Eitan Haber
צילום: שלום בר טל
Dawn of a new day
American elections reminiscent of 1999 Israeli elections won by Barak
NEW YORK - If we go by what we see and hear, Barak Obama is about to become America’s next president. Any other outcome would be a surprise.
What we have been seeing is somewhat reminiscent of the 1999 Israeli elections. At the time, Ehud Barak and his people were all over the place; on balconies, at street corners, and on the roads. Everywhere you looked you saw Barak, Barak, Barak.
Today, we see Barack at every corner, and mostly on television. The amounts of money and ads he directed to every possible channel are beyond any imagination. People around here say that this is unprecedented.
However, beyond the ads, which showed Obama from every possible angle, almost the entire media stood by him while butchering his rival, John McCain. Almost all newspapers, as well as national and local radio and television channels, were singing in one voice: Obama, Obama, Obama. The media’s enlistment in favor of the first-ever African-American presidential candidate may have doomed McCain. Perhaps he never had a chance.
Yet nonetheless, McCain was fighting to the last moment, as if his chances were just as good, or better, than his rival’s chances. Some of McCain’s supporters said, behind closed doors only, that many voters will rethink the idea of voting for an African-American once the moment of truth arrives and they stand there alone at the polling station. These people may end up voting McCain after all.
Indeed, it appears that the Americans, who turned hypocrisy into a professional endeavor, are also tainted by a certain degree of duplicity.
Tuesday’s vote is first and foremost a protest vote against George W. Bush and the decisions made during his eight years in office – mostly the decision to embark on war in Iraq; a war that already exacted thousands of casualties and cost huge sums of money. It is a war whose end is not yet in sight.
The animosity towards Bush around here is to a large extent reminiscent of the Israeli animosity towards Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak towards the end of their terms in office. You can almost touch it. It appears that the Israelis are the only ones who still sympathize with Bush.
This election campaign, said the commentators, will bring the largest number of voters in America’s history to the polls. As of tomorrow, it may indeed be “the dawn of a new day,” as Ehud Barak said in his victory speech in 1999.
