Israeli politician's 'Fascism' perfume campaign ad draws criticism

Agencies

March 20, 2019

Occupied Jerusalem, Mar 20: A new ad with an elegantly dressed minister using "fascist" perfume drew online outrage on Tuesday, the latest in a social media war ahead of an Israeli election that has also featured a flatulent hippo.

Israeli law prevents political ads from being aired on television until two weeks before the April 9 election, so parties have flooded social media with clips instead.

The elections are expected to be close and social media is playing a part in the campaign as never before.

Messaging tool WhatsApp is particularly popular among Israelis and makes sharing clips easy, though Facebook and Twitter are also unavoidable in the self-proclaimed "start-up nation," known for its high-tech prowess.

"There's very heavy use of the internet in campaigning, but it's a wild west," said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler of the Israel Democracy Institute think tank. "There's no regulation."

In keeping with Israel's seldom subtle political scene, many clips have been over the top, and the one released late on Monday featuring Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked pushed lots of buttons.

The ad, viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social media, tries to play on accusations from her critics that Shaked has pursued a fascist-like agenda and argues that her policies are in fact more democratic.

Supporters registered approval, but many comments judged the ad, which mimics an advert for a pricey perfume, as a failure that could be mistaken for an endorsement of fascism. "For anyone who doesn't know that the left often accuses Shaked of fascism, this ad will sound like she's endorsing fascism and calling it democracy," Eylon Levy of Israel's i24 news channel posted on Twitter.

Opinion polls show Shaked's far-right New Right party not performing as well in the election as had earlier been projected, and the aim seemed to be to recapture the public's attention. It certainly succeeded in doing so, though it perhaps backfired.

As dramatic piano music plays, Shaked saunters and poses while a narrator lists the virtues of a perfume called "Fascism". The qualities listed include Shaked's stated goals such as reducing what she calls judges' activism.

After spraying herself with "Fascism," Shaked turns her gaze to the camera and says: "Smells like democracy to me."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud have been among them, creating an online television channel and churning out regular videos denouncing his main opponent, former military chief Benny Gantz. Gantz's Blue and White alliance has responded in kind.

Smaller parties have sought to differentiate themselves.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon's centre-right Kulanu, which is struggling in opinion polls, last week released a video designed as a trailer for a movie.

It featured a fish climbing a tree and a flatulent hippopotamus, with the message being that only Kahlon, the "sane right", cares about social issues.

The animals were meant to symbolise all the distractions from real issues Israeli voters are facing in the campaign.

The extreme-right Jewish Power party, which many Israelis view as racist, has distributed a video showing a soldier hesitating to shoot a Palestinian attacker out of fear of prosecution.

One of the party's leaders, Itamar Ben-Gvir, emerges and tells the soldier to "shoot him, it's self-defence!"

The head of the party, Michael Ben-Ari, has since been disqualified from the election by the supreme court for statements that the attorney general called incitement to racism.
Netanyahu and Gantz have been duking it out over who is best-suited to guarantee Israel's security.

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Israel killing Palestinian children in Gaza every day despite ceasefire: UNICEF

News Network

November 22,2025

The Israeli regime’s forces have killed two Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip every day since the ceasefire began in early October, UNICEF has warned.

The UN children’s agency said on Friday that Israeli forces continue to attack Palestinians in Gaza even though the agreement was meant to stop the killing.

“Since 11 October, while the ceasefire has been in effect, at least 67 children have been killed in conflict-related incidents in the Gaza Strip. Dozens more have been injured. That is an average of almost two children killed every day since the ceasefire took effect,” UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said in Geneva, reminding that each number in the statistics represents a child whose life had ended violently.

“These are not statistics,” he said. “Each child had a story, a family, and a future that was stolen from them.”

Data from Palestinian factions, human rights groups, and government bodies recorded since the US-brokered ceasefire deal went into effect on October 10 show that Israeli forces have carried out numerous attacks, each constituting a separate ceasefire violation.

UNICEF teams say they repeatedly continue to witness heart-wrenching scenes of fearful Palestinian children sleeping outdoors with amputated limbs, while others live as orphans in flooded, makeshift shelters.

“I saw this myself in August. There is no safe place for them. The world cannot normalize their suffering,” Pires said, lamenting that the UN could “do a lot more if the aid that is really needed was entering faster.”

The UNICEF spokesperson warned that with the advent of winter, the risks for hundreds of thousands of displaced children will increase.

He warned, “The stakes are incredibly high” for children as winter acts as a threat multiplier, where children have no heating, no insulation, and few blankets. He said respiratory infections rise.

“Too many children have already paid the highest price,” Pires said. “Too many are still paying it, even under a ceasefire. The world promised them it would stop and that we would protect them.”

“Now we must act like it,” the UNICEF spokesperson added.

Since the Israeli regime launched its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza in October 2023, it has killed nearly 70,000 people in the territory, most of them women and children, and injured over 170,000 more, while reducing most of the structures in the enclave to rubble.

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