Postmortem: Israel’s 2006 Elections, by Yedidya Atlas
Excerpts;
This postmortem analysis is an after-the-campaign report to all those who were involved in implementing a national campaign to prevent a leftist victory in the Israeli 2006 elections, with all its ramifications.
Results
Approximately two months prior to the elections, it became clear to concerned people on the ideological right that the new party of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon posed an existential threat to the State of Israel should they garner the number of expected Knesset seats (44-45) then being predicted by the various polls promoted by Israel’s leading media vehicles. It was further obvious that the various parties on the right of the Israeli political spectrum – including, and perhaps especially, the Likud – seemed (and later proved) incapable of launching a successful campaign to alter the media-advocated results before the fact. The last important point was that Kadima, a party comprised of opportunistic and corrupt politicians with no binding ideology (in fact, no ideology at all beyond a secular left-wing agenda), was a party without infrastructure, few if any field workers, and relied solely on gifted PR manipulators and massive media promotion; i.e., without the across-the-board overt advocacy of the Israeli media, Kadima would have sunk significantly in the polls. read more
