Echo of the past: Israel's election broadcasts hit TV on Tuesday, but are they relevant? - analysis

The election campaign broadcasts that begin airing Tuesday on television and radio are a throwback to a bygone Israel of the hora, asimonim (payphone tokens), and the ubiquitous kova tembel kibbutz hat.

But while the hora has given way to trance parties, asimonim to cellular phones, and the kova tembel to baseball caps, the campaign broadcasts live on. In the age of TikTok and Facebook, this surviving ritual feels quaint, albeit anachronistic, a flicker of the communal campfire around which Israelis once gathered.

That campfire was the country’s single television station. When elections approached, it turned over a slice of its prime-time programming to the political parties, giving them three weeks before election day to make their pitch.

It was a different time. Everybody watched the same station, giving the parties an opportunity today’s campaign managers can only dream of: reaching a broad audience in one place, including people well beyond their own base.

And the next day, everybody talked about the ads. Newspapers even reviewed and occasionally graded them. This was a shared experience, and the broadcasts became an integral part of Israel’s election culture – part entertainment, part political education.

They were as much a fixture of Israeli election campaigns as candidate debates are of American ones.

To some degree, they were our debates, with parties often answering an opponent’s ad from the night before. Structured debates between prime minister candidates, though held from time to time, never took root here. Campaign broadcasts with catchy tunes and gimmicky lines did.

Some entered Israeli political lore. In 1984, the beloved comedy trio Hagashash Hahiver skewered Likud in sketches for the Labor-led Alignment. In 1996, Likud repeatedly warned that “Peres will divide Jerusalem.” And in 1999, Natan Sharansky’s Yisrael Ba’aliya party made “Shas control? Nash control!” – Shas’s control? Our control! – a slogan about wresting the Interior Ministry from Shas.

The tunes and punchlines sometimes stayed with people longer than the platforms. You did not have to support a party to hum its jingle, repeat its slogan, or laugh at its comedian.

It is hard to say whether these ads persuaded anybody, any more than a billboard or campaign bumper sticker. BBut the broadcasts helped brand the parties and their leaders. They also signaled that the country had entered the campaign’s final stretch.

The underlying framework for these broadcasts is the 1959 Election Law, with television provisions added in 1969 after the establishment of Israel Television. That year was the first with televised party broadcasts.

The rationale was straightforward. A government with considerable influence over state broadcasting – as was the case then – could dominate the airwaves. Allocated broadcasts guaranteed opposition parties access. What now looks rather quaint began as a democratic safeguard against the governing party monopolizing the screen.

The first spots were essentially campaign speeches delivered through a television camera. Only from 1977 onward did parties begin employing advertising experts and communications professionals to create their ads.

The politician standing before a camera delivering a stump speech gradually gave way to a slick, marketed product: a leader to trust, an opponent to fear, a slogan to remember.

The broadcast period, which was once three weeks, was shortened to two in 2008. Each candidate list is entitled to seven minutes of television time and 15 minutes of radio time over the entire period, not each day. Parties represented in the outgoing Knesset receive an additional two minutes of television time and four minutes of radio time for each MK.

The formula looks in the rearview mirror. A party’s representation in the outgoing Knesset counts; its expected strength in the next one does not.

That means Benny Gantz’s Blue and White, struggling in the polls to cross the electoral threshold, will likely receive more television airtime than Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar, which most polls predict will win around 20 seats and emerge as either the largest or second-largest party.

There is no small irony here. A system intended to ensure access also gives established parties an advantage over newcomers. Yesterday’s electoral verdict determines how much time parties receive to argue for a different verdict tomorrow.

Over the last few years, as social media has exploded and parties target voters through messages on those platforms, there have been several unsuccessful attempts to change the system.

The broadcasts retain a democratic purpose, even as audiences have tuned in to other platforms. They offer viewers a chance to encounter parties outside their existing political bubble, provided, of course, that they stay tuned.

But that last qualification is key, as the country no longer gathers around a single screen to watch a single station. Those days are over. The campfire remains, but much of the crowd is no longer huddled around it.

Meanwhile, campaigning on social media is constant. Parties do not need to wait for an official broadcast window. They can address different groups with tailored messages and respond to opponents within hours rather than waiting until the following evening.

The television broadcasts once helped shift the campaign into high gear. Today, they mark the closing stage of a campaign already running at full throttle.

They may still generate a memorable line or a revealing moment. But the days of everyone watching together as the parties parade their goods are gone. Social media offers individual encounters through a personalized feed, rather than a common national experience.

Perhaps that is the broadcasts’ lingering value: for a brief scheduled interval, the contestants still take turns on a common stage, even if much of the audience has wandered off.

The question is whether that purpose is enough to sustain the ritual, or whether it is time for these broadcasts to join the asimonim and kova tembel as relics of a simpler, quainter, bygone Israel.