Maof

THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 13, 2006

Israel's election campaign presents an unparalleled challenge to Israelis on both the Right and the Left who care about the issues challenging the country. Today, not only do they have to defend what they believe, they also have to defend their right to believe anything.

Last Friday, Makor Rishon published an in-depth report on the growing isolation and demonization of the religious Zionist camp. Hebrew University sociologist Tamar Elor explained that the front running Kadima Party presents an impossible challenge for the religious Zionist sector, represented most prominently by the settlers in Judea and Samaria.

"The settlers are an ideological sector. Kadima, as a party devoid of an identity, a face, a name or a path, is their polar opposite," she asserted.

While it has made expelling Israelis from their homes in Judea and Samaria its flagship policy, Kadima has no ideology with which religious Zionists can clash. As a result, Elor maintains that religious Zionists "cannot do anything against it. They prefer [former far-Left Meretz party leader] Yossi Sarid the idealist, ten times more than Kadima which lacks any identity."

For his part, Sarid bemoaned the superficiality of the political climate cultivated by Kadima in a column in Haaretz on Friday. Sarid exhorted Israel's intellectuals to make their voices heard arguing, "With men of letters consistently involved, it will be impossible for a reality to emerge where PR men's cannon shells roar out while the muses and their servants are silent and silenced."

Kadima's basic sales strategy is to be a party unfettered by content. Being a party that stands for nothing means that it can stand for anything any voter wishes to believe it stands for. An empty shell can be filled with anything and so can be all things to all people.

LIKUD AND Labor, like the smaller parties across the political spectrum, are at a disadvantage in campaigning against Kadima because they all stand for something. And since Kadima is not bothered by principle, it has based its campaign plan on mocking its rivals for having ideological, political, religious or social essences around which their policies are based.

The fact that Kadima, which seeks to represent itself as a party of grown-ups has more in common with Jerry Seinfeld than David Ben-Gurion was made fairly clear in a series of interviews and profiles of its prominent leaders published in the weekend newspapers. Three such articles were published in Ma'ariv.

First there was a rather creepy interview with Kadima's Deputy Minister of the Interior Ruhama Avraham who first rose to prominence in the late 1990s as then prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's secretary. As the interview noted, the most consistent characteristic of Avraham's career has been her willingness to exploit, betray and undermine anyone in order to advance her career. Avraham makes no bones about her blind ambition. In her words, "No one who can't push me ahead is allowed to play to game."

Avraham abandoned her supporters in the Likud Central Committee in favor of Sharon's withdrawal and expulsion plan from Gaza. Sharon rewarded her by appointing her Deputy Minister of the Interior. Avraham recognized that her support for Sharon meant that "I wouldn't have a chance [of reelection] in the Likud" and so she bolted the party and joined Kadima last November.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Avraham, is that in a four page interview - where she spoke at length about her decision to change her hair color from platinum blond to honey, and about her fashion sense which she says inspired her fellow legislators to pay more attention to their appearances, and always come to her for a final check before they go before the cameras - she never once mentioned any guiding philosophy regarding the greater good.

She never mentioned why Israel is worth serving. She never discussed the dangers Israel must defend against. She only talked about herself. While admitting that when she became a mother she made a conscious decision to prefer her career to her family, "knowing my children would suffer for it," Avraham, proudly and eerily announced that she considers herself "the mother of the People of Israel."

ASIDE FROM the interview with our dear mother with honey colored hair, Ma'ariv published a profile of the founder of Kadima, advertising executive Reuven Adler. Adler, a graphic artist by training, served as one of Sharon's closest political advisors. His competitors denounce him, noting that during Sharon's premiership, Adler's PR firm, Adler-Homsky, won the advertising contracts of such plumb state-owned companies as the Electric Company, Israel Railroad and Bezeq Telecommunications (before it was privatized). His main rival, Ilan Shiloah, was quoted stating, "In the world of advertising there is no parallel to the phenomenon of moral corruption called Adler-Homsky."

As the profile notes, "Adler is credited with the transformation of Sharon's image from an extremist, aggressive right winger," (is there any other kind?), "to a warm and doting grandfather who extends his hand in peace." His advertising partner Eyal Homsky brags that Adler "created Kadima - the name, the logo, the slogan…. It's his baby."

Ma'ariv provided a fairly comprehensive picture of Adler the ad man - who tells us both what cellular telephone to buy and what party to vote for. But while the reader came away from the story knowing about his professional development and his attitude towards his work, one thing was conspicuously absent from the account: what he stands for. Not a word was devoted to what, if anything, Adler believes in other than Adler himself.

Finally, Ma'ariv - like every other newspaper in the country, led its Friday edition with its "exclusive" interview with Kadima leader and Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Although Olmert told Ma'ariv, as he told every other newspaper in the country, that he is planning to destroy many, many Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria if he becomes elected and surrender the vast majority of the areas, as well as a number of neighborhoods in Jerusalem, to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, he did not once explain how doing so would advance Israel's national interests or thwart the global campaign of jihad.

Olmert said nothing about what Israel represents to him or how he came to believe what he says he believes in today. Indeed, one of the main qualities that he seems to want the public to value in him is his intellectual shallowness. As he noted to an over-solicitous, pandering interviewer, "There is no subject that justifies a three hour meeting."

Rather than contend with the serious issues that one would expect a prime minister to concern himself with, Olmert's most heated, impassioned comments related not to policy, but to his rival, Netanyahu.

His criticism of the Likud leader again, did not relate to a policy matter. Olmert's attacks on Netanyahu were a page taken from his deputy Shimon Peres's playbook. Netanyahu, he insinuated, was responsible for Yitzhak Rabin's assassination because he spoke at an anti-Oslo accords rally. Now, by criticizing Olmert's decision to transfer tax revenues to the Hamas-led PA and his plan to destroy Israeli communities in order to give the land they are sitting on the Hamas, Olmert alleged that Netanyahu is inciting his murder.

ISRAELIS ARE a people filled with contradictions. On the one hand, we are one of the most ideologically and historically driven people in the world. Jews came here from over one hundred countries, inspired and awakened by leaders of a different era who sent out the call to return to our ancient homeland. We have built this country up from the ruins of millennia of neglect and turned it into the most prosperous, advanced, open and free society in the Middle East while defending it against acts of aggression and war that have continued without interruption for over 120 years. We could never have accomplished any of these things if we didn't have a deep seated belief in ourselves and in our rights and responsibilities as a free people in our land.

On the other hand, we are driven by fads. Stars are elevated to the level of near deity one day, only to be forgotten the next. The same goes for everything from fashion lines, hair colors, investment priorities, marriages, politicians, nightclubs and professions. Since Sharon brought ad men like Adler in to run our politics, the same has held true for ideologies and values.

On March 28, some 3.5 million Israeli voters will be called upon to determine what they value. Will they choose substance or will they choose nothing? Will they demand leaders that model themselves after Winston Churchill or will they settle for an Israeli Jerry Seinfeld? All we can do is wait and watch.

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