Israel's hardline right-wing leader Ariel Sharon is set to become the nation's prime minister after defeating incumbent Prime Minister Ehud Barak. During the recent election, Israeli-Pales-tinian peace was a key campaign issue because four months of Israeli-Palestinian violence had left more than 400 people dead. Anti-war propaganda was widely used by both Barak's Labor party and Sharon's Likud, who ran on "peace" and "stability" platforms.
Sharon, who has had a very tough stance against the Palestinians, purposely shifted his fiery style "from fighter to peacemaker," as a slogan stated in his campaign literature. Meanwhile, Barak, who lost the election due to public doubts over his flip-flopping stance in peace talks with the Palestinians, also stressed in his advertisements that "only I could prevent a war."
In fact, along with war-ravaged Israel, we can also find examples of anti-war propaganda being widely used as campaign platforms in many other countries.
US presidential elections, for example, have no shortage of peace ads. In the 1964 election, Democratic candidate Lyndon Johnson tried to arouse public fear over atomic bombs -- hinting that his opponent, Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, was keen to use nuclear weapons against North Vietnam -- with his controversial "daisy ad:" As a young girl picks the petals off a daisy, an adult voice begins counting down to zero as a closeup of the girl dissolves into a nuclear explosion.
In the 1972 election, Republican hopeful Richard Nixon came up with a series of warm and intimate commercials using authentic documentary footage to give voters a glimpse of his visit to Russia in order to portray him as the "protector of world peace" -- while the US was trapped in the Vietnam War.
With Taiwan and China constantly at loggerheads, peace, stability and the avoidance of war were inevitably key campaign issues in both the 1996 and the 2000 presidential elections. For example, in the closely fought 2000 election, DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian
In the 1996 election, the very first direct presidential election in Taiwan's history, all candidates also chose to uphold the "peace" platform in their campaigns when the island was threatened by China's military exercises. DPP candidate Peng Min-ming (
We might examine all the peace ads above, by dividing them into negative and positive ads. First, the negative ads -- such as Johnson's "daisy ad" and Lien's "go out to do battle" commercial. In fact, the Barak campaign also used the same strategy in Israel by sending out simulated conscription orders to Israeli citizens to alert all voters that a war might break out if Sharon was elected prime minister. The use of the horror-type campaign, however, is easy to criticize. Johnson's controversial "daisy ad," for example, was aired just once because it received severe criticism. Lien's direct and provocative commercial was also highly criticized by the media, contrary to his own expectations.
As a result, although negative ads are helpful in establishing a target, both the degree of public fear aroused by the ads and the delivery of the threatening messages should be carefully controlled. Thus, the backlash from a negative campaign should not be ignored, as candidates who run negative ads might be accused of being "afraid of being at war with an enemy" or "threatening our own people." Even though negative ads are often effective, many people consider them to be little more than political dirty tricks.
Besides the attack ads, there are also positive ads which mainly focus on the prosperity that candidates might bring if elected. During last year's presidential election, for example, the DPP's Chen came up with a commercial -- in which he repeatedly stressed his desire for cross-strait peace because his son was of military age -- in order to ease voters' worries as well as to display his determination to promote cross-strait relations.
In Israel's recent election, even Sharon, who caused the most severe Israeli-Palestinian clashes in decades, emphasized that "only Sharon could bring you peace" in his ads to promote future peace and stability.
Generally speaking, most peace ads are designed to arouse voters' emotions, to promote future prosperity, or to attack others for causing wars. The content of the ads, however, is usually vague, cliched and lacking concrete proposals for peace. Even if candidates can come up with a complete peace proposal for their ads, whether or not they will be able to implement such programs if elected remains a matter of conjecture.
It is to be hoped that, after Sharon -- known as the"butcher of Beirut" in the Arab world -- has taken office, he will turn over a new leaf and move sincerely to fulfill his campaign promises in order to become the "peacemaker" mentioned in his ads and settle the disputes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Paul Ho is a graduate student of Journalism at National Chengchi University and a Web site editor at Peacetime Foundation.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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