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In Israel, a Click Away From ‘Yes We Can’
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Candidate
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| Contributor | WesternDem |
| Last Edited | WesternDem Nov 14, 2008 03:22pm |
| Category | News |
| News Date | Nov 14, 2008 03:20pm |
| Description | JERUSALEM — Click on the Russian-language version of the campaign Web site of Benjamin Netanyahu, the conservative Likud leader running for prime minister of Israel, and up pops a picture of the candidate with Barack Obama. On the Hebrew version, Mr. Obama is not pictured. But he is, in fact, everywhere.
The colors, the fonts, the icons for donating and volunteering, the use of videos, and the social networking Facebook-type options — including Twitter, which hardly exists in Israel — all reflect a conscious effort by the Netanyahu campaign to learn from the Obama success.
“Imitation is the greatest form of flattery,” noted Ron Dermer, one of Mr. Netanyahu’s top campaign advisers. “We’re all in the same business, so we took a close look at a guy who has been the most successful and tried to learn from him. And while we will not use the word ‘change’ in the same way in our campaign, we believe Netanyahu is the real candidate of change for Israel.”
Those who created the Obama Web site, including Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital, say the Netanyahu site is closer to Mr. Obama’s than any others they have seen.
“Nothing has been so direct as the Netanyahu Web site, though we have seen others with shades of it,” he said, adding that when a campaign is successful, “people are going to knock things off, both in terms of functionality and aesthetic.”
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