From pork to ‘centrifying,’ how to woo the Israeli electorate

As the election campaign gathers pace, here are five insights for and about our would-be leaders.

1. Moshe Kahlon could use a Sephardi rabbi

The ex-communications minister with the charming smile, nice line in self-deprecation, and evident capacity to “centrify” himself, is seeking to broaden his appeal. Formerly an opponent of Palestinian statehood, he now says he would relinquish territory for peace. Formerly a dutiful Likud minister, he now complains about the rising poverty levels here over the past decade — largely years of Likud rule. Formerly an ally of Netanyahu, he now echoes Labor’s repeated critique of the prime minister in warning that Israel must not neglect its vital cooperation with friends and allies. As he gradually recruits hoped-for assets to the Knesset slate of his new Kulanu party — unveiling US-born ex-Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren on Wednesday, and anti-poverty activist Eli Alaluf on Thursday — Kahlon might also want to think about seeking out a resonant figure from the Sephardi Orthodox world.

A child of Libyan immigrants, Kahlon was one of the very few Sephardim in the Likud leadership, and although the gulf has narrowed a lot in the last few years here, ethnic origin is still a factor for some voters, and the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox political framework is imploding before our eyes. Eli Yishai felt compelled to leave Aryeh Deri’s Shas and set up his own party, and initial polls suggest many former voters could turn their backs on the pair of them. Shas won 11 seats in 2013; now polls show both Shas and Yishai’s evidently misnamed HaAm Itanu (The People Are with Us) struggling to clear the Knesset threshold. Kahlon is well placed to benefit. Recruiting or winning the endorsement of a pro-IDF-service figure from the Shas world — and ideally one who didn’t fall out with the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (sorry Haim Amsalem) — could help the soaring Kahlon fly still higher.

2. Labor needs a general, or a Shin Bet head, or a Mossad chief

Anyone remember when Labor last won an election? You have to cast your mind back to 1999, and Ehud Barak’s short-lived premiership. When it has been 15 years since Israel’s former party of government last governed, it is going to take a lot to persuade the electorate that Labor can still govern. And with all due respect to the fillip delivered by the merger with Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua, she’s not going to draw many votes from the center and center-right.

Labor’s ever-so-nice leader Isaac Herzog has evidently been receiving training in how to appear more assertive, but his consequent attempt at rabble-rousing at his press conference with Livni two weeks ago — which involved a repeated, arm-thrusting promise of political “revolution” — was a little embarrassing. What Labor needs is the steelier image that only ex-security bigwigs can provide. Laborites Barak and Yitzhak Rabin justified their relatively moderate diplomatic policies on the basis of previous careers that took them all the way to the chief of staff’s office; balancing security risks and diplomatic opportunities, they were perceived to know what they were talking about.

Herzog’s problem is that energetic, charismatic ex-security chiefs are in short supply. It was reported 10 days ago that Yoav Galant, named chief of staff in 2011 but sidelined by scandal, was to run with Likud, though Galant is denying this. Ex-Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin says he’s not entering politics for now, and in any case may already be too identified with the left to be much of a draw. Former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi is available but, unlike Galant, is still too embroiled in potential scandal to be an asset. Where are the pragmatic generals of yesteryear? Herzog must be asking. His problem is that many potential Labor voters, looking at the party’s security vacuum, may be asking the same thing.

3. The electorate is woo-able

“I’m Joni Ernst. I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm. So when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork.” That’s how a fairly anonymous candidate for a Republican primary in Iowa introduced herself to potential voters in a campaign commercial last spring. She’s now Iowa Senator-elect Joni Ernst (and incidentally paid a first visit to Israel earlier this month). A US Army combat veteran who served in Iraq and Kuwait, and a former Iowa state senator, Ernst was a credible candidate, but it was that ad that gave her campaign what proved to be winning momentum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Y24MFOfFU

Israeli politicians spend vast amounts of public money on campaign commercials, bombarding the electorate with generally off-putting ads. Angry at being forced back to the polls too soon, worried about security, worried about the economy, looking for hope and encouragement, the 2015 vote may find the electorate unusually woo-able. And a campaign commercial that offers inspiration would be a good place to start. We’re rightly cynical about our politicians, and current scandals don’t help (step forward the latest suspects from Yisrael Beytenu), but we are suckers for effective marketing.

4. Look even more carefully than usual at the polls

The track record of Israeli electoral surveys is far from impressive. But it’s worth being even more skeptical than usual in an era of increasingly politicized media ownership.

Just to give one example of an exceedingly dubious survey: A December 9 Channel 10 poll was excitedly headlined as showing that Herzog was only one percent behind Netanyahu as Israelis’ preferred prime minister. Channel 10 made great play of the drastic closure of what had hitherto been a far wider gap between the two, interpreting it as marking a dramatic fall in Netanyahu’s standing — a real potential election game-changer. Closer examination, however, showed that respondents had been given a choice of seven potential PMs: Netanyahu (who was favored by 23%), Herzog (22%), Naftali Bennett (13%), Gideon Sa’ar (13%), Moshe Kahlon (10%), Avigdor Liberman (10%) and Yair Lapid (9%). Where’s the trick? Well, those seven names are not the heads of seven rival parties. By slipping Sa’ar’s name into the list, the pollsters were giving respondents a choice of two potential Likud PMs. (Former Likud minister Sa’ar had been considering a political comeback when the poll was taken, but has since backed out.)

No wonder support for Netanyahu “fell” in the poll; he wasn’t only competing against outside rivals, but also against a fellow Likud man.

5. Watch out for the kingmakers

In comments last weekend, Labor’s former leader Shelly Yachimovich declared that the thought of Avigdor Liberman becoming prime minister made her nauseous. She was speaking amid calculations that Liberman, another politician busy “centrifying” himself, might turn out to be particularly well-placed to build a coalition the morning after the March 17 elections. With his party now plunged into a corruption scandal that seems dramatic even by its own impressive standards, the era of prime minister Liberman now seems rather more distant than it did as recently as Saturday; five days is a very long time in Israeli politics.

That these elections will be determined by the centrists and centrifiers, however, remains a credible possibility. Along with the ultra-Orthodox parties, it is coalition partnerships with Yesh Atid, Kulanu and, now to a lesser extent Yisrael Beytenu, that could deliver solid majorities to either the right or the left. Which means Lapid and Kahlon, in particular, could prove the kingmakers of 2105. At the very least.