From the Equal Rights for Men and Taxi Drivers Party to the household names of the Likud and Labor Party, Israel’s January 28 election throws up some fascinating characters. However, the unusually brief election campaign also has some more sinister overtones.
While at least one rightist ‘Jewish’ party calls for the voluntary removal of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, some of the Arab candidates openly state that Israel is a racist country.
Take the example of Azmi Bishara, the leader of Balad. There was a serious move, driven by the government, to prevent him from running for re-election to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Israel loyalists accused him of treason, when he visited Syria on at least two occasions, to sit alongside some of Israel’s sworn enemies. It is also alleged he called on Arab Israelis to offer more than just vocal support for the Palestinian violence.
In the event, Israel’s High Court of Justice, the top appellate court in the country, rejected the government’s case, and Bishara, alongside the other Arab parties was given permission to run for office once again.
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His election ad is a simple appeal to the people: “There’s a strong link between the occupation and racism,” he says. Balad will insist that Israel become a state of all its people. The party will fight for everyday needs, such as equality in health care and the prevention of the demolition of Arab homes,” he says.
Israel “tried to stop your right to elect your representative,” he tells his supporters in Arabic.
A smaller Arabic party, the Democratic Action Organization (Da’am) describes those Israelis who refuse to serve in the armed forces in the West Bank and Gaza, “the conscience of the people.”
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Another Arab party under the leadership of one Hashem Mahmeed, the Advanced National Alliance, preferred to film its ad outdoors. An elderly gentleman tells Mahmeed how the “Zionists” stole some 250 acres from him, in order to build a security buffer along the Green Line.
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The buffer is the perfect ‘segueway’ into the Labor Party. One of its ads accuses the Likud of having done nothing over the last two years to advance the buffer zone. It says just three miles have been constructed at the northern end of the West Bank.
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The narrator points out that those few, paltry miles were constructed at the direct insistence of Labor’s former defense minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.
The film continues with an attack on the Likud’s leader Ariel Sharon. It suggests he is in the pocket of “the settlers,” even showing him wearing a skullcap, hinting that he will not be a good leader for secular Israelis.
For his part, Sharon uses the Likud’s allotted time on television to appear the statesman and to attack Labor.
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Seated in front of an [is it fake?] open fire, Sharon says Labor disappointed the people by quitting the coalition. Despite that, though, Sharon says he will ask Labor to rejoin, once he is re-elected prime minister.
It is interesting to note that in his last election two years ago, Sharon was seen in the ads holding his grandchildren and alongside the rest of his family. Perhaps given the current investigation into his sons’ questionable pre-election activities, there is no sign of Sharon, the grandfather, this time around.
Talking of changes, the religious, Sephardic Shas uses its airtime to alert Israeli Jews to the massive influx of non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
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Using speeches of the party’s spiritual mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Shas talks of the pigs, baptisms and crosses that have found their way into the Jewish state in recent years.
Picking up the theme, Shas’ Ashkenazi counterpart United Torah Judaism wonders whether a secular lifestyle will lead to a voter’s grandchildren losing their last vestiges of Judaism.
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The third major religious, Jewish party, the National Religious Party, makes much of its new leader, recently retired general Effie Eitam.
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Showing his strong military record and his similarly domineering personality, the NRP also finds time to point out that the Likud will not have a single religious Knesset member in its ranks, despite expecting ‘modern-orthodox’ Jews to vote for the party.
The hawkish National Union similarly accuses the Likud of not representing the political right. It offers the following equations:
1. Likud=Mitzna (Labor’s new leader)
2. the minnows=zero (hinting that voters should refrain from backing Herut, which broke away from the National Union)
3. Shinui=Meretz (suggesting the centrist-secular Shinui is just another version of the dovish-secular Meretz)
And finally, to Meretz. Its main focus this time round is on saying “no” to Shinui. Shinui broke away from Meretz at the last general election, and could well eclipse it come January 28.
“Meretz is the party of life and death [issues], Shinui is into cosmetics,” says the narrator.
And just a mention of a party that threatened to wipe out Labor last time and seems highly unlikely to win any seats next week. The Center Party. So far it has had five leaders in its four-year life, and these days many are asking of the star of its election broadcasts “who is David Magen?”