Kadima campaign: Who are you to criticize Mofaz?

Kadima released its first campaign video on Sunday, painting party leader Shaul Mofaz as a tragic figure who is being punished for practicing clean politics.

“Why shouldn’t good people go into politics? Politics is sh*t,” explained narrator Uri Gavriel, an actor who appeared in the latest Batman movie and is best known in Israel for portraying “Yigal the Nazi” in mafia serial Haborer.



“No area is as ungrateful and dirty as politics,” Gavriel continues as his words appear on the screen. “With politics, if you make one mistake, all the credit you earned your whole life is erased.”

Gavriel then describes the “latest hot trend” to criticize Mofaz.

“Who are you to criticize Mofaz? The man gave 36 years of his life to the country, went into politics, the most crooked area out there, in order to bring some values to this broken country,” he added. “What are you criticizing him for? That he doesn’t know how to play dirty and come out clean?” The actor lists Mofaz’s security credentials, emphasizing that he was IDF chief of staff during Operation Defensive Shield in 2004 and the targeted assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004, and saying that Mofaz “did not zigzag on his country's security even once, or even blink.”

The Kadima clip criticizes other Center-Left parties and leaders, like Shelly Yacimovich of Labor and Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid as “ready to ‘Meet the Press’ but not to meet reality” and not qualified to be defense minister.

A photo of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appears on the screen, while Gavriel says “It’s sad that in order to reach a position of power in this country, you need to be good-looking and talk nicely.”

The actor concludes that he is going to do “the least trendy thing,” and vote for the “straightest” candidate, Mofaz and Kadima.

The campaign video was presented at an event with 400 party activists at Kadima headquarters in Petah Tikva.

Mofaz said that “Kadima is alive and will continue to act for Israel’s security in the next Knesset.”

“I care about security and soldiers,” he stated. “We cannot gamble on our security. IDF soldiers fight so we can all sleep soundly, and we are here to fight for them.”

The Kadima leader also cited the central message of his party’s campaign – that soldiers should be paid as much as yeshiva students.

Mofaz called for equality in the burden of military service to be put at the top of the national agenda. “We have proof that we are people of action [on this issue],” he added.