Party meant to represent elderly voters features masked gunman in ad.
By LAHAV HARKOVPeople stand still as a two-minute air raid siren is sounded marking Holocaust Remembrance Day in Jerusalem April 28, 2014(photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)
The Central Elections Committee banned a campaign ad on Wednesday that featured the air raid siren, heard when rockets are falling, from being aired on the radio.Election ads on radio and television began on Tuesday, in concentrated hours on the major radio and TV stations.The air raid siren advertisement was for the Founders Surety Party, the latest iteration of the Pensioners’ Party, led by Haim Dayan, a former MK from the right-wing Tzomet Party. It is the same sound played on Yom Hazikaron, when people stand in remembrance of fallen soldiers and victims of terror.“On April 9, we will remember the elderly who died this year because of a lack of medicine… We’ll remember the sick people in [hospital] hallways pushed out of the conversation. We’ll remember them all, but we will fight for those still with us. The founders are coming back to the Knesset, and they are angrier than ever,” the ad states.The ad was banned because it sounds too realistic and people could think there was an actual rocket alert.Founders Surety had another disturbing ad, though it can be aired again.Their televised clip features a small boy and girl dancing, with people cheering for them. As they grow older and older, the crowd slowly disappears until no one is watching them. When the couple is elderly, a man in a mask with a Star of David on it approaches and points a gun at them.“Israel is going back to targeted killings – against the elderly population. We will make sure it stops!” the ad states.The Central Elections Committee also banned a Union of Right-Wing Parties (URP) ad featuring a Palestinian approaching a soldier with a knife, and the soldier lifts his gun but hesitates to shoot, because he’s concerned about the military prosecutor, who shows up and measures the distance between the soldier and the potential stabber with a tape measure.Then, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a candidate from Otzma Yehudit, one of the parties making up URP, appears and says: “Shoot him; it’s self-defense!”“They are tying our soldiers’ hands. We came to make a change,” Ben-Gvir said.It is against campaign laws to use IDF soldiers in advertisements.The committee sent out a warning to all parties on Wednesday, to adhere to the rules “to avoid unpleasant situations.”Tzomet, the party led by former Likud MK Oren Hazan and not the same Tzomet that Dayan was in, also had to change one of its ads. The committee decided that the party cannot use images of Avera Mengistu – an Israeli being held hostage by Hamas – and Oron Shaul and Hadar Golden – IDF soldiers whose remains have been held by Hamas since 2014 – without permission from their families.
