|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
With the first round of election broadcasts almost over, Tommy Lapid and his Shinui Party take home the biggest trophy They've been treated, courtesy of the Green Leaf Party, to a psychedelic "trance" version of "Heveinu shalom aleichem" and the sight of an Israeli flag with a marijuana leaf in place of the Star of David. They've listened to the candidate of the Casino Party assure them that the answer to this nation's economic and social problems is to turn Israel into the Las Vegas of the Middle East. They've watched as all the major parties, and a number of the smaller ones, have relentlessly chased after the votes of immigrants from the former Soviet Union - with even Shas at one point choosing to feature two Russian-speakers voicing support for Aryeh Deri's party. And they've seen the man once regarded as Israel's most media-savvy politician, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, being matched - and perhaps even beaten - at his own game by his One Israel rival Ehud Barak. But the most notable story to come out of the election broadcasts derives not from the various campaign oddities, or even from how the two main candidates fared on the TV battlefield. According to various political/media experts, the one striking development this year was how a small, breakaway party that before the election broadcasts began was given not much chance of even making it into the next Knesset has risen in the latest polls to the point where it is now predicted to get as many as six seats. That party is, of course, the liberal-Left list Shinui, whose success in significantly improving its chances at the ballot box almost entirely through its television ads is the big story of the TV campaign. And Shinui's success, contends political/media consultant Roni Rimon, is due to one man - Avraham Poraz. When MK Poraz broke off from Meretz earlier this year to reconstitute Shinui as the independent party it had once been, few political pundits gave him any chance of returning to the Knesset. "So Poraz, who's a very bright guy, made a very smart move," notes Rimon. "He brought in Tommy Lapid, made him the head of the party and allowed him to star in all of Shinui's election broadcasts. At the very least he knew that, given the current electoral threshold [1.5 percent of the vote], it is almost impossible to get just one seat, so even as the party's No. 2 man Poraz was guaranteed to ride Lapid's coattails into the Knesset." Viewers were already long-accustomed to Lapid's sharp-tongued attacks on religious legislation, and the haredi population in general, in his role as a regular commentator/interviewer on two highly-rated popular public-affairs programs, Popolitica and Everything's Politics. That background gave him a decided advantage in the election broadcasts. "Lapid is not only an experienced television performer," says Sam Lehman-Wilzig, coordinator of the mass communications program in Bar-Ilan University's political studies department. "He also already had a strong recognition factor among the public, so there was no need to explain who he was and what he stood for." FOR THE Shinui broadcasts, Lapid simply transferred his caustic anti-haredi act from the TV studio to the electoral platform - an unprecedented, and in the view of some, potentially troubling development for the local political scene. "In principle, I don't see anything wrong with a media figure crossing the line into the political arena," says Dr. Yehudit Auerbach, head of Bar-Ilan's division of journalism and communications studies. "It's certainly just as legitimate, and probably more so, than all the ex-generals who go into politics and suddenly start making all kinds of social pronouncements. "The specific problem with Lapid is that he's brought with him into the electoral arena the aggressive Popolitica style that's already reduced the political talk shows to the lowest possible level of discourse. And the fact that he's achieved success with it makes it only more likely that we'll see more of the same in future campaigns." How does Poraz, generally regarded as one of the most serious and thoughtful parliamentarians, react to the criticism of his party's broadcasts? "I see no problem with them," he says. "In the months before the elections we saw unprecedented attacks by the haredim on our most important democratic institutions, like the Supreme Court. So there's nothing wrong with making the need to keep the haredim out of the next government the central theme of our campaign " Beyond the substance, what about the hard-hitting, some would say demagogic, style of Lapid's broadcasts? "For a political message to be effective," responds Poraz, "it can't be parve, you have to express it in a way that's effective. Over the years, Tommy has built an image for himself as a sort of enfant terrible of Israeli politics - and we certainly didn't bring him to Shinui to suddenly become Mother Teresa." "Look," Poraz continues, "there's no denying the importance of being able to perform well on television nowadays. There are Knesset members who do virtually nothing on the job, but because they are good talk-show guests, everybody knows them. Then there are those MKs who can do substantial work for 11 years and really achieve something, but because they aren't media stars, nobody on the street even recognizes them." Like Avraham Poraz? "I guess you can say that." SHINUI'S winning television campaign, says political/media consultant Arnon Perlman, also demonstrated clearly how the election broadcasts can especially benefit the smaller parties. "On television, given the limitations you have to work with, it's best to focus on one simply defined issue," says Rimon. "The two big parties, which are addressing the general population, had to present more wide-ranging programs dealing with the major security and economic issues. "Shinui didn't have to spend time talking about the peace process or unemployment, but had the luxury of focusing exclusively on the issue of most interest to its specific constituency." This is a tactic, notes Lehman-Wilzig, that was first used successfully by Shas in 1988. "The idea is that you speak exclusively to your core group of voters without bothering to speak to the broader public. Shas didn't care that its ads, with their blowing shofars, looked incomprehensible, even laughable, to people other than their working-class Sephardi supporters, because they knew it spoke to their voters' sensibilities." A party that also successfully used this approach during the election broadcasts was Yisrael Ba'aliya, which night after night talked only about wresting the Interior Ministry from the hands of Shas. The commercials were overseen by Yisrael Ba'aliya media adviser Moti Morel, who worked with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1992 and Netanyahu in 1996. They have been given credit for injecting new life into Natan Sharansky's Russian-immigrant party, especially in its struggle with rival Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu. "The Yisrael Ba'aliya ads were a perfect example of how a campaign can actually dictate the political agenda, rather than react to it," asserts Auerbach. "Before the election broadcasts, nobody outside the Russian-immigrant community was talking about the Interior Ministry as an issue. It wasn't at all on the agenda." That all changed when Yisrael Ba'aliya began running its "Shas kontrol? Nyet, nash kontrol" ("In Shas's hands? No, in our hands") commercials. "Suddenly," notes Auerbach, "you have everybody in the media and even the two main prime ministerial candidates talking about the Interior Ministry." Ex-model turned cosmetics queen Pnina Rosenblum also helped her electoral chances via the the election broadcasts, says Perlman, by picking her targets wisely. "She focused on domestic violence against women and helping small businesses," observes Perlman, "two subjects that are both natural for her to talk about, and were left largely untouched by the other parties. They might not be perceived as big issues, but enough voters probably care about them to put her in the Knesset." AND what about the main prime-ministerial contenders? "The Center Party had only one issue to begin with," says Rimon, "the idea that [party leader] Yitzhak Mordechai had a better chance of beating Bibi [Netanyahu] than Barak. Once the polls proved otherwise, there was no rationale to their campaign, and their TV ads became totally irrelevant." Only a few days ago did the party alter its message to focus on the Knesset role. The Likud also had problems with its television campaign, in contrast to the clear advantage they enjoyed over Labor in 1996. "Rather than being consistent," says Perlman, "the Likud changed its line some five or six times, which is the one thing you shouldn't do during the broadcasts." This was a result, he adds, of One Israel's success in basically anticipating and countering most of the negative attacks which Netanyahu's team launched against Barak. Thus, for example, when Likud ads tried to portray Barak as being willing to share rule of Jerusalem with the Palestinians, One Israel responded with footage of Mayor Ehud Olmert praising Netanyahu's rival as a staunch defender of Israeli sovereignty over the capital. The Likud then switched gears and attacked Barak over his support for a Palestinian state; the One Israel candidate answered with an ad in which he reiterated his call for a national referendum on any final-status agreement. And when the Likud tried to tar Barak by his association with such dovish Labor figures as Yossi Beilin and Avraham Burg, Barak presented his "security council" packed with stalwart army figures like Yossi Peled and Matan Vilna'i. 'FOR negative campaigning to be successful it has to strike a real chord," says Lehman-Wilzig. "What Bibi and his team apparently didn't take into account this time is that while you could attack Shimon Peres in 1996 as being soft on security because that perception is already out there, it's much harder to do the same with a man who is the most decorated chief of General Staff in IDF history." Especially when One Israel's most repeated commercial continually offered viewers a stirring summation of Barak's IDF record, recapping his glory days as an anti-terrorist commando during the 1970s for those voters - like Russian immigrants - not familiar with that phase of his career. The impact of that one commercial was demonstrated by a Channel 2 survey this week, in which viewers were asked which candidate could best be described as a "hero"; 59% said Barak, as opposed to only 30% who said Netanyahu. It's no surprise that by the last week of the election broadcasts, viewers were being belatedly treated to a historical highlight film of almost every candidate with a notable military record, including Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, Rafael Eitan and Avigdor Kahalani. One Israel's decision to stress economic issues in their election broadcasts - expressed in the slogan "100,000 Israelis have lost their jobs in the past few years; why should he [Netanyahu] keep his?" - also appears to have been a gamble that paid off, especially for Barak media adviser James Carville. In an interview two weeks ago, the famous American campaign consultant said: "Right now, my guess is that economic considerations will be a bigger factor in this election than any [Israeli] election before." At this stage, that guess is right on target. THE sense that One Israel bested Likud during the election broadcasts has been reinforced by reports of Netanyahu's dissatisfaction with the work being done by his media coordinator, Communications Minister Limor Livnat, and even the prime minister's own once highly prized American political consultant, Arthur Finkelstein. Thus far, the media-war side of this election bears some comparison to the 1996 New York State Senate race, when Finkelstein ran the campaign of Republican incumbent Al D'Amato. As in these elections, every attempt by Finkelstein's man to accuse his rival of being too much on the Left was effectively countered by his equally aggressive, and ultimately triumphant opponent, Democrat Charles Schumer. Of course, the campaign is not over and, if neither candidate wins decisively on Monday, neither are the election broadcasts. If a second round is needed, then both prime-ministerial candidates will be given an hour of airtime to use until the second round of voting on June 1. How that time will be distributed over that period has yet to be decided by the Central Elections Committee. Some is certain to be used finally to arrange a debate between the two candidates, with the rest given over to more campaign commercials. While Barak's team can be expected to continue more or less with the same media strategy, Netanyahu will likely be looking to create a whole new set of commercials, especially some that touch on the possible political repercussion of the composition of the new Knesset. So, while Round 2 of the TV campaign - if there is one - won't be featuring such lively supporting characters as Lapid, Rosenblum, the Green Leaf and Casino parties, expect some fireworks from the two main stars of the best television show of the season.
Links in this section:
Links to other sections: | |
|
Click here for feedback and comments. © 1999, The Jerusalem Post - All rights reserved 
| |
(May 14) - Television viewers who have been following the election broadcasts for the past few weeks have seen and heard some pretty strange things.
