The Likud achieved a victory on Tuesday after the Knesset passed the first two pieces of legislation related to the judicial reforms. But when it comes to communicating with the public about the process, the party failed abysmally.
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Justice Minister Yair Levin has one spokesperson – 26-year-old Nachum Wolberg on whose shoulders fell the heavy responsibility of explaining the reform without thorough prior preparation.
Yes, you read it right: Wolberg is facing off alone against dozens of local and foreign media outlets, hundreds of reporters, tens of thousands of protesters, and millions of social media users.
Do you know what else is mind-boggling? The budget that the Likud allocated to educating the public on the reform: 8,500 shekels, which is just over $2,000.
How many ads could be bought with that amount? How many flyers can be distributed across cities? How can this possibly be enough to hire professionals? Later the Likud updated the budget to NIS 200,000 ($54,0000), which given the scale of the reform, is still laughable.
Such a lack of investment in messaging is a major failure on behalf of the Likud. The highly-complex reform was proposed without preparation (for fear details would leak to the media), without prior conversations with reporters, without a list of possible experts who would advocate for it, without advertising, and above all – without informational material for the public.
Only last week Monday – a full month and a half after Levin first proposed the reform – Public Diplomacy Minister Galit Distel Atbaryan finally contacted the Likud, suggesting they use the phrase "a reform to strengthen the judicial system" rather than just "judicial reform."
Likud's Avi Dichter has recently even said that the faction never held a thorough discussion on the matter. Some simply don't know enough, some want to avoid a confrontation and others stick to their own profiles.
Coalition partners too criticized the Likud for "not dealing with the matter at all."
"Even if Netanyahu was too busy to deal with it, where was his team?" one of the officials wondered. "The whole atmosphere around the reform was negative, there was aggressive brainwashing [of the public] here and the Likud did nothing."
Likud's Danny Danon too admitted that the faction was "winning in legislation, but failing in advocacy. We should have gone into this campaign more organized." He also suggested the establishment of an expert team that would lead such communication efforts.
As far as the supporters of the reform are concerned, this is a major miss. And yet, even with the national protests, more and more lawmakers, even those in the opposition, say that some change to the judicial reform might be needed. There is also broad consensus on the need to diversity the Supreme Court.
Hopefully, Likud lawmakers, who are considered some of the best campaigners in Israel, will step up.
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