an even more blatant rip off of the original which promotes Sagiv Asulin, a young leader of Likud who used the video to garner support in the primaries and consequently will most likely make it to the Knesset. 
Apparently when it comes to political campaigning, originality is not a strength in the Holy land, though silliness is. At least Channel 2 is doing something that can potentially involve Israel Israeli (like Joe Sixpack but Israeli) in the political process. They’ve teamed up with YouTube and are asking for Israelis to submit questions that will actually be answered live on the air by all three party leaders who are vying for prime minister. CNN did something similar during the primaries and proved to be really, really bizarre and surreal at times. I am of course referring to an actual snowman asking a question about global warming. Not sure how any Israeli can top that or if Channel 2 would even be courageous to broadcast a camel asking about the receding Dead Sea.
Here we go again
So, it’s all but a foregone conclusion that we’re headed for early elections. Just what this country needs.
Kadima leader Tzippi Livni, claiming that she wasn’t ready to give in to the ‘blackmail’ of potential coalition partners like Shas, took the high road and went to President Shimon Peres today and returned the mandate he entrusted her with last month to form a new government.
So barring some unforeseen blip, and owing to the convoluted manner the president and the Knesset parties must behave now, we’re looking at mid-Feburary for election day. And guess who’s prime minister til then? Ehud Olmert.
Ain’t Israeli politics grand?
I’m actually looking forward to the campaigning, because the televised election ads are among the most entertaining moments of TV since the original Saturday Night Live in the mid-1970s.
That’s about the only consolation to the whole ordeal, because whether Livni and Kadim come out on top again (highly unlikely), the Labor Party and Ehud Barak make a comeback (even unlikelier), or the Likud and Bibi Netanyahu clean up (Lord help us because it’s very likely), the resulting coalition will be very similar to The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, which goes “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
I’m sure that despite the fateful issues and decisions facing us, the next elections will have a record low turnout. Until we start producing some new blood and new ideas, more and more Israelis are going to continue turning off to politics. And it’s a time when we can ill afford to leave our fate to others to decide.
Maybe the environmental Green Party will finally galvanize voters and become this next election’s Pensioners’ party or Shinui – a dark horse coming out of nowhere.to capture the minds and hearts of the population.
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