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With the Kosovo crisis hogging international news headlines, foreign journalists who wanted to interest their editors in today's election have had to be creative. Actually, the rest of the world has much more important things to think about. Take Denmark, for instance. That nasty little affair half a continent south in the Balkans has meant that Danish troops have been activated as part of NATO - making it the first time since the Prussians grabbed a border area in 1864 that Danish soldiers have been at war. Given those constraints, Hans-Henrik Landsvig is doing everything he can to interest his editors at Berlingske Tidende, one of the country's three big dailies, to take an article on the Israeli elections. "In normal circumstances the Israeli election would be quite a big story, but Kosovo is really an enormous story in Denmark and the newspaper is stuffed with things about it," Landsvig said. "It's difficult to find space in the paper for the Israeli elections - and the affair with the [bombing of the] Chinese Embassy [in Belgrade] certainly has not helped me at all." A sampling of reporters from around the globe turned up the same predicament: The amount of news they're able to provide on the Israeli election to readers and viewers back home has been sharply curtailed because of the NATO assault on Kosovo. Speaking to an audience of student journalists this winter, Los Angeles Times bureau chief Tracy Wilkinson pulled out a recent copy of the paper to illustrate the inordinate interest Israel generates abroad. One of the frequent Knesset crises that raised the possibility of early elections - not a decision to go to elections, mind you, just a possibility that they would be called - was considered significant enough to make the Times' front page. Certainly it helps that the Times's top editor, Michael Parks, used to be the Israel bureau chief. The paper still will make room for election stories that illustrate Israel's social stresses; yet with the Kosovo crisis, Wilkinson said, "We've had to scale back our coverage over what we normally would do for such an important event." Even a photographer who was supposed to come to Israel for the elections got waylaid to Kosovo, Wilkinson says. In such circumstances, reporters have to be creative. By now, it seems that journalists the world over have found two election stories compelling enough to force their editors' hands: the Russian immigrants and James Carville. THE CHOICE of those two stories is illustrative of what the outside world wants to know about the Israeli elections. Voters in Israel may care about the differences between Ehud Barak's and Binyamin Netanyahu's peace policies or economic programs. The rest of the world wants personality. Carville, the "Ragin' Cajun" who helped Bill Clinton to victory and then went overseas to advise Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder, is about as colorful a personality as you can get. The Russian story has wide appeal for different reasons. Even 10 years after the opening of the Soviet floodgates, the fact that Israel has absorbed some 800,000 Russian immigrants is news to much of the world. Natan Sharansky, leader of the Yisrael Ba'aliya party and the most prominent of the Russian politicians, is an internationally known figure from his days as a Prisoner of Zion. And on the basis of pure news judgment, the fact that the Russians are a crucial swing vote in the election is a meat-and-potatoes political story that would demand coverage anywhere. "Many Americans who are interested peripherally in Israel forget sometimes what a diverse body politic it is, and how many bits and chunks and shards there are in the Israeli electorate," The Washington Post bureau chief Lee Hockstader said. "I think it still comes as a surprise to many readers that there are that many Russian-speaking Israelis, and their effect on the election can be that large." IN THE former Soviet Union, much of the reporting on the election has been refracted through the lens of the Russian immigrant community. NTV correspondent Alexander Stupnikov noted a curious phenomenon: "In Russia they hate prominent Jews, mainly out of envy. But if you gain prominence in Israel, then they're proud of you, and consider you a Russian." NTV's 120 million viewers certainly will want a few words on what the election results mean for the peace process. But what they really want to know is how homeboys Sharansky and Avigdor Lieberman fare in the elections, and what it will mean for the status of friends and relatives who have made aliya. Stupnikov, in fact, has been spared the fate of many of his colleagues in the journalistic community. Since so many NTV viewers have family members in Israel, Stupnikov's editors in Moscow are eager for stories on the social issues affecting the Russian immigrant community. Thus, NTV viewers learned about Barak's promise to make May 9, the date of the Soviet Union's victory over the Nazis, into an Israeli holiday, and about the travails of Russian immigrants at the hands of the Interior Ministry, which sparked the wrestling match between Yisrael Ba'aliya and Shas for the post. "Until 1991 all they heard in Russia about Israel was the Zionist occupier and so forth," he said. "Since then they've become very interested in anything that affects the life of the Russian community here." Still, aside from those who have family members in Israel, most people in Odessa have no idea that Israel is having an election, said Mayor Ruslan Bodelan, in town this week for the annual Jerusalem Conference of Mayors. "To my great regret, you know nothing about us, and we know nothing about you," he says. Others among the 40 mayors at the conference may have missed the political currents swirling at the Israel Museum last Monday night. Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert apologized for leaving a festive dinner to run to the television studio, where he was scheduled to appear alongside Netanyahu. "I don't know if I have to support him or not support him," he said half-jokingly, an oblique reference to the distance that has grown between the two during the campaign. Museum Director James Snyder followed Olmert to the podium. "We like you just where you are," Snyder said, "so go off for the evening, but don't go too far away" - an even more oblique reference to the speculation that Olmert could be the Likud's next candidate for prime minister if Netanyahu loses to Barak. THOUGH the elections weren't a major topic at the mayors' conference, individual mayors spoke of how the Israeli elections are viewed in their home countries. In Rwanda, they care about the elections for the impact it could have on the country's ties with Israel, said Peter Butera, an aide to Marc Kabandana, mayor of the capital city, Kigali. "It is in our interest to know what our friends, cooperators and those with whom we have bilateral ties are going through," Butera said. "Anybody who lives within the global village is interested in what happens here." Norwegians are watching the elections especially closely to see what the results will mean for the peace agreements signed in Oslo, Kristiansand mayor Bjoerg Wallevik said. "I think Norwegians are worried about the two sides not finding solutions and that it's taking too long," Wallevik said. "They hope there is going to be a solution to the peace process that ends up something like what the Oslo agreement said." The Dutch, too, are primarily concerned with the future of the peace process, Zandvoort mayor M.R. van der Heijden said. "People in Holland follow the activities around the election," van der Heijden said. "The most important thing for the Dutch people is to have peace in the Middle East one way or another." Some of the election news van der Heijden's constituents read may come from Jet van Wijk, a stringer for a Dutch news agency and magazine. Though it may be easier to sell stories from this month's Eurovision song contest than from the elections, van Wijk could actually get some extra work as a result of the Kosovo crisis: Dutch radio and television stations that would normally send crews to cover the Israeli elections have exhausted their resources in Kosovo and will need to rely on local stringers instead. ONE indication of the international interest in the elections was the attendance at a Foreign Press Association panel last week with leading analysts from the Ha'aretz newspaper. With turnout much higher than expected, journalists who arrived late were forced to sit on the stairs. Readers in Japan are not so interested in Israel but would like to know what the elections will mean for the peace process, said Koichi Murakami, correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. In fact, most foreign correspondents have a similar focus on the peace process, FPA chairman and Associated Press bureau chief Nick Tatro said. But ironically, said Hockstader of The Washington Post, the peace process is much less of an issue in these elections than it has been in the past. "These elections might be somewhat more complex for foreign correspondents to explain to their audience because they're more about domestic issues, social strains and social rifts than the election of 1996, which was a security-dominated election," Hockstader said. "It's a more complicated, more textured, more multi-faceted story than just Arabs against Jews." That doesn't mean The Washington Post is devoting more space to the story. Since NATO's bombing campaign in Kosovo began in March, only four or five international stories unrelated to Kosovo have made Page 1 - including Hockstader's piece on the Russian immigrant vote. All foreign stories are being cut in length by about 20-30 percent to make room for the Kosovo coverage. Still, resourceful journalists can fall back on a time-tested means of selling a story: look for a local angle. Gisela Dachs of Die Zeit was able to sell her editors on the Russian story because some 100,000 Jews who left the Soviet Union settled in Germany. In fact, the paper was so interested in the story that they sent their Moscow correspondent to Israel to help with the reporting and gave the story a four-page spread. Dachs also got the Carville story into Die Zeit - aided, no doubt, by the fact that Carville recently advised the campaign of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Even Landsvig managed to find a local angle to the Israeli elections. Ehud Barak's gambit of joining with Meimad proved fortuitous not just for One Israel but also, it appears, for Landsvig: Meimad's top candidate Michael Melchior, who is No. 17 on One Israel's list, just happens to be chief rabbi of Denmark.
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(May 17) - With the prime ministerial candidates' every mumble chewed over in the Israeli media like stale gum, it's easy to think that the entire world must be breathlessly awaiting today's election.
