Election Campaign Broadcasts, Strange Second Night

 

While last night, the first night of Israeli election campaign broadcasts had an energy and entertainment factor, tonight's was pretty dull and boring.  Not only did some of the parties, most notably Likud, Kadima, Tsippi, the Messiah character, the Arab-Israeli party (and possibly more) rerun elements of last night's ads, but the "time-richer parties" like Kadima and Likud showed us the same clips a number of times tonight.  If they continue, I'll have the script memorized, and my memory isn't all that great.

I found Kadima's ads most annoying and tricky.  The speaker shows MK wannabes of other parties, the unknowns of the higher numbers and mocks them comparing those "nobodies" with Shaul Mofaz.  This is a tricky technique meant to confuse the viewer.  Mofaz is Kadima's #1.  He should only be compared to the #1's of the other parties, not their "backbenchers."

Another absurdity in Kadima's ad, which also repeated too many times, was when they list a number of Mayors who "came back home to Kadima."  Now, the Kadima Party is not among the veteran Israeli political parties.  It's pretty new.  Except for maybe some of its youngest members, too young to be office holders, pretty much every Kadima member came from a different political party.  Kadima was only established in 2005 when  Ariel Sharon left Likud. That's well under ten years ago. If Kadima is a politician's home, he's a fickle,opportunist sort of politician who changes parties like most people change shoes.

What more can I say about Kadima other than they've been publicizing the troubled by corruption charges former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's support of the party and Mofaz.  Nu, do you really trust a party that Olmert recommends?  I don't.  And the fact that Kadima doesn't understand that there are people in Israel who are turned off by Olmert's presence in the ads makes me even more suspicious of their principles and policies.

Likud also had another NRP aka Bayit Yehudi-Bennett promotion ad.  Haven't they yet learned that the best thing would be to ignore him?  They revealed how far Right many of his list are.  There are people debating between Likud and NRP. The Likud sketch will just encourage them to vote NRP, which is more Right than Likud.

Otzma LeYisrael brought up the difficult situation of the African invaders, illegal aliens who have been entering Israel illegally.  They have also been the cause of crime, including horrendously cruel rapes in the areas they're living in.

And by the way, the Jerusalem Post's Gil Hoffman  also agrees with me that last night, the best ad was from Otzma LeYisrael.

Best gimmick: Far right Strong Israel MKs Arye Eldad and Michael Ben-Ari speaking Arabic. It doesn't matter how many takes it took to film the commercial. They clearly made an effort and their message about the need for Arabs citizens to share in the burdens of Israeli society will undoubtedly be remembered.