Otzma Yehudit fights IDF prosecutors, Labor tries to convince us that Kachol Lavan is right-wing, Netanyahu goes around the country making home visits, Zehut calls out feminism for being anti-freedom, and Eli Yishai is apparently afraid of cute puppies having Bar Mitzvahs. Here is a breakdown of the past week’s Israeli campaign ads:
Labor: Who Are We Against Again?
According to the Labor Party’s latest campaign, their true rivalry is not with Netanyahu or the right-wing parties but rather centrist factions like Kachol Lavan who are stealing their voters. In their latest video, the Labor Party asks its viewers to guess who said various right-wing statements (the answer, in each case, is a candidate for Kachol Lavan). For example, there is Zvi Hauser saying he plans to build new settlements, or Yoaz Hendel saying that his Ideology comes from the Likud. Many parties lately have been trying to convince voters that only they are authentic in their ideology, and according to Labor, left-wing voters need to know that “Kachol Lavan is right-wing.”
Even though going after Kachol Lavan may bring back some confused left-wingers, it won’t bring Labor to the top of the next coalition. Only Kachol Lavan has a chance at unseating Netanyahu, and Labor would probably have to join their government as a junior partner. And in pursuit of that goal, perhaps Labor is doing Kachol Lavan a favor: they may help win over some right-wing voters for Benny Gantz and his party.
Likud: Bibi Of the People, By the People, For the People
Netanyahu apparently has started doing home visits. As part of what I can only assume is him trying to show the people that he is laid back and just like them, Bibi’s latest campaign shows him surprising people at their homes. It’s just him and a guy filming him from an iPhone, or at least that’s how it looks from the strange vertical cut-off shot, as if this were a badly shot Instagram story of an everyday person and not a carefully budgeted election campaign.
Otzma Yehudit: The Real Enemy is the Prosecutor
Unsurprisingly, Otzma Yehudit came out with a campaign video so controversial that its legality had to be debated. In a video that was widely distributed on social networks, a terrorist with knife drawn approaches a soldier who points his weapon towards the would-be attacker in order to neutralize him. The soldier suddenly becomes afraid to shoot because he imagines a military lawyer locking him up and convincing him that the shooting is unjustified. Then Otzma candidate Itamar Ben-Gvir enters the frame, instructing the soldier to fire anyways because it is an act of self-defense.
We can point out many moral issues with this video. One of the main problematic messages is that soldiers shouldn’t trust their commanders or the military prosecutor and that if they think it’s necessary, they should disobey commands. This is part of Otzma’s campaign to normalize behavior similar to that of Elor Azaria who served jail time for killing an immobilized assailant.
Zehut: Feminism is Anti-Freedom
Moshe Feiglin came out last week with a special video just for us women on International Women’s day to celebrate why we apparently don’t need feminism anymore. And why is that, you ask? Well, in the first case, because we are sick and tired of hearing about patriarchy and rape culture, we also want to be free from having to pay on a date, and miss the times when men felt comfortable to ask us out. We are tired of the mutual fear that feminism has brought upon us (mutual as in women’s fear of being raped and men’s fear of being shamed). Why are these feminists trying to take away our freedom to have kids and stay at home?
It’s almost hard to believe that the women in the video were not forced to say such supposedly progressive and brave things. Thanks to Zehut and its lovely video we now all know that the true threat over women’s freedom is not a lack of equality (which has been fully achieved according to the video), but feminism and its demanding ways.
Kachol Lavan: Not Much Better Than Zehut
Common courtesy tells us that on International Women’s Day it is expected from everyone, even a party run by male generals, to make a video about female empowerment. Kachol Lavan’s video is full of women from the party (it seems that they came out from hiding just for this advertisement) chanting out substanceless mantras all about how we women “can do anything.” These statements go on for the whole video, with airy suggestions like “we need to believe in ourselves” and “love ourselves just the way we are” because “we can do anything we want.” Apparently doing anything doesn’t include being in the top ten spots on Kachol Lavan’s list.
Eli Yishai: Cute Puppies Having Bar Mitzvahs
Who should we be afraid of the most? According to Eli Yishai’s new campaign video (which is both ridiculous and ridiculously offensive): Reform Judaism, “strange women who wear Tzitzit,” and dogs that do Bar Mitzvahs. Yishai’s video shows people having a Bar Mitzvah for their dogs and warns that if we are to give a space at the Western Wall to Reform Jews (who “disgrace the Jewish tradition”) we are all in grave danger from losing Judaism as we know it.