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I ran acorss a piece of news in a couple of Israeli russian language news sites, which seemed to boil down to a fact that someone in Israel sued either Finance Ministry, or Finance Minister Kahlon, regarding some sort of Ministy ad campaign use of the term "Netto", which somehow was linked to Kahlon's political party for some reason.

Unfortunately, the articles in Russian were uber confusing (despite my being a native speaker, I couldn't figure out heads or tails of what the issue was), possibly because as usual with such news aggregators they are often a product of near-machine translation, probably from original Hebrew article; and I couldn't find any articles on the topic in English.

The term seems to be bog down standard finance term without any political connotations I can think of, at least in English.

Can someone with the knowledge of Israeli politics explain what the context was (what was the issue, why was it raised as problematic, and how it related to Israeli politics and policies)?

Sample news:

Министерство финансов обязалось отказаться от использования термина «нетто» в своих рекламных кампаниях. То же самое касается и рекламных кампаний министра финансов Моше Кахлона и партии «Кулану», главой которой он является. В своем ответе на иск, поданный адвокатами Шахар Бен Меир и Одед Кремер, государство постановило, что термин не будет использоваться ни в названии программ, с которыми может выйти министерство финансов, ни в рекламных кампаниях.

user4012
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  • Под руководством Моше Кахлона, министерство финансов вышло с несколькими программами, в названии которых фигурирует слово «нетто»: Нетто промышленность, Нетто снижение цен, Нетто семья. **Параллельно с этим партия «Кулану» вышла с рекламными кампаниями под лозунгом «Нетто Кахлон»**. So basically term netto was used as part of both Ministry of Finance and the party PR. – Matt May 16 '18 at 16:48
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    @Matt - so what is the problem with that? It is a standard finance term, why would it be a problem if both sets of ads used it? (for that matter, if this is an official brand of ministry initiative, why would it be a problem if the party had an ad that referred to "hey you elected us and our Finance minister did this and that") – user4012 May 16 '18 at 17:38

1 Answers1

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The claim is that minister Kahlon is using his office's funds to promote his party.

The term netto (which simply means 'net' as in 'net weight', and also implies one's net salary) was heavily used by Kahlon's party prior to the elections, the leading slogan being' Kahlon - netto for me'. It was later repeatedly used in the name of programs promoted by the ministry of finance (netto family, netto industry and more).

This is supposedly meant to ensure that the public connects these programs to Kahlon's party.

This Hebrew article on The Marker says that while Kahlon's party spent almost 1M ILS on a 'netto Kahlon' campaign, the ministry of finance spent 3M on a campaign promoting netto themed programs. This, according to The Marker, raises the question whether it's a way around the law forbidding spending public funds on a political campaign.

ugoren
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