Hamas War

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Election Campaign Broadcasts, First Night's Surprise

In Israel during the election campaign, each party is allocated, according to its present size, a certain total of minutes to be used in television campaign ads. New parties are given a minimal amount of time they can use.  This time can be divided into a number of movies shown during certain campaign hours/program on Israeli Television.

Tonight was the first night of the televised campaign.  Some of the movies are very slick, others are stupid, amateurish and even sickening.  If you don't enjoy politics and marketing, then you'll find most of them very boring.

A few of the parties focus on their "numero uno," number one, head of the party.  The Likud-Beitenu shows Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu most of the time while also giving Lieberman's face (no speaking parts) enough, they hope, to keep his supporters happy enough to vote for their joint party.  Other "one man/woman" campaigns so far are Kadima-Shaul Mofaz, The Movement's Tsippi Livni, There's a Future's Yair Lapid and Labor's Shelly Yachamovitch.

NRP aka Bayit Yehudi goes in the opposite direction and does its best to look like a large varied party, down-playing religion and stressing army service.

But, IMHO, the biggest surprise was the short film by the Right, pro-Jewish Life in all of the Land of Israel Otzmah LeYisrael.  MK's Dr. Arye Eldad and Micheal Ben-Ari spoke together quite comfortably in Arabic.

I had a feeling they were going to surprise us, and I just couldn't stop laughing.  I just wonder how many other politicians could have pulled that off.  I wonder how many of the Leftists really know what the Arabs are saying.  Tsippi Livni's slogan was a pathetic and meaningless "Don't be afraid to hope."  And her ad mocked Bibi and Lieberman for insisting that Hamas Arab terrorists had to be destroyed.  She claimed that an agreement can be reached with them, and we'll all be friends.  Please don't forget that she supported Disengagement which gave the Arab terrorists Gaza for easy the launching of deadly missiles at Israel.

Back to Eldad and Ben-Ari, who gave a lesson in what democracy really is, that nobody is above the law.  Jews and Arabs must obey the same laws to benefit from living in the State of Israel.

Sorry, but it's with Hebrew subtitles:

עוצמה לישראל - תשדיר בחירות 




בלי חובות אין זכויות
or
אין זכויות בלי חובות
Without obligations, there are no privileges or
There are no privileges without obligations...
Simply put, we should all be equal under the law.  That's democracy!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for a breakdown of the campaign ads. My Hebrew is slowly slowly (even the turtle would win) slowly improving so I would only be looking at the body language of the commercials.

Alan said...

Ben Ari, like Rand Paul, knows how to count.

Ben-Ari knows how many many voters speak Arabic in their kitchens, and that quite a few of them are Notzrim who could EASILY be peeled away from being part of a "Palestinian" identity..... given some smooth handling. A talent which, alas, few Anglos ever were born with.

Batya said...

Serach, at your service.
Alan, many Arabs do understand the point and agree. I have no doubt. I've been working with Arabs for two years now, and there's a basic pragmatisim in those I know.