Ayelet Shaked is the Israeli Minister of Justice. Together with Naftali Bennett, she led the Jewish Home party, a Nationalistic-Religious right-wing Israeli party, who four years ago entered into the governing coalition ruled by Netanyahu’s Likud. As a secular younger woman, she was expected to widen Jewish Home’s demographic appeal to non-orthodox religious Jews and to secular right-wingers. Her rise from non-politician to Minister of Justice has been rapid and successful.
There are several things Shaked has been known for from the beginning of her career: her model-like looks, her cold delivery, and her uncompromising contempt to any Democratic institutions standing in the way of her politics. A newspaper interview, early in her career, garnered a reader’s comment, “Oy, what a cute fascist.” He was not the last to apply the fascist label to her, or to Bennett. As Minister of Justice she has most notably battled the Supreme Court of Israel, and has acted in many ways to limit its checks, among the last feeble ones remaining, on the excesses of the Israeli government against the Palestinian population. She has railed against “activist judges”, while pushing to make it easier for the government to appoint activist judges friendly to its causes. She has campaigned for more restrictive laws against anti-government organizations, and for the expulsion of illegal African refugees. She has been frighteningly effective in her post.
Shaked has been riding high these last four years, on the power of Jewish Home’s 8 Knesset seats (out of the 120 total). But in these coming elections, things might be different. Jewish Home had split. Its more explicitly nationalistic and Anti-Arab members remained (later to join forces with the even more right-wing Tkuma, and then with the yet more explicitly racist, neo-Kahanist Otzma Yehudit). Shaked and Bennett, who consider themselves more marketable, formed the New Right party.
When parties split they usually split their votes as well. The New Right has not been polling as high as Jewish Home was before the split. Some recent polls show the New Right with only 4 seats, the minimum for entering the Knesset. If they drop any more, they will be out of the Knesset and out of the government. So it’s time to get creative, and hence the following campaign commercial, which someone posted on YouTube with English subtitles.
I have to admit, when I first saw it I thought it was a parody, and I couldn’t understand how they could so perfectly simulate Shaked. But it wasn’t. It’s an official campaign video:
There’s so much wrong here, that I don’t know where to start. It speaks for itself.