Courrier International leads with 'the ugliest campaign in Israel's history.' But by fixating on the spectacle, the European press misses the point: a Maariv poll putting a brand-new party ahead of Likud, a coalition stuck at 49 seats out of 61 — and proof that in Israel, even in wartime, the ballot box remains the supreme judge.
Less than two months before the October 27 elections, Israel's campaign has commentators reaching for superlatives. "This is the ugliest campaign in the history of the State of Israel," journalist Nadav Eyal wrote in Yediot Aharonot — a line Courrier International rushed to put in its headline. The trigger: Sara Netanyahu's remarks on Channel 14 on August 31, suggesting that Yair Golan, leader of the opposition party The Democrats, had been informed of the Hamas attack before the prime minister and was "dressed and ready" on the morning of October 7.
The backlash was immediate — including on the right. Many Israelis saw with their own eyes what Golan actually did that day: driving to the scene of the attack on his own initiative to rescue people. "Sara Netanyahu did us an enormous favor," Democrats officials quipped in Ha'Aretz. The prime minister himself was forced to walk it back, conceding that there had been no "treason" on October 7 but rather a "failure" and a "misjudgment" by the army and the intelligence services.
