All is quiet on the elections front: Where have all the screaming headlines gone? - opinion

Tracking the electioneering vagaries of the parties in the run-up to the October 27 polling day for the 26th Knesset is not an easy task.

With all the latest possibilities available to publicize party messages, whether touting your own platform or attacking your opponent, there are many pictures, clips, memes, speeches, and interviews.

On the other hand, every election campaign has its quiet side. Or even a silent side. Some things are avoided or even suppressed.

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu will probably not refer to the term “responsibility” in his campaign. On the other hand, I am not sure there is anything National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir will not say.

As for Netanyahu’s opposition leaders, issues are being avoided. The media is also muting its references to those issues, if not ignoring them, since they do not help the cause.

One example is the renewed sessions of the Netanyahu trials. In the past month, one witness, former MK Eitan Cabel, basically undermined Case 2000. In it, Netanyahu is charged with criminal corruption for allegedly exchanging favors with Yediot Aharonot.

His testimony also affected Case 4000, the Bezeq-Walla affair. Prosecutors alleged that Netanyahu traded state regulatory benefits for favorable media coverage.

In June 2023, the three judges told the parties they saw “difficulties” in proving the bribery offense and suggested that the prosecution consider withdrawing that count. In June 2026, they repeated their earlier assessment and made clear it had not changed.

A tantalizing media spin-off resulting from that trial was the revelation that in November 2015, prominent journalist Ben Caspit, a foe of Netanyahu, met with police investigator Eran Kamin.

Irregularly, Caspit urged Kamin to open Netanyahu’s baggage at the airport, and that of his wife, as evidence of embezzlement would be found. That development is absent from mainstream media coverage.

There is quiet regarding why the investigation into former military advocate-general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, a second example, has stalled with no prosecution entered.

Now dismissed from service but still receiving financial benefits, she perpetrated the illegal disclosure of the Sde Teiman security-camera video to Channel 12. The person who edited it so maliciously is still unknown. Afterward, she also misled the High Court and other officials about the source of the leak.

The most senior IDF officer in the army’s justice corps is suspected of obstruction of justice, fraud, breach of trust, and abuse of office, too. Since last February, the case has gone nowhere, and we still do not know whether Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara or people in her office were involved.

A third matter that has gone very quiet is Qatargate with its overlapping Bild classified-document leak connection. That was highly publicized even as a matter of national treachery.

It also seems to be meriting the quiet treatment, and the media is not relating to the matter. High-profile figures close to Netanyahu were presented to the public as arch criminals.

These included Yonatan Urich, Netanyahu’s close media adviser; Eli Feldstein, a former Prime Minister’s Office spokesman; Srulik Einhorn, long-time Likud campaign strategist; and even Tzachi Braverman, Netanyahu’s chief of staff and current ambassador-designate to the United Kingdom.

Why is there quiet?

With all those figures, why is there quiet? Could it be that there really isn’t anything to make noise over?

One possible reason is that the former Mossad chief David Barnea said in April 2026 that he had not identified damage to Israeli national security or to the hostage negotiations resulting from Qatargate.

The 2024 unauthorized transfer of a highly classified Israeli intelligence document to the German newspaper Bild by some of those same Netanyahu advisors is also under the radar.

We are still waiting for the full report on Brig.-Gen. (res.) Oren Solomon’s internal inquiry into the IDF’s actions and failures during October and his accusation that senior military leadership tried to suppress his critical findings.

To remind us, that article (printed in Israel Hayom with the censor’s approval, incidentally) indicated that Yahya Sinwar and Hamas were deliberately preventing a hostage agreement, including by using the hostages to pressure Israel.

The anti-Bibists fulminated, and the media loudly accused the Netanyahu clique of manipulating public opinion.

However, with now-former White House coordinator for the Middle East Brett McGurk’s admission that “the idea that Hamas just was ready to release all the hostages is complete bulls***,” the Bild leak is in its proper proportion.

McGurk said Israel repeatedly agreed to proposals while Hamas resisted.

In other words, the extremely loud campaign in Hostage Square that the government was preventing any deal was unsupported by the facts.

Actually, now the tables are turned, and the role of the Kaplan Camp in the Hamas decision to go ahead with its invasion plans should be highlighted. Did their activities encourage the idea that Israeli society was imploding? Why is the media silent?

There is quiet because the public relations principle is: if an item serves your goal, quash it and ignore it. Don’t even mention it.

This is true especially if it turns out your own source goes on television to contradict and disavow the fairytale you spread.

Of course, there are two more weeks in the campaign, and I am not a prophet; nor do I suggest any one side is unblemished.

I think it fair that the public be reminded that the many media storms we have experienced over the last few years have either been proven wrong or led nowhere.

If the media goes silent on a hot story and lets it peter out, that may be a sign that something was wrong in the first place, or that the media is supporting one of the sides.

The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.