Hamas assures the rise of BIBI
Analysis / Good days for Netanyahu
By Avirama Golan
The media consultants for Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud presumably are pleased today. If the success of a campaign is measured by headlines, then Netanyahu beat them all. On Sunday, the cameras clicked round him at a mad pace as he stood on "Sharon's balcony" at Beit Arieh (where Ariel Sharon used to bring every foreign visitor), and explained why the fence route must be moved eastward. On Tuesday, he had news programs jumping with his "social growth program," and the week is not yet over. Who remembers the argument over what year the Netanyahu photo for the Likud campaign was taken?
The pictures aren't the only thing that's different. Netanyahu of 2006 is not as gung-ho as in 1996. Perhaps because now, a decade after entering major politics and shaking up the entire system - he is more mature, more experienced and much more cautious. Then he was a young politician, 47, with a flowing head of hair touched with silver. Now he is a slightly heavyset man of 57, his hair gone white.
Then he surprised listeners with the neo-liberal economic theories he brought from the United States, and was met with suspicion and sometimes boos. Now there is hardly a politician or business reporter who doesn't use all his economic expressions. Then he went nowhere without his wife; today his wife is far from the cameras, and the gossip has lost its bite. Then nobody knew who he was, today he is the very symbol of the economic policy.
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Then the political fight was between him and Shimon Peres, in the aftermath of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination and the height of a pitched battle between an Oslo-supporting left and a settler-supporting right. Then came the first terrorist attacks. Now it seems that all his bleak prophecies have come true. At any rate, nobody chides him for lightly coining the problematic term "Hamastan." Then he had Gutnik and the Habadniks behind him, with the giant signs reading "Bibi is good for the Jews" that raised tough questions about the ties between candidate and campaign contributors. Today, alone, he points to the capital-government nexus far from his backyard.
Netanyahu makes good use of his age and experience. It's hard to find a better expert at image building than Netanyahu. "Some folks are angry at me," he confessed to the battery of press at Metzudat Zeev on Tuesday. "And you know what? When I talk to them, I find that even those who are angry at me believe that I'm right."
And here's how he's pulling it off this time: he takes the anger against him and presents it as children's anger at their father. "It was hard for me to take the economic measures. But I acted like the father of a family about to collapase, and to save the family you have to hurt the people dear to you. I saved the family. Now we can begin to give back to those people, who were hurt."
If you like, here's the new Netanyahu: the protective father, who knows what he's doing: warns about the neighborhood bullies, promises that whoever works nicely will get a treat, and reminds the children that he works very hard so they can have a better life. |
