Israeli Prime Minister Nominee, Benjamin Netanyahu, is taking, or stealing, some pointers from U.S. President-elect Barack Obama. He’s not doing it politically though (depending on what you personally consider “political” these days.), instead he’s cuing off of the success of the Obama campaign, and modeling his own exactly the same.

While the politics don’t run parallel to that of Obama’s, the website sure does. The
Netanyahu camp has designed a precise, state of the art, homepage replica to that of the Obama campaign.

The site is heavily equip with matching shades of blue, transparent fades creating the backdrop and words in different languages, but pretty much in identical font.
And of course, each page is topped off with a man in a suit. Even the communication functions on the page are alike, citing facebook groups, video, blogs, text messaging, and even twitter, which has only just begun to catch on in Israel. Basically, the aesthetic and utility are indistinguishable.

Awkwardly enough, Netanyahu stands as the most far fetched candidate out of the three prime minister nominees to draw comparison with Barack Obama. Netanyahu has said that if elected he would not partake or advocate further negotiations with Palestine, contesting that they lead nowhere and that it would be more beneficial to focus on economy “until Palestinian attitude changes.” Obama alternatively, made foreign policy dialogue a focal point of his campaign, much like Tzipi Livini, who is also running for Israeli Prime Minister and has vowed to continue the talks with the Palestinians, which she is currently helping to lead.

Netanyahu however, believes the proposed adjustment is a proper substitute for the current Israeli government lead by Ehud Olmert, and that by doing so he is positioning himself as the candidate of new ideas both for Israel and for peace with the Palestinians.
Like Obama- New ideas, peace, happy ending- but a completely different plan of how to get there.

Like in the U.S. presidential election, Netanyahu is also targeting Livini’s similarity between her policies and that of Prime Minister Olmert’s, very much like how Obama portrayed McCain and President George W. Bush as practically being conjoined twins.

“Together we can succeed” is the campaign slogan on the Netanyahu site, echoing Obama’s, “Yes we can,” so the guy is really quite the astute copycat. But at the same time it’s really not that unusual Netanyahu is imitating Obama. After all, Obama won, and Netanyahu wants to win too. “We’re all in the same business, so we took a close look at a guy who has been the most successful” said Ron Dermer, one of Mr. Netanyahu’s top campaign advisers. He’s right- it sure is a business, though I’m still not quite sure it’s suppose to be.