The party is led by Iranian-born Shaul Mofaz, who was the first non-European named chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and later became minister of defense.
A poll published last week by Yediot Aharonot, one of the Israel’s largest dailies, showed that if the election were held today, Kadima would not get enough votes 2 percent of those cast to win even a single seat in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
Kadima won 28 seats in the 2009 elections and became the largest party in the 120-seat parliament elected that year.
If Kadima is wiped out, that would likely wipe out any political future Mofaz might hope for.
Mofaz is fighting hard and hoping to strike sparks in the campaign before the January 22 elections. And one of his main issues is Iran.
In an event kicking off the Kadima campaign last Thursday, Mofaz accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of being obsessed with a desire to bomb Iran.
Polls show that Netanyahu is very popular and likely to emerge with the largest body of backers in the Knesset. But polls also show concern that Netanyahu is overplaying his hand on the Iran issue. The public is not happy at the thought of Israel going to war on its own without American backing. Many Israelis also feel that Netanyahu is hurting Israeli interests by battling with President Obama over Iran.
It isn’t clear how serious Netanyahu is about Iran. Some think he is merely using it as a political foil to rally the right behind him. They note that when Mofaz brought his party into the governing coalition last spring, Netanyahu fell silent on Iran; all his attacks ceased. But two months later, the day after Mofaz quit the government, Netanyahu resumed his verbal assaults on Iran.
Mofaz unveiled a new poster as he started the Kadima campaign. The poster shows a flaming mushroom cloud with the words, “Netanyahu will mire us in trouble.” Mofaz said Netanyahu and his allies were driven by “a messianic belief in bombing Iran.”
He said, “Netanyahu is leading us down a messianic path toward a collision in an irresponsible and irrational way.”
Kadima was founded in 2005 by Ariel Sharon, when his rightwing Likud party, now led by Netanyahu, did not give him backing to push for a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Kadima made such a peace its core objective. But the effort ran aground and many voters don’t seem to see what Kadima stands for anymore. And despite the peace goal, Kadima under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert led Israel into a war in Lebanon in 2006 and one in Gaza in 2009 from which few Israelis see measurable benefits.
The poll shows Kadima forfeiting the center to the old Labor party, now under the new leadership of a popular and firebrand woman journalist, Shelly Yachimovitch, and an entirely new party, Yesh Atid, led by a very popular television personality, Yair Lapid.
In the past month, since elections were called, Kadima legislators have been bailing out of the party, some retiring entirely and others defecting to other parties.
Mofaz was born in Tehran with the name Shahram Mofazzakar in 1948. His family moved to Israel when he was nine.
