Likud's New Billboard Splits the Election in Two: Right, or Palestine
A fresh Likud billboard sets Netanyahu's face against a row of rival leaders under the words Right or Palestine, the same no middle road message he first staged with a T junction road sign in September, days after Gadi Eisenkot offered him a debate on any terms he chose.
A campaign billboard in Israel showing Prime Minister Netanyahu on one side and a row of opposition leaders on the other, as pedestrians walk past. · Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
A new Likud billboard puts Prime Minister Netanyahu's portrait on one side under the word Right and a row of opposition leaders on the other under the words or Palestine, collapsing three weeks of campaign argument into an image meant to be read in seconds. The slogan plays on the name of Gadi Eisenkot's party, Yashar, which means straight in Hebrew: there is no straight path, Likud's version says, only right or Palestine.
The line traces back to 17 September, when Netanyahu addressed a Likud rally in Tel Aviv standing beside a prop road sign shaped like a T junction, a turn left or a turn right and no way to continue straight ahead. He told the crowd the election was a direct contest between left and right with no middle ground, dismissed Yashar as a bluff without genuine right wing credentials, and said a government led by Eisenkot would bring in left wing and Arab parties, a Palestinian state, and security withdrawals.
Eisenkot has tried to turn the same contrast back on Netanyahu rather than deny it. At a Yashar party conference in Ramat Gan on 5 October, he challenged Netanyahu to a televised debate on whatever channel, format and date Netanyahu chose, framing an open debate as something Israeli democracy was owed three weeks before a vote in which Yashar leads every public poll. Netanyahu's campaign manager, Tzvika Brot, did not accept or refuse. He asked instead whether Eisenkot would show up alone or bring the same coalition partners the billboard warns about, naming Ra'am's Mansour Abbas and Hadash's Ahmad Tibi.
Put the billboard and the debate answer side by side and they make the same argument in two formats. The poster reduces the choice to a slogan, right or Palestine, and the response to a debate invitation does the same work in a sentence, by naming the Arab lawmakers it suggests a Yashar government would need. Three weeks from the ballot, Likud's campaign is not contesting Eisenkot's lead so much as trying to decide what voters picture when they hear his party's name.
