TO APRIL 9
Trailing in the polls and stung by criticism from rivals on the right wing, the New Right party unveiled an advert for a perfume named FASCISM, featuring the Justice Minister in a fashion shoot.
The black-and-white video, starring 42-year-old Ayelet Shaked, shows her striking poses while draping a white jacket over her shoulders and walking though an empty house.
A sultry voice reads out “Fascism. Judicial revolution. Reducing activism. Judges’ appointments. Governance. Separation of powers. Reining in the High Court. Fascism.”
At the end of the clip, Ms Shaked sprays the perfume and says: “it smells like democracy to me.”
The backstory to the video — which kicked up an instant stir on social networks and the media when it was posted on Monday evening — is New Right’s dismal polling in recent weeks.
The party founded three months ago by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and his ally Ms Shaked after they broke away from Jewish Home has been losing votes to other right-wing factions. In some polls, it is down to only four or five seats, barely above Israel’s electoral threshold.
הבושם שהשמאלנים פחות יאהבו. pic.twitter.com/vaQCtkT4Cr
— איילת שקד ayelet shaked (@Ayelet__Shaked) March 18, 2019
One of the party’s main policies is continuing Ms Shaked’s policy in the Justice Ministry of appointing conservative judges to the bench who would reverse the “judicial activism” approach of recent decades.
But this approach suffered a setback on Sunday when the Supreme Court ruled to disqualify far-right candidate Michael Ben Ari from running in next month’s election, leading to an outcry on the right amid claims of judges interfering in the democratic process.
One of the eight judges voting in favour of disqualification was David Mintz, a conservative jurist whom Ms Shaked had fought to appoint.
In response, New Right held an emergency press conference on Monday, only a day after an event to launch their manifesto.
They announced proposals to reform the way judges are chosen. Under their plans, a committee of MKs would decide on the appointments after holding public hearings with candidates, replacing the current system of an appointments committee in which politicians are in the minority and serving Supreme Court judges are also represented.
The FASCISM perfume video came from these proposals, as an attempt to highlight Ms Shaked’s plans to change the judiciary.
It succeeded in mainly riling left-wingers, who saw it as Ms Shaked “objectifying herself” and “glorifying” fascism. This was likely an intended effect.
But the main objective was to remind right-wing voters how far Ms Shaked is prepared to go in fighting the left and the legal establishment.
