The election has started: Campaign ads for January 27, 2009 (Morning)
The way Knesset campaigns work here is public financing gone wild. We get a half hour (actually this time, with 34 parties, it's 40 minutes) of campaign commercials twice a day, with every party getting free air time.I'm listening to the first round of campaign commercials on the radio. There was actually a round on television last night, but I missed it. Here's a summary of the major parties' commercials.
Kadima is emphasizing Livni personally and she's trying to sell us her honesty and her parents (who were Etzel (Irgun Tzvai Leumi) fighters). She is 'bothered' that her father considered voting against the 'peace treaty' with Egypt and eventually abstained. She believes that we have the right to all of the Land of Israel, but we have to choose having the entire Land or a Jewish and democratic state. (Of course, that's not the choice - giving up parts of the Land of Israel will put the 'Palestinians' on our doorstep). I suspect her parents are rolling over in their graves.
Labor features Shelley Ychimovitch, a former Israel Radio broadcaster but it's all about why we want Barak to be Prime Minister. Nothing substantive in this ad.
The Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, National Union and the ultra-Orthodox parties were not covered in this ad session. I did not include Jewish Home (which claims to be the successor to the National Religious Party) for reasons discussed here.
None of this means I will vote for any of the parties whose commercials I review.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:40 AM
4 Comments:
Carl - of course not. Personalities of course can have some effect on a country's foreign policy but its supreme values and interests, that are the essence of its history, culture and particular requirements, always remain the same. I think it was Russian President Dmitry Medvedev who was asked why Russia had her own distinctive approach. The same is no less true of Israel and in the end, man matters far less than the Jew's loyalty to G-d, who is the source of faith, freedom and life. Without G-d, there is no Judaism and there is no Israel. That cannot be made more clear to outsiders. And the rest is history.
Carl,
What a bunch of choices...they run the spectrum....and the ads have just started, only 2 weeks before the election?
As you know all too well, ours start the day after the Inauguration, etc., or so it seems.
You will make the right choice..
With faith in G-d, Nana, let's hope so. Every one prays for the welfare and safety of this small land and of its beautiful and courageous people!
NY Nana,
The ads are publicly financed. They used to start three weeks before the elections, but since they follow one after the other rather than being ordinary commercials in ordinary programs, they discovered no one was watching or listening so they cut it to two weeks.
We are hopeful that by the next election we will become a normal country and not have ordinary programming interrupted.
At least this time they moved it out of prime time.
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