Reviving the Art of Debate in Israel

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/18/world/middleeast/israel-elections-debate.html

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JERUSALEM — Until a few years ago, there was no Hebrew word for debate. Then in 2012, linguists adopted the term “mamat,” whose root means “confrontation,” which Yoni Cohen-Idov, an international debating champion, sees as symptomatic of what ails his nation’s political discourse.

“Debate, the English word, consists of two elements — one is confrontation, the other is discussion,” he said. “If you’re rivals and you only shout at one another and make slogans, and you don’t discuss things in depth, that is not a debate.”

Instead of using “mamat,” he conjugates “debate” in Hebrew, like so many English cognates that pepper conversation here. “I’m waiting for them to come up with a better word,” he said.

He is waiting, too, for a real political debate between the major candidates for prime minister, something that has not happened in Israel since 1996 — before he was old enough to vote. And he is not alone: A poll published on Friday in the Israeli daily Maariv showed that nearly two-thirds of Israelis would like to see a nationally televised debate ahead of the March 17 elections.

For now, there is the perennial debate over whether and how to debate.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his leading challenger, Isaac Herzog, have both declined Channel 2’s invitation to appear next week on a stage crowded with the leaders of nine other political parties.

Mr. Netanyahu’s party, Likud, said he would only consider a one-on-two setup with Mr. Herzog, head of the Labor Party, and the centrist former minister Tzipi Livni, who have teamed up for this campaign under the banner Zionist Union and have promised to rotate the premiership. But Mr. Netanyahu will not decide until after his March 3 speech on Iran to a joint meeting of Congress.

The Zionist Union said that it would prefer a head-to-head but that “it’s really important” the prime minister “faces his opponents, and the details don’t matter.”

Political veterans credit Israel’s last real debate as one of the factors that propelled Mr. Netanyahu to his first term as prime minister, in 1996. His relative youth, aggressiveness and on-air savvy, 60 hours before the balloting, helped him squeak past Shimon Peres, who had taken the post after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, by 29,000 votes.

But three years later, a debate was part of his downfall. Ehud Barak of the Labor Party, the main challenger, chose not to participate, leaving the long-shot centrist candidate — Yitzhak Mordechai, Mr. Netanyahu’s own former defense minister — to rattle the master with vicious attacks.

“Netanyahu, the television wiz, was beaten on his home court,” one columnist observed of the debate, which others likened to an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show” or a boxing match that defied the odds. A stunning 44 percent of Israeli households had tuned in.

There have been four elections since then, but no full-fledged debates. Not when Mr. Netanyahu was returned to the premiership in 2009, and not when he sailed to a second consecutive term in 2013. Like incumbents everywhere, analysts say that Mr. Netanyahu is now loath to elevate challengers by standing side by side with them.

“From his point of view, there’s nothing to gain and everything to lose from debating,” Gadi Wolfsfeld, an expert on political communication, said of the prime minister. Demanding to face both Mr. Herzog and Ms. Livni, he said, is an “impossible condition,” he added, that allows Mr. Netanyahu “to look like he’s agreeing without agreeing.”

In the United States, presidential debates are a crucial introduction for candidates to vast swaths of an unengaged electorate. In Israel, voters tend to be conversant in even the nuances of political platforms. That does not, necessarily, lead to elevated discourse.

“You notice it in everyday life, you notice on talk radio and on television, nobody lets the other person finish,” complained Mr. Cohen-Idov, who helped start a debating program now in place in 200 Israeli schools. “Elected officials and media people in Israel, they don’t even try to say anything too complex or too deep because they know for a fact they’re going to be cut in 20 seconds.”