September 12, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  In the 1988 election campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis sought to bolster his perceived weakness on defense by inviting the press to the General Dynamics plant in Michigan to witness him riding in an M1A1 Abrams tank. 

His rival George Bush Sr. pounced on the photos of a puny Dukakis waving from the tank while sporting a ridiculously oversize helmet to mock the Democratic hopeful, to devastating effect. It was a picture worth a million words and it doomed Dukakis’ already faltering candidacy.

Benjamin Netanyahu, an avid student of U.S. politics, must be worried that the video of him being hastily rushed off stage at an election rally in Ashdod in the face of a Hamas rocket attack will have a similarly disastrous impact on Israeli voters. Even though Netanyahu and his bodyguards were following established procedure, the Ashdod video cast the prime minister in an unfavorable and cowardly light.

The image was doubly injurious because it highlighted Netanyahu’s main Achilles’ heel in the national security arena: The ongoing failure of his “soft” containment policy towards Hamas to relieve southern Israel from the constant threat of rocket attacks from Gaza.

In close election that could be decided by a miniscule margin, the video could make all the difference between victory and defeat. Netanyahu now has five days to try and un-etch the embarrassing impressions left by the video from the public’s mind. Even for a wily politician known for his skills as a campaign “magician,” it is a formidable challenge.

Netanyahu’s first reaction was to try and turn the generally mocking reactions to his video on their head: In the Wednesday Knesset debate on the Likud proposal to legislate the introduction of cameras to polling places - which failed to garner the requisite majority - Netanyahu said that it wasn’t clear who celebrated the damaging video more: His rivals Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid in Kahol Lavan or Hamas leaders in Gaza.

But Netanyahu’s distress was also discernable in a repulsive post on his Facebook account in which Gantz and Lapid were accused of allying with “the Arabs” who “want to annihilate us all – women, children and men.”  Responding to the ensuing uproar, Netanyahu disavowed the post and blamed its patently racist language on a staffer.