ISRAEL: The next mayor of Jerusalem?

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In three weeks, Jerusalem will have a new mayor.

Nir Barkat is leading the polls. The successful Israeli made his fortune in high-tech, retired from active business and alongside serving on the City Council, invests much of his time and money in education and business ventures as well as urban cleanup. For many, this native son of Jerusalem embodies exactly what the city needs: dynamic, young, academic and secular, a good combination of business smarts, values and strong local patriotism. In other words, the same socio-economic group that the city needs to attract, and keep from emigrating.

Meir Porush may be a few points behind the leading mayoral candidate in Jerusalem, but he definitely gets points for his campaign. Using candor and humor to disarm concerns among secular residents -- not the ultraorthodox candidate’s immediately obvious constituency -- Porush asks Jerusalemites to ‘think outside the box.’

Many secular people have difficulty identifying with an ultraorthodox man. This is natural, says Porush, admitting this is a two-way street. ‘Don’t judge me by the length of my beard but on my merit,’ asks the politician with 25 years of public experience.

Some may be surprised at Porush’s relatively innovative campaign that uses Internet, blogs and an animated cartoon in his image. One of his first posts on TheMarker Café, a social network hosted by the Haaretz website, challenges readers to rethink stereotypes: ‘TheMarker Café is no place for an old Haredi with a long beard and 12 children, right?’ Well, think again. As for the 12 kids, what’s done is done. But he’s only 53 and besides the long beard, Porush also sports a long and impressive public resume and a good sense of humor, including self-humor. ‘Dear Jerusalemites, don’t be Haredim,’ reassures his friendly campaign cartoon, using the Hebrew word that means both ‘ultraorthodox’ and ‘fearful.’

Candidate Arkadi Gaydamak is a bit of an unknown quantity. The enigmatic Russian-Israeli tycoon has spent millions of his own dollars in Israel, at times filling a governmental and budgetary vacuum and sponsoring projects many believe the state should have initiated such as vacating citizens from the north during the Second Lebanon War and organizing weekend outs for Sderot families living under rocket attacks. His slogan appropriately states that he ‘doesn’t talk. [He] does!’ He owns Jerusalem’s Beitar soccer club, a lobby of considerable clout, and recently donated $40 million to keep an important Jerusalem hospital from going belly-up.

Some are wary of his giving. Gaydamak has been investigated on money-laundering suspicions in Israel and in France for on suspicion of illegal arms dealing in Angola. Others welcome it as genuine and kosher philanthropy. Either way, landlocked Jerusalem is covered in ‘Arkadi, make us a beach!’ graffiti. Like everything else he does, Gaydamak’s campaign is BIG (see the building on the left).

Barkat regards the position as a mission, not a job arrangement or a political party perk. For years, the capital’s mayorship was a partisan tug-of-war tainted –- and at times paralyzed -- by national (and international) politics. But not this time. ‘There is a sense that the capital has been abandoned by Israel’s political establishment,’ writes Sunday’s Haaretz editorial, concluding that the nation’s politicians have turned their backs on Jerusalem in the moment of truth. But maybe that’s just what the city needs. After all, it’s the municipality that takes out the garbage and builds schools, not the nation’s parliament or the international community.

-- Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem.

Top: Nir Barkat at the 2007 Jerusalem Parade. Credit: Gila Brand, Hebrew Wikipedia.

Middle: Porush’s campaign banners promising affordable housing for young families. Credit: Batsheva Sobelman / Los Angeles Times

Bottom: Gaydamak’s giant campaign banners on a building towering over the city’s entrance. Credit: Batsheva Sobelman / Los Angeles Times

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