More Israeli election stuff, about how the Central Elections Committee yanked the Prime Minister off the air in the middle of a press conference, and what came of it:
ANALYSIS: Circling the wagons around Sharon, By Herb Keinon
By HERB KEINON
By all accounts, Central Elections Committee chairman Mishael Cheshin's decision to pull the plug on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's press conference Thursday night was high political drama.
"Unprecedented," enthused Labor supporters.
"Unheard of," growled Likud backers.
"Unbelievable," commented neutral observers.
Whomever you believe, Cheshin's move now appears to have given Sharon a huge boost in the polls.
If Sharon's handsomely-paid media advisers hadn't thought of all this beforehand, if they didn't anticipate that Cheshin would take their candidate off the air after their man slammed Labor Party chairman Amram Mitzna, and if they didn't figure this would give Sharon a huge bounce in the polls, then they were derelict in their duties.
The Likud's defense strategy in the Cyril Kern story has worked wonders.
First someone leaks the story to Ha'aretz, the left-wing daily perceived by many as a paper with an interest in getting Sharon.
Sharon's response to the story is that an innocent loan from an old army buddy has been blown way out of proportion, that the whole story was leaked by political rivals intent on "stealing" the election, and that the country's elite the legal establishment and the media are out to get him.
For much of the population, this scenario is not something that exactly stretches the imagination.
Sharon then appears on television and, voila, is abruptly taken off the air. If that one act doesn't dramatically prove his point that he is a victim who cannot get a fair hearing, nothing will.
The next day's headlines played perfectly into Sharon's hands. Forget the column inches of punditry about the loan and what Sharon did or didn't know, just look at the headlines.
Yediot: "Silenced on air." Ma'ariv: "Drama on air: The screen is blackened. The fight of his life." Hatzofeh: "Shutting up the prime minister on the air."
Overnight "the story" went from being about a $1.5 million loan to Sharon to being about how the prime minister was "censored." More than anything else Sharon could have done, Cheshin's decision to order the television and radio networks to stop broadcasting the press conference proved to his natural audience that he is, indeed, a victim of the elite. Cheshin's action did more for Sharon than any hour-long explanation he could ever deliver about the details of the loan could possibly do.
Thanks to Cheshin, Sharon went from godfather to victim, almost as fast as he morphed recently from grandfather to godfather.
And Monday's poll figures bear this out. "Against all expectations," writes Chemi Shalev in Ma'ariv, "the Likud is on the rise, and the Labor Party is on the decline." In Ma'ariv's poll, the Likud went from 30 seats on Thursday, before the press conference, to 32 seats on Sunday. Labor dropped from 22 to 20 seats.
A Yediot poll has the Likud bouncing back even stronger, going from 28 before the press conference to 32-33 seats. Labor drops to 20 from 21-22 seats.
Which all goes to show that the reports of Sharon's demise, as well as Labor's celebration of turning the electoral tide, were greatly exaggerated. But do the recent poll numbers really go "against all expectations?"
They do if those measuring the expectations come from the Left. But Sharon, or Sharon's handlers, know his public those who make up what is called the Right-religious bloc. They know that among this not unsubstantial part of the population there is a deep-seated feeling that, indeed, the Left is out to get them, and will use any means to do so.
In the Yediot poll, 3-4 of the 4-5 seats that Likud made up over the last few days have come from the NRP, National Union, and Shas. This is the constituency which buys into the narrative that the Left and the country's elite are out to get the Right.
Whether it was all by brilliant manipulative design or just dumb luck, having Sharon's press conference halted mid-sentence strengthened the impression that he is under attack. What Monday's polls indicate is that when this is the perception, Sharon's natural constituency circles the wagons.
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