IN AN Israeli election saga that has given a lift to Labour's campaign and brought the Likud's plummeting to earth, TV footage has shown the Likud's high flying bird of peace to be a cruel fake, writes David Horovitz.
Its wings flapping gloriously, the pure white dove soars effortlessly toward the front of the screen at the start of the Likud Party's nightly television campaign advertisements. The symbolism is unmistakable: Here is the emblem of peace, taking flight under a new Israeli government led by Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
Behind the image, though, lies a more sordid reality. What looks like film of a dove taking flight is actually footage of the bird struggling to escape its shackles. As revealed by an Israeli news programme, the Likud dove was actually filmed tied to its perch with a transparent plastic cord, and the footage then mixed in with other graphic effects to create the uplifting imagery. Those widely spread wings reflected not effortless flight but a desperate bid for freedom.
The image of the dove has been central to the Likud's campaign, which is geared at attracting those crucial centrist voters still prevaricating between Mr Netanyahu and the incumbent prime minister, the Labour leader, Mr Shimon Peres, in the run up to the May 29th elections. Determined to allay deep seated suspicions that a Netanyahu led Likud government would destroy the peace process by freezing the phased handover of power to the Palestinians in the West Bank and renewing funding for Jewish settlements, Likud campaign directors settled on the film of the flying dove to underline their campaign slogan: "Netanyahu - Making a secure peace."
For Labour's Mr Peres, the exposure of the tethered dove is sheer political delight, and his campaign managers have been quick to capitalize. In their TV commercials they are repeatedly screening the footage of the shackled bird, and charging that the raw film more accurately represents how a Likud government would pursue peace. It would profess determination to move ahead, Labour charges, but in fact hopes of peace would be tied down by the stubbornness of the extremists in Mr Netanyahu's cabinet, hardliners like Gen Ariel Sharon and Gen Rafael Eitan, the duo who launched Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
As if to compound the Likud's woes, an animal rights group has filed a police complaint against the party, charging that the bird was abused during the filming of the commercial - hardly the kind of publicity to bring voters flying into the Likud nest.