Israeli election: 'Wishful thinking' for pro- and anti-Netanyahu parties?

PRESS REVIEW – Wednesday, October 28: Papers react to the ongoing election results in Israel. Next: Macklemore's Free Palestine tour is coming to Paris. Also: antidepressants don't work the way we thought. Finally: a sneak peek into boomer divorcées' dating lives.

Both right-wing paper The Jerusalem Post and left-wing daily Haaretz talk about the record-breaking voter turnout in Israel and the fact that Arab parties are likely to win a record number of seats. Reuters shows us the exit polls from the main Israeli TV channels – Kan11, Channel 13 and N12 – all showing a very tight race with no majority and a record of 18 to 19 seats for the Arab parties. Israel Hayom writes that "Israel faces a political deadlock after the elections". Voters have delivered a verdict, but "not a decisive one", according to the right-wing paper. It says there's a gap between opinion polls in recent months and the exit polls we just saw. These, it says, are driven by developments in two key strongholds – the Arab sector and traditional Likud cities. 

The Times of Israel writes that "a government can only form if the same politicians who have been in power for years decide to mend fences and break decades-long patterns". The paper says that both camps – pro- and anti-Netanyahu – are relying on "wishful thinking". A headline in The Times reads "In Gaza, the Israeli election is the last thing on people's minds". Many Gaza residents say they are preoccupied with daily survival and the elections are just "too remote".

Speaking of Gaza, US rapper Macklemore has kicked off his "Free Palestine" tour and is holding a concert in Paris on Thursday. Le Parisien reports that all the profits generated from the concert will be donated to 12 charities working to support Palestinians. British paper The Guardian called his opening concert in Dublin a "triumph of a show" and gave it five stars. The review says that it felt like all the artists were truly there for the cause and not for some political glory. Fox News, however, says the show got mixed reactions, with some saying it was "out of touch" or even "performative" and that Macklemore should focus on problems closer to home. 

Meanwhile, The New York Times sheds light on how antidepressants work in an article by psychiatrist and writer Awais Aftab. The headline reads "Millions use antidepressants. We still don't understand how they work". Aftab writes that for decades, the public understanding of the medicine was stuck in a narrative shaped by 1990s pharmaceutical advertising – that antidepressants work by correcting a chemical deficiency in the brain. But evidence from research shows this is actually not true. In fact, doctors and scientists don't have a clear understanding of how the pills relieve mental health problems. Today, scientists have a couple of working hypotheses. One of them is that antidepressants shift how the brain processes negative emotional information. 

Finally, The Washington Post writes that in the 1990s, baby boomer women set records for divorce. Thirty years later, they are dating – but men don't always meet their standards.

You can catch our press review every morning on France 24 at 7:20am and 9:20am (Paris time), from Monday to Friday.