The Israeli political scene seems to be very disturbed recently.  No, it is not about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is not about Iran, and it is not about about the recent tensions with Syria.  The debate is about a proposal by the government to amend external voting in the law or in other words to allow Israeli citizens abroad to vote in the election (HE).  I’ve heard this idea floating before, but I have never seen such a vibrant debate about this issue, which has recently become very close to my heart.

The situation today is that anybody holding an Israeli passport can vote in the Israeli election, but this person has to be physically present in Israel on the election day.  If you are studying, working, or simply on vacation abroad during the election day, you cannot go to the consulate and vote.  The only people entitled to vote remotely are diplomats and sailors.

The debate is happening on two levels.  On one level, it is a purely political debate, because some believe that the voters living abroad tend to vote to the right and thus the government is pushing for the change of law and the opposition is vigorously opposing it (HE1, HE2, HE3).  On another level, which constitutes most of the rhetoric, the debate is about values – should people who are not living in the country, particularly such country as Israel, be able to decide for those who will actually have to live with the consequences ? (HE1, HE2, HE3, He4, He5, HE6, HE7, HE8)

Some context may help understanding the later facet of the debate better.  Ever since the establishment of the state, people moving to live in Israel were referred to as “olim” or people who are “coming up” to live in and build the country.  On the other hand, people who left Israel to live elsewhere were referred to as “yordim,” meaning people who “stepped down,” left, deserted or abandoned the enterprise of building a Jewish state.  Traditionally, it was completely unacceptable to leave the country.  People who did that, and in fact their entire families, were frowned upon and looked down at.  However, in the past decade or so the criticism softened and in fact Israel is experiencing a brain drain (there are about 500-700K holders of Israeli passports currently living abroad).  The argument of those opposing the law thus resonates with the old sentiment and claims that the people who decided to abandon the not-so-luxurious Israeli realities have no right to decide for those who stayed.  In Israel, they say, election are not just about social issues, which are also important, but they are also about existential topics like war and peace.  If you are not going to live with the consequences of the vote, you shouldn’t have the right to vote, in the first place.  If it is important for you to vote, you can invest in coming to Israel once in four years to do that.

And this is where it is getting personal for me I guess.  It is getting personal because I couldn’t vote in the last election and given the frequency with which elections happen in Israel, I most probably won’t be able to vote in the next one as well.  The issue I am taking with this situation can also be viewed on a couple of level.  First, there is a financial  and logistic concern.  As a student, I simply cannot afford a random visit to Israel.  No matter how much I care about the democracy, the Maslow principles are getting in the way (not to mention the fact that my life is pretty much dictated by the academic calendar).  Second, there is a more substantive argument about my right to influence the reality of my country.  At the end of the day you can take an Israeli out of Israel, but you cannot take Israel completely out of the Israeli.  It starts with the fact that even though I am physically not in Israel at the moment, I am still influenced by the political decisions of its leaders (whether these are some of the taxes I am still paying or protests I encounter on campus, on  street or anywhere else).  But even more that that, as someone currently living abroad on a student visa, I think I should be able to influence the realities I am supposed to come back to upon completion of my studies.  I may decide not to go back to Israel after I finish my PhD, but then it will be a totally different story; right now I don’t have any tools to influence the reality I am supposed to return to, which I think is counterproductive for the country if it wants me back (somewhat related HE).

I may be wrong, but at this point of my life it somehow makes sense (and apparently not just to me – HE1, HE2).  Many of the arguments I read are dismissing any variation of making voting accessible to Israelis living abroad (here is an article in HE stating that 66% of Israelis oppose this idea).  It is “either you are with us or you are against us,” which I find both outdated and counterproductive.  There was a study triggered by this debate, which compared the external voting arrangements in other countries and showed how most of the world has reacted to globalization and to the fact that citizens who live abroad are still citizens of the country (PDF in HE).  In fact, one of the proposed versions of the law is taking a moderate approach that limits the period when one could vote abroad to six years, subject to spending at least 40 days over that period in Israel (HE), but the public discourse neglects the details and focuses on the principle.  This situation is similar to the arrangement in New-Zealand for example.  To be fair, some people do say that students should be given the right to vote (HE), but I think that if such an arrangement will be accepted, let’s say with the conditions similar to what is stated above, it should cover not just the students, but everybody else as well.

I wonder if you have any thoughts on the subject and what the situation is in your country?

As to the first observations, it turns out that the five most popular websites in Israel are: Google (92.3%), Walla! (67.2%), Facebook (61.2%), Ynet (58.4%), and YouTube (54.9%). This is interesting and slightly surprising at the same time.  It is interesting because Facebook has outperformed Ynet and the Israeli equivalents of YouTube are nowhere near the top runners.  It is also interesting because US brands are occupying three out of top 5 places.  Of course in all of them, the users can do practically everything in Hebrew, but still, the local attempts to offer search, social networking, and online video, are not doing very well.

These statistics are also surprising, because there is an image of Israelis as being obsessed with news, but it seems like the social interactions are currently more interesting to them compared to the biometric database law and such.  Perhaps this is a sign of relative calm in the region.  Also, to me, one of the surprising aspects of the numbers above was that Walla! outperformed Ynet in popularity, because I was under the impression that Ynet is far more popular.  Perhaps that can be explained by the fact that Walla! offers not only news, but also email, shopping, and more (the exclamation mark in the name is there for a reason – they are taking the Yahoo! approach).  This may also be an explanation to why Ynet has recently offered its registered users a free email with unlimited capacity.

Asked explicitly about their browsing habits at work, the respondents to the survey listed the  same five websites at the top, but in a slightly different order: Google (87.8%), Ynet (52.8%), Walla! (47.9%), Facebook (31.2%),  and YouTube (25.3%).  It looks like the working people value news more than socializing and entertainment, but since I don’t have the actual survey in front of me, it hard to tell much.

As to the second observation, there is a new book out there, trying to analyze the success of the Israeli high-tech.  From its description the book sounds a bit too poetic (almost like a marketing brochure), but it cites  some interesting numbers and voices an important warning.  For example, there are around 3,850 start-up companies in Israel today and in 2008 the volume of venture capital investments in Israel was 2.5 higher compared to that in the US.  If you compare the per capita venture capital investment, the volumes in Israel are 30 times higher compared to Europe, 80 times higher compared to India, and 300 times higher compared to China (well, I guess this is one good thing about being a small country).  There are 63 Israeli companies traded on NASDAQ, which is the larger group of foreign companies from a single country on that exchange (the second largest group is Canada with 48 companies).  Finally, it turns out that Israel has one of the highest rates of investment in civil R&D in the world.  According to the article the country invests 4.5% (of its GDP I assume, because the article does not clarify that) in civil R&D, compared to 3.2% in Japan (the second largest) and 2.7% in the US (the third largest).

The book discusses a number of factors that contributed to the entrepreneurial culture and innovation in Israel (such as the immigration and combination of the army service and good higher education) and highlights one factor that endangers it all.  The authors, Dan Senor and Saul Singer, suggest that the state of the K-12 education in Israel is degrading and something needs to be done if Israel wants to maintain its innovative-entrepreneurial advantage – and I tend to agree.  I have not read the actual book, so I am not sure what exactly they are proposing, but I think it is good that this problem is getting attention in something that will probably become a popular read in the industry.

Currently there two private broadcast TV channels in Israel, which are supported through advertising (there is a government supported public channel as well).  Channel 2 started operating commercially in 1993 and Channel 10 joined the competition in 2002.  Both channels are operated through permits, which means that they have to be renewed every few years, which in turn is supposed to give the public body that monitors these channels, the Second Authority, the leverage to make demands for quality content.

One can debate whether or not the Authority is successful in imposing content quality standards, but the reform is aimed at moving from the permit regime to a license regime.  According to those pushing for the reform, this will allow to introduce another player to the Israeli broadcasting media market.  Since such a shift requires amending the law, the story starts with discussions in the Economic Committee of Knesset, the Israeli Parliament.

So, what can we learn from these debates?

• According to Menashe Samir, the CEO of the Second Authority, the annual income of the commercial broadcasting TV stands on NIS 1.2 billion (around US $320 million), while operating a channel costs about NIS 400 million (around US $70 million).  Eran Pollack, from the Ministry of Finance, provided some more specific data, saying that in 2008 the commercial broadcasting channels had incomes of NIS 700 million for Channel 2 (US $187 million) and NIS 400 million for Channel 10 (US $107 million).

• Eran Polack also said that in 2008 the overall TV industry in Israel had an income of approximately NIS 5.5. billion (US $1.47 billion).   The break down is really interesting.  The commercial broadcasting TV channels account only for a small portion of that pie; the Israeli cable and satellite TV providers account for almost two thirds of it.   HOT, the cable company had an income of NIS 2.085 billion (US $559 million) in 2008, and YES, the satellite company had an income of NIS 1.415 billion (US %378 million).  Also, the public channel accounted for about NIS 350 million of income (US $94 million).

• As to the viewers, according to Yehuda Saban from the budget department, an average Israeli views 225 minutes of TV a day – over 3 and a half hours.  Children watch TV even more than that.  All this in spite of the fact that the costs of cable/satellite TV in Israel are relatively high; at the bottom 20% of the income group, people spend as much as 1.2% of their monthly income on TV.

It is f course also interesting to see how both supporters and opponents of the reform justify their positions through claims for greater societal benefit, but I won’t torture you with this now :)

In the video below you can see an interview with Guy and Netzah where they talk about the pilot:

I understand that Guy is still working on reflections on the pilot and its results, which he will publish in his blog.  I have some thoughts of my own, but I will hold them untill he has his say :)

Here are some highlights:

• 95% of the students have access to computer with an internet connection.
• Most parents don’t really care what their kids are doing online or how much they spend there.  For example, 67% of the parents do not limit the time their kids can spend online, 53% do not express any interest about what they are doing there, and only 22% are using filtering software.
• Most of the students are rather pragmatic in their use of the internet.  81% of the students are looking for any information online (not surprising, but interesting number), 77% are playing online games, 68% utilize the web for their studies, 66% use it to communicate with their peers, and 63% download music.
• It also looks most of the students are rather thoughtful in their use of the internet. 72% explicitly stated that they are aware of the dangers of the internet and “consult or check” before giving away identifiable information (71% are using a screen name) and 14% of the students admitted that they are exposed to adult content.
• Online ethics and copyright awareness are not as strong.  30% of the students are convinced that they can download anything they want from the internet and similar proportion of the students are convinced that they can download papers from the internet for class submission (this one is rather worrying result in my eyes).
• Some results are not as clear.  For example, 40% of the students are convinces that internet is a free place where you can copy or use anything you want. I am not sure what exactly the Ministry people were trying to achieve in this question and how we should read it, but they presented it as a negative phenomenon.

As I said, the report is released in the context of “internet safety day.” As such, it is framed so that we would appreciate the dangers children are exposed to online.  This is particularly evident in the emphasis on the fact that parents do not care much about what their kids are doing online and an explicit attempt to emphasize that significant percentage are exposed to adult content, as well as to suggest that the kids are not careful enough in online interactions.

However, I think the results actually show that the Israeli youth are very thoughtful users of the Internet.  I have no tools to judge how many teenagers are exposed to adult content in the offline world, but 14% does not seem like a frightening figure (of course it is self reported, so the actual figure is probably higher).  At the same time, the main uses of the medium are mostly positive and most of the youths are careful about how they behave online and how they expose themselves to strangers.

The Ministry of Education is taking credit for the positive trends (even though longitudinal data would help) and probably rightfully so .  I think it is an important argument in the discussions about internet filtering under the claim of protecting the kids.  First, we can see that the situation is not as horrible as some proponents of filtering suggest (unless, of course, looking for information online is considered negative/dangerous behavior in some communities).  Second, if the Ministry of Education is right that the current situation is a result of educational efforts, it shows that resources spent in that direction do bear fruit.

Having said that, it is important to note that my entire discussion is based on a press release from the ministry. In other words, all the data above was selected and framed by the ministry to serve a purpose.  It would be of course much more useful if the ministry would publish the detailed report, including the instruments they’ve used and the responses they’ve got.  For example, it would be really interesting to see age difference in the attitudes and uses of the internet.  It would be also interesting to see how different socioeconomic groups interact with the medium.  Finally, as I have mentioned above, presenting longitudinal data (if it exists) would be very helpful. Do you think it is too much to ask for a complete report?  Or perhaps it is available somewhere out there and you could point me to it?

Please let me know what you think about this.

Reading the Israeli press in the last month or so made an impression that the news media today are more focused on covering the future, rather than on reporting news.  For example, according to Gid’on Levi (HE) the Israeli election is already decided and Netanyahu is going to take the election with ease.  Udi Lebel, criticized the growing intervention of army officials in political processes by suggesting that Israeli should negotiate with Syria.  He opened his article with a claim that we are facing a new government with a Prime Minister (PM) who opposes such talks (HE).

These sentiments are supported by some polling data (HE), which shows that if the election would happen then (Nov, 20), Likud would have 32 seats in Knesset (6 more from the previous poll), Kadima would have 26 seats (3 less than before), and Avoda would practically disappear with only 8 seats (3 seats less than in the previous poll).  Although the data has slightly changed since then, the trends remain.

In fact, reading these articles and then the comments people leave as a response to them, definitely gives one a sense that this election is over, even before the parties have gone through the primaries.  I think it shows one of the greater weaknesses of the Israeli version of the parliamentary system (HE).  People seem to form their voting inclinations based on the person aiming for the PM post.  As if this person is going to have exclusive governing powers and the entire policy of the future government will be up to this person.  In reality, however, the PM has a lot, but not at all ultimate powers.  Because of the way the parliamentary system works in Israel, the PM is a hostage.  First of all, they are a hostage of their own party, and then of the other parties joining the coalition.

Right now, the dynamics of this campaign have been very personal.  It is definitely Zipi vs. Bibi as the “Economist” put it.  All the people who joined/left the major parties were nothing more than markers of the qualities of the candidates.  The more people (or should I say celebrities) have joined a certain party, the more credentials they are supposedly provide to the person heading that party.  It seems like neither the voters, nor the press, are paying attention to the individual admissions and ideological approaches of the newcomers and those who decided to change political affiliations.  Yet, once the election hype is over, these individual characteristics of people on each candidate’s list will become extremely important both for the political direction Israel is going to take and for the stability of the next government.

The last argument takes me back to the media and to the role of Oracles they have taken upon themselves.  Reading the predictions, I cannot help myself but seeing all good spiral of silence, agenda setting, framing, and a handful of other theoretical approaches playing off in front of my eyes.  I wonder to what degree focusing on the leaders of the parties and on the prediction contributes to making this prediction eventually come true?  I wonder if there is going to be any change in discourse once the primaries are over?  Will the actual teams matter in public discourse of these election?

One thing that becomes clearer and clearer to me is that the current version of the parialmentary system in Israel is not neccesarily the most productive model of government (and I am not alone – HE).  At the same time, it looks like changing this model may be difficult, to impossible, because the change is supposed to come from within the same milfancionting apparatus.  In one of the recent analysis of the voting patterns of the Israeli voters (HE), Prof. Michal Shamir expressed some optimism that at some point Israel can get its own Obama (I guess referring to the inspiration, enthusiasm, and hope his campaign and the begining of his presidency gave to the american people).  I would love to hope that she is right, but observing the election dynamics makes me more sceptical that the current system can produce a person who would will be free of its, not neccesarily healthy, influence.

Recently, as Israel started warming up the election machine again, Zipi Livni was quoted saying that she would like that the atmosphere in Israel after the election would be similar to what she felt in Washington DC before the inauguration of Obama (HE). In her blog she has a video when she is briefly describing what saw and you can see that she is excited and that she really would like to be in the same place as him in terms of public support (HE).  This urged me to finish this post, which I started writing back in December.

Since she declared that she is choosing election to a shaky government, Zipi Livni became associated with an expressions such as “new politics” or “different politics”, which implied politics focused on the needs and interests of the public as opposed to those in positions of power.  I am not sure to what extent her rhetoric back then was inspired by Obama, but it was clearly going in the similar direction of “change”, particularly when it comes to the way politics is done in Israel.  She got criticized for that statement and accused for using that as a rhetorical tool only.  Nevertheless, other politicians, particularly those who are aiming for the Prime Minister (PM) seat, have gladly adopted the same rhetoric, especially after they witnessed it working in the US.

For example, on a summit of Likud party in mid-November, Netanyahu was quoted saying:

“We are not [going back] to the old politics.”

followed by a promise of open and clear election campaign (HE).  During the same week, while speaking to the Assembly of the Jewish Agency about his approach to the peace process, he was quoted saying:

“We need a new approach.  The old one did not bring results. We need to build bottom-up by making the lives of our Palestinian neighbors better.” (HE)

Even though the rest of the speech included some old statements about united Jerusalem and negotiations from a position of strength, it was indeed packed in the rhetoric of change.

During the primaries season, the intra-parties campaigns could be viewed as another example.  Michael Eitan, a Likud MK, launched his entire campaign under the slogan: “To prove that it can be done differently” and he borrows broadly in his rhetoric and uses of technology from Obama.  But not only him.  Miri Regev, a newcomer to Likud, who seems like an Israeli version of Sarah Palin, launched her primaries campaign and referred to her hopes that members of Likud will choose good people to compete with Kadima.  Among other things she said that she hopes that the party will be “smart” to bring:

“People who grew bottom-up, who have record and an alternative, and who chose the political route because they care about the Israeli people and about the country.” (HE)

In a recent article addressing the dynamics of the campaign Yoel Marku in Haaretz quoted Livni’s advisers saying that the choice is between preserving the status quo and choosing Livin, who represents the “let’s do something new” approach (HE).

Aluf Ben, in his article in Haaretz (HE), summarized the rhetoric of the two main candidates for the PM:

Candidates in the election are always trying to present “change”, particularly this year, with the meteoric rise of Barak Obma to the White House out of nowhere.  It is difficult for both Livni and Netanyahu to sell this product.

And he goes on describing how both candidates are disparately trying to reinvent themselves with little credibility.

Perhaps Shas, the ultraorthodox party went furthest.  I do not have an article to link to and what I know is from talking to people, but apparently they simply translated Obama’s “yes we can!” adding “with God’s help”.

There are definitely many more examples out there, if one is looking.  One question I keep on asking myself is whether these are the candidates who are acting under the Obama Effect, or there is a different effect in motion.  After all, I am not listening to the actual speeches, and all I know is from the media.  So, Is it possible that these are the media who are acting under the “Obama Effect” or more so “Obama Coverage Effect”?  In other words, is it possible that it is the Israeli media that are influenced by their US (and global) counterparts and prefer focusing on rhetoric focusing on change and bottom-up approaches?  After all, the Israeli media even tried to copy the model of YouTube debates, even if with partial success (HE).

What do you think?

P.S.  And just because I couldn’t help myself, the evidence to the first part of Obama effect is so overwhelming!!!  Tzipi Livni has her own vblog (HE) and Kadima website was upgraded to look more 2.0ish,  Netanyahu, who has an Obama-clone website under a domain that has nothing to do with the party, but with him as an individual, has lunched daily addresses to the nation on… YouTube of course (HE).  Avoda has also launched a refreshed website (well, that was not hard to do, compared to what they had before) though, Barak does not blog or Twitter yet.  The highlight, however, I think is this rather bizzare phenomenon of “Livni Boy”.  Well, this is not exactly a phenomenon, but just a single instance, but it is nevertheless “interesting”:

On the right.

In the meantime, the “business is as usual”, as suggested by an old Hebrew saying.  It seems that Likud, is continuing gaining momentum as more an more “stars” are coming back to the party or are joining it for the first time.  In a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy, it looks as if they smell that Likud is going to reign and everybody now wants a piece of that power.  Perhaps this movement becomes more obvious as it starts attracting criticism from the media (HE) and also from within the party (HE).

Michael Eitan, one of the current Likud MKs (who has been pretty good about maintaining online presence already for a while and is very much involved in technology related issues) had a very sarcastic post on his blog (HE) complaining about lack of media attention to devoted Likudniks, while the newcomers and returners are getting all the air time (so needed in the primaries). Same sentiment was heard prior to the assembly of the party (HE1, HE2) to approve changes in its constitution to accommodate the newcomers and set the deadline for primaries (HE).  The internally-generated criticism in Likud is particularly interesting, because it helps illustrating how unnatural the migration to the party seems even to its members and to what extend it is all about power grab.  For those who paid attention, this may remind what happened to Kadima when it was established and it was clear that it is heading towards a swiping victory.  Everybody likes being on the winning side.

Yet, the “noise” does not seem to bother Netanyahu, who continues his efforts to assemble “stars” and recently was even spotted trying to recruit people from the traditionally-liberal celebrity scene of Tel-Aviv (HE).  This happens at the same time as he is trying to recruit a former Chief of General Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, who was also offered to head the new right wing party (HE1, HE2).  On the flip side, Uzi Landau, another prominent figure in the Israeli right shifted even more to the right and moved from Likud to Yisrael Beiteinu (HE) thus further blurring the distinction between the two parties.

On the left.

While the carnival of new-old faces in Likud continues, Avoda seems to slowly sink into a chasm (HE1, HE2, HE3).  On the one hand, people who could potentially uplift the public face of the party and signal the so needed change, are leaving.  Ami Ayalon, has recently announced that he is leaving Avoda and is looking for an alternative on the left side of political map (HE1, HE2, HE3).  On the other hand, the party demonstrates that it is true to the “good old” rules of “political kitchen” where deals are being “cooked” and places on the ballot are being saved for the veteran politicians based on really unclear and not transparent criteria.  The latest stunning example was reserving a spot on the ballot for Fouad Ben Eliezer who is a veteran politician, but does not have an outstanding record of parliamentary activity or an electoral appeal, which would somehow justify such a decision (HE).  The only concern though, is for Avoda to receive enough votes that Ben Eliezer would make it to Knesset even with the reserved spot on the ballot. The party is being criticized on any possible grounds starting from loosing its ideological grounds (HE) to the way its internal politics is done (HE).  Avoda may currently be the best example to why it is so difficult to initiate change in Israel through the traditional political system.  The apparatus is so convoluted and is dense, that people with their best intentions at the beginning of their way are getting lost as they fight to climb the party ladder.  It is hard to see the next leader coming from Avoda at this point.

Identifying the vacuum on the left side of the political map (HE), a new left movement has been recently launched (HE).  It is based on a series of famous names in the Israeli cultural spheres (such as Amos Oz) and former politicians, and as of now it backs Meretz, which is trying really hard to reinvent itself (HE).  They lost a lot of their leading role as a social-democratic party in the last decade, and decline of Avoda seems like a good opportunity for their comeback.  Unfortunately, Meretz has a label of being too far to the left to actually lead political processes in Israel.  I remember in the past reading somebody calling them an eternal opposition party, which cannot shad off the opposition mentality, even when they are in the coalition.  Even if currently Meretz is on the rise, it is going to be too busy rebuilding and reinventing itself, to take a leadership role in this election cycle.

Elsewhere

Other parties do not seem to make any outstanding steps either.  Shas has declared about the beginning of their campaign aiming for 18 seats in the Knesset and the Ministry of Education (HE).  With all the tolerance in the world, I don’t think the latter is a good idea for Israel regardless of ones political affiliation or worldview.  Besides, all this happens when in the background more of people affiliated with Shas are going to jail for corruption allegations (HE).

And there is of course Kadima, which still seems to struggle for its identity, which to a degree reflects kind of identity crisis within the Israeli society itself (HE).  For some reason, Olmert, facing with corruption allegations, decided that in his last days he can say things he could not as long as he hoped to continue in politics.  It reminds the last days of Bush before the electio in the US, when he was eager to leave a positive historical mark (such as pushing for whatever results in the talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, as long as those could be presented as results).  This definitely hurts Livni, who is being aggressively portrayed by Likud as ultra-leftist.

As if adding to Livni’s “leftist” trouble, one of Kadima MKs announced on leaving the party declaring that Livni is too far to the left (HE).  Frankly, I have not heard about this MK before, neither have people who commented on the news item about his announcement.  Nevertheless, he did manage to further harm the centrist image of Kadima.

And if that was not enough, the gender issue starts coming out more aggressively.  In Jerusalem, Kadima ads with Livni’s portrait were removed in order “not to harm the feelings of the religious community” by showing a female face in public (HE).  I am not sure I have colloquial vocabulary to react to this.  Even if Livni is the only new leadership-face in the Israeli politics in this election, this environment isn’t really welcoming her.

Closing comment on leadership

So what is the bottom line for now?  I think it is rather gloomy.  The current picture is of the Israeli political scene being busy with its own survival (as usual) instead of thinking about the larger national and regional goals.  In this environment, which is on one hand caught in old-fashioned, bureaucratic party regimes and on the other is driven by a celebrity approach to individual politicians, it is really difficult for a new kind of leadership to emerge.  If you want to make it though you have to be both, a celebrity and a party go-getter, which leaves little to no space for vision or sincere conversation between the public and the political apparatus.  There are talks about need of changes in the government system (HE), and there were attempts to do that in the past, but none of the new ideas will be tried in the three months before the election and I am sceptical that this topic will even constitute a debate item for the running parties.

Maybe I am setting the the hopes/expectations too high, but right now it seems that the chances of change in this elections are small.  It looks like the Israeli public is going to compromise on leadership again.

I may talk about the rhetoric of change on a different occasion.  Now I would like to make a short note about the second point about the use of technology.  I wrote earlier about the new Likud website and this news has actually made it to New York Times already (not from my blog of course :).  However, this is not all.  Obama Effect dribbles down to the primaries season, which the Israeli parties are going through now, before they depart onto the national battle.

Michael Eitan, a Likud MK, has launched an-Obama inspired campaign for his primaries.  The campaign is called “To prove that it can be done differently” (my unprofessional translation) (HE).  Eitan’s idea is to have a transparent, grassroots oriented primaries campaign, including collecting donations on his website.  You can see how it links to the rhetorical part of Obama Effect by emphasising the change, even if using a different vacabulary. I have not seen other politician doing this, except for the new Likud website, but that is in a different league.

Eitan’s example is particularly interesting, as the primaries are traditinoally viewed in Israel as rather dirty and internal to the parties processes.  By opening up the black box of primaries to the broader public, and by reaching out to people beyond the party lines, Eitan is already dong things differently.  It will be interesting to see how it eventually works out, particularly in light of his party-boss taking the Obama-style campaigning really seriously this time.  So, far Eitan received NIS 6,500 in donations (around US $1800) from 54 people (HE), but I don’t know if it is considered a lot (I guess not that much).  Nevertheless, I think it is more than any other politician in Israel collected online for his primaries.

I am sure there are more instances of Obama Effect to come and I wonder if people in other parts of the world observe its instances.

Prologue

Following are my not very systematic results.  This is a rather long, but quite clunked post.  I hope you will find it interesting though, because I found the “research” behind it quite intriguing.  All in all I looked at the search results for the main parties (Kadima, Likud, Avoda, Shas, Ysrael Beitenu) and the major candidates (Livni, Netanyahu, Barak), at their website, their presence in social networks, and in spreadable media.  Please let me know what you think.

To ease your reading, here are the links to different parts of this post.  Read just the one that interests you.

• Search for parties
• Search for candidates
• Party websites
• Personal websites
• Parties on social networks
• Candidates on social networks
• Candidates in spreadable media
• Parties in spreadable media
• Epilogue

Search for parties

I decided to start with looking at what somebody would find trying to look up information about the parties.  After all, we want people to make informed choices and internet brings information at our fingertips :) I conducted all the searches in Hebrew on November 10, 2008, and here is what I found.

In most cases, when you look for the major parties in Google, the first result will lead to the party’s website.  This is clearly the case with Kadima, Likud, Shas, and Yisrael Beitenu.  Searching for Avoda, however, yields mostly job-search related results, and you will not find the party’s website among at least the first 30 results.  This probably stems from the fact that unlike other party names, which are relatively unique, “Avoda” in Hebrew stands for work and is a rather common word.  However, if you specify that you are looking for the political party Avoda, you still get weird results.  The first result is a Wikipedia article about the party, but non of the following links clearly suggests a party’s website.  There is a link to verify your membership in the party, but we will get to it later.  Interestingly, none of the parties is utilizing the option of advertising with Google, which was “given” in the US election, even though searches for candidates’ names and parties usually yielded their websites as the top result.

Testing the same searches with local search engines, such as Walla (powered by Yahoo) and MSN.co.il (powered by MS Live Search), yielded somewhat different results.  Searching for Avoda with Walla, lead to the same job-related results.  Specifying that you are looking for the political party, still yeilds some job-related results at the top, and only then some party-related content.  Searching for Kadima yielded the Wikipedia article about the party as the top result, followed by party-related results with the link to the main party website only as the 10th result.  Searching for Shas, Likud, and Yisrael Beitenu leads to the parties’ website as the top result.  Walla also has an option for contextualized ads, but non of the parties seem to utilize those.

Searching with MSN.co.il yielded results very similar to those of Google.

All in all these are good results for Shas, Likud, and Israel Beitenu, and rather decent results for Kadima.  Their website and related (positive) information can be easily found with the most simple search.  Kadima is not doing very well with Walla, which is one of the (if not the) most popular search engine in Hebrew these days.  At the same time, these are rather bad news for Avoda, as their information is very difficult to find.

Search for candidates

So, far we reviewed the search results for the main political parties competing in the February election. What happens if we search for the three candidates for the Prime Minister (PM) post?

Searching for Livni in Google brings up the Wikipedia article about the candidate as the top result, followed by a mix of relevant and not relevant results.  Among the first ten results, there is no link to the party website or to Zipi Livni’s personal website.  If you specify your search to Zipi Livni (full name vs. just the family name), the results are more relevant, however very few of them are official communication from the campaign and many are not very flattering.

Netanyahu is performing much better here.  If you search for just his family name or for his popular full name (Bibi Netanyahu or just Bibi), the first result will be his personal blog, followed by a Wikipedia entry about him, followed by a website commemorating his brother, and then a mixture of relevant website, including a website of his supporters.  The most positive for Netanyahu results are yielded when you search for his popular name.  If you search for his more official name, Benjamin Netanyahu, there is a slight shift in results (Wikipedia article is coming first), but they are all relevant and contributing to what I can imagine as potential causes of his campaign.

Barak is loosing the race here again.  If you search just for his family name, the first two results are related to an international communication company carrying the same name, and only the third result is the Wikipedia entry about the candidate.  Other results are a mixture of irrelevant results, some of which are actually about Barack Obama.  However, if you specify your search to his full name, Ehud Barak, the results are much better and after the Wikipedia article at the top of the search results, you will actually receive his personal website.

Moving on to Walla, Netanyahu is again leading the pack with yielding the most positive results for his campaign.  Whether you search for parts of his formal or popular name, the top results will always containt links to his personal website and to the support website I’ve mentioned above.  At the same time, things look not as good for Livni.  Searching just for her last name, yields a lot of results, which are rather critical of the candidate.  If you focus your search to her full name, the results are slightly better, with the Wikipedia at the top, but there are still enough critical materials, which I am sure Kadima’s campaign would like not to have in the top ten results.  For Barak, the situation is slightly better in Walla.  Searching just for his family name, yields a mixture of results, some of which are relevant.  Searching for his full name, yields similar results to those in Google.

Sorry, for making the MSN summary shorter again, but its results were rather similar to those of Walla.  In fact, all the candidates do slightly worse with MSN, as it bring less relevant results and when those are relevant they actually tend to be more critical.  All in all, Netanyahu is doing the best with search there, followed by Barak (only if you search for the full name), and then Livni.

Party Websites

In the Israeli political system, you do not vote directly for the PM.  You are voting for a party and later the head of the party that leads the formation of a coalition, gets the PM job.  This is why I started testing the search with looking for parties and only then for the candidates.  Now I would like to talk about the party websites, before I move to talk about those of the candidates.

I start with Kadima, which has a relatively decent and updated website.  Although its design seems to be stuck in the late 1990’s when they just started discovering that you can do online slightly more than showing HTML.  The website is extremely busy with graphics and not very trivial to navigate.  It has an option to watch videos on its homepage and it has a survey (with a question about whether Zipi Livni should declare general election, which was decided a few weeks ago).  Besides a rather updated stream of news and static information about the website, the only interactive features on the website are an option to send email and joion the party.  Well, I might be exaggerating, because they also allow to download campaign related stuff from the website with the only caveat that it is from the previous election (I think).  The entire website is in Hebrew, but there is a link to the Russian version of the website.  If click that however, you get a pop-up window saying that the site is under construction.

Likud have just launched a new website.  I am certain that just about a week and a half ago, when I first thought about this post, they had a rather horrible website.  The new one, however, is really up to date and is rather impressive.  It is rather pleasant aesthetically and has a number of 2.0-ish functionality, such as the ability to search for local events, start a blog, etc.  A number of Likud members of Knesset have blogs that are linked to from the website.  There is not much content there yet and it will be interesting to see how it evolves.  Clearly following Obama’s footsteps, they are trying to build a community of supporters at: my.netanyahu.co.il.  In fact the main Likud website is now sitting on www.netanyahu.co.il, which I think is an interesting attempt to focus attention on the party’s main political asset.  Of course they have information about the party and an option to join it.   The highlight, however, is the ability to donate to the party online – something I have never seen in the Israeli politics before.  Currently, the website is focused on the municipal election, but from the way it looks and feels it is definitely the currently best built online space in this campaign so far.

It looks like the news about invention of the internet did not really reach the Israeli Labor Party.  The most official page for Avoda I could find is a mostly empty page where you can check whether or not you are a member of the party or download a form to join it.  That’s it.

Yisrael Beitenu is doing much better than Avoda, but not as good as Likud; probably closer to Kadima.  They have a rather static website, which is more pleasant to the eye compared to that of Kadima.  The website is mostly about pushing information to its users.  It has a rather updated news section and a lot of information about the party.  The only interactive feature I spotted was an option to join a mailing list.  There were however, a couple of features that I have not seen on the other two websites.  First, Yisrael Beitenu attempts to publish the names and ID numbers (equivalent of SSN in the US) of their donors.  That is quite transparent, but I am not sure what it does to people’s willingness to contribute and how sustainable this is (there is only information about May 2008 presented on the website).  Second, they have rather elaborate versions of the site not just in Hebrew, but also in Russian and in English.  This is interesting.  While I can understand their willingness to invest in the Russian version of the website (a lot, if not the most, of their supporters are Russian-speakers), but I cannot understand the motivation behind the English version.

If Kadima and Yisrael Beitenu are stuck in late 1990’s, Shas is confusing.  On the one hand, when it comes to the website design, it is stuck in the early 1990’s.  On the other hand, in terms of functionality, they are almost as good as Likud’s website.  It is possible to join a social network on Shas’s website, edit a profile, send and receive messages within the network, and more.  Other than that, the website is very long HTML page that has a lot of content about the party, its spiritual/cultural agenda, news, and information about events.  The site has quite an extensive multimedia collection and at the same time, it is not available on Saturdays.

To summarize, I was really surprised to see the overhaul Likud’s website went through and the extend to which Shas’s website has embraced the modern technical abilities.  At the same time, other parties are really lagging behind.  Particularly surprising is the Avoda’s negligence of the internet.

Personal websites

This one is relatively easier as I think Zipi Livni does not have a personal website, so there are only two to look at.

Netanyahu is definitely in the lead here and as I mentioned in the previous section, he just re-launched his entire online presence mimicking Obama’s campaign.  It definitely looks impressive and it will be interesting to see how it evolves.  To their credit, I have to say that Likud not just channeled their online efforts into a single place, but it also preserved some of the older materials.  Netanyahu used to have a blog and a personal website for a while now, and I think many (if not all) of his blog posts made it to the new website.

When it comes to his personal website, Ehud Barakis doing much better than his party.  There is actually a decent website with a lot of static information about the candidate.  You can become Barak’s supporter and join his mailing list.  Weirdly enough, there are fields for a user name and a password on the website, but there is nowhere one can join anything that resembles a social network.  They do have a section on the website for announcement for “authorized personnel only”.  Whatever that means, it does not support communication with potential voters.  Moreover, many of the pages on the website are empty, which creates a feeling that they wanted just to put something out there, without putting enough resources into it.

Parties on Social Networks

I started with Facebook.  I remember looking at the information about the Israeli network on Facebook and being impressed.  Unfortunately, Facebook no longer provides access to networks statistics.  Nevertheless, here is the membership count for the various parties I could find:

• Likud: 985 members (and they also have separate pages for the international and the English speaking wings of the party)
• Avoda: 154 members
• Kadima: 149 members
• Yisrael Beitenu: 17 members (another 44 members in their English speaking wing)
• Shas: I could not find any

There are of course more groups focusing on the parties and there as well, Likud is much more represented compared to other parties (even though the discussion is rather polarized).  Interestingly, I ran a similar search on a Russian social networking website VKontakte and actually found a couple of groups supporting the following parties:

• Yisrael Beitenu: 107 members
• Likud: 35 members

I didn’t see other parties represented there.

Candidates on Social Networks

For that category I looked on Facebook.  Frankly, I don’t think there is another significant social networking website in Israel, if you do not account for communities formed in places such as Tapuz or Nana for example.  Those are more blogging communities, but I may be mistaken.

Since all three candidates have Facebook profiles, we can start with pure numbers of the kind social networks usually care about:

• Netanyau: 1230 supporters
• Livni: 858 supporters
• Barak: 87 supporters

There is not much activity going on the politician’s website, but you can observe clashes among supporters and even some criticism on the discussion boards.  I don’t really know what else one can see looking at their profile pages.

One can see a much more colorful picture if they look at the groups arguing in support or against certain candidates.  It is quite difficult to say something systematic about these groups but here are some of my unsystematic observations.  First, Ehud Barak as a politician is almost non existent in this sphere.  Benjamin Netanyahu is coming out of this comparison as the most controversial figure.  He has probably the largest amount of groups focusing on him, but those usually have limited membership.  Tzipi Livni is giving a “good fight” to Netanyahu in this sphere.  She may have fewer groups focusing on her, but those that do are mostly supportive and have relatively large memberships.

Also, with all the personalization, I am not sure I am seeing anything nearing a complete picture.  So, I wonder, when you look at how these candidates appear in social networks, what do you see?

Candidates in Spreadable media

I started my search with YouTube.  Searching for the candidates’ channels, the only one whom I found present was Netanyahu – at least I think it was his channel.  The other two candidates were absent from YoutTube, even though there are many videos focusing on all three.  I wonder if there is a reliable way to measure whom users on YouTube favor more among the three candidates.  Do you have any idea about the best way to do it?

I also searched Flix, the Israeli version of YouTube. There was no dedicated equivalents of channels and most of the videos posted by various users were captures of TV translations of either speeches and news items or satirical programs.  There is very limited user generated content dealing with politics that goes beyond simple power-point-style presentations.

Parties in Spreadable media

I was not able to locate dedicated party channels on YouTube, but most of the major parties are being mentioned in various videos.  You can find items ranging from captured TV performances to user-created content, usually criticizing the parties or their members of the Knesset.  Interestingly, looking for Avoda-related content, I saw that two of the party members, Ami Ayalon and Ephraim Sneh, actually have their own YouTube channels.  Nothing like this stood for any of the other members of Knesset or party members.

As before, I also searched Flix.  It had significantly fewer political videos.  I could not find dedicated equivalents of channels owned by the politicians, but there were some channels clearly supporting Netanyahu or Livni.  Most of the relevant content on Flix seems to be snapshots of the official speeches of the candidates.  There was no Israeli version of Obama girl.

Epilogue

From my unsystematic analysis above, it looks like Likud is currently leading the way with technological innovation in this campaign.  Although they just launched their new environment, it already looks promising and I hope other candidates and parties will follow their example.  It will be great if this election produce more “new” media innovation in both the technological and the strategic realms.  There are of course other parties that are using the online environment for they purposes, but none of them is doing an extraordinarily good job.  Anyhow, this is just a beginning of the electoral race in Israel and although the entire election period is only 3 months, a lot can change as we move on.

In the meantime, in the US, Obama seems to continue innovating with technology.  His administration “in formation” launched a website for supposedly direct communication with the people.  I first read about in Megan’s blog and I share her careful scepticism abot whether or not this direct channel will work and whether ot not it will be actually direct.  Nevertheless, there is a lot of interst and some expectations from this initiative and the future of the community created at my.barackobama.com This one will be an extermly interseting to watch.