There are three major parties whose membership is mostly Arabic Israelis: Balad, the United Arab List, and Hadash. Here are two posters from Balad, the National Democratic Alliance. Another of their posters is on the Jerusalem page. The very large plastic poster below was found by the roadside near a Dead Sea beach, a popular recreation site. The party drew 66,000 votes.
				Hadash, the Communist Party of Israel, (left) has a combined Jewish and Arabic membership. It drew 77,000 votes. The largest Arabic party, the United Arab List (below) received 114,000 votes.
			From Jaffa, this poster is from the Arab Worker’s Party, which received only 2,000 votes. I believe the platform emphasizes women’s issues. The posterer has pasted a replica of the party’s ballot in the upper right, but some opponent has graffitied it out with black spray paint.
			A characteristic of Arabic posters is the display of the face. The major Arabic parties put up pictures of their entire lists of Knesset candidates. Shown here are those of Balad, the United Arab List and the Communist Party Generally only candidates for prime minister appeared on posters, but here culture dictates that one must look into the eyes of the person whom you are expected to trust. In one TV ad for an Arabic candidate, the camera panned down to show his hands as he spoke.
The Jewish religious parties campaigning in Arab areas seemed to understand this. After several tries, I got to the top of a steep embankment in Nazareth and grabbed the poster on the left. Meir Porush looks straight into our eyes, and the slogan reads “word of honour.” No other poster for his party, United Torah Judaism, showed a candidate’s likeness. Aryeh Deri, the hero of Shas, appeared on many Hebrew-language posters, but always looking outwards or upwards, as seen on the Shas page on my site. In the Arabic version he looks right at us.
I believe that presenting one’s face as one’s guarantee is associated with cultures based on honor and shame. Challenges to honour are often put to the face, such as slapping it or pulling the nose. Arab cultures are in this category as discussed by Frank Stewart, Honor, 1995. The contrast came out when Barak’s forces issued a small card to be saved until after the election, next to one’s credit cards and phone cards. The back lists his election promises -- the voters can refer to it afterwards to see that they were kept. From an honor-culture’s viewpoint, my claim to be trustworthy because you can check on me would be self-abasing, almost a contradiction. It is saying that, short of that, no one would believe me.