The Lingering Legacy of October 7 Shapes Israel’s Electoral Landscape

As the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023, assault approaches, the event continues to profoundly shape how Israelis perceive their regional standing. Despite subsequent conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, the memory of the attack remains central to the national consciousness.

With national elections approaching in late October, the Hamas-led invasion—which resulted in the deaths of 1,139 Israelis and the capture of approximately 250 others—is poised to be a decisive factor in determining the electoral outcome.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces ongoing scrutiny over his administration’s failure to conduct an independent inquiry into its pre-attack shortcomings, a gap that contrasts sharply with investigations into the military and intelligence services and continues to haunt him heading into the elections.

Critics, including former Prime Minister and electoral rival Naftali Bennett, have accused Netanyahu of disregarding pre-attack warnings about Hamas, maintaining a security doctrine predicated on the group’s deterrence, and failing to prepare the nation adequately. Furthermore, former Chief of Staff and prominent opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot has elevated an independent investigation into the October 7 failures to a central pillar of his party’s electoral platform.

Netanyahu’s primary strategy aligns with what many critics view as the defining trait of his premiership: deflecting responsibility onto others. The stakes are exceptionally high for the embattled prime minister, who is currently facing a corruption trial; an electoral defeat could severely compromise his ability to avoid incarceration.

Netanyahu has advanced the assertion that senior defense officials intentionally withheld his wake-up call prior to the October 7 attack, despite noticing suspicious activity in Gaza. “They knew that, as prime minister of Israel, I would have immediately ordered the entire military onto high alert,” Netanyahu stated, outlining his belief that he could have thwarted the invasion.

Meanwhile, Sara Netanyahu has pointed to opposition leader Yair Golan’s widely praised immediate response to the attack—specifically his rushed departure from bed and subsequent drive to the scene—as apparent evidence of his prior knowledge of Hamas’s intentions.

“Sara and Benjamin Netanyahu are merely fueling the conspiracy theories already circulating in the public sphere,” said Neve Gordon, an Israeli academic at Queen Mary University of London, drawing parallels to populist strategies globally. “Claims that the attack was planned, that generals were complicit, and that all of this is accelerating as elections approach are designed to confuse the electorate and solidify the prime minister’s base.”

Unhealed Wounds

Israeli media outlets have deeply embedded the trauma of October 7 into the national consciousness through relentless repetition of the day’s events. Furthermore, the attack has been consistently invoked to justify subsequent events, including the devastating conflict in Gaza and the loss of over 73,000 Palestinian lives.

“The October 7 massacre was immediately recast as a new Holocaust, rendering the subsequent violent reaction as legitimate, all while ignoring the suffering of innocent people,” said Lev Grinberg, a sociology professor at Ben Gurion University. “No one wished to witness images of Palestinian suffering, and the media collaborated in this neglect by hiding such imagery from the public.”

“For most Israelis, [October 7] represents the worst chapter in the nation’s history, haunting public opinion and fundamentally undermining their basic sense of safety,” said Ayala Panievsky, a London-based Israeli academic and media analyst, describing the profound trauma of the attack and what she characterized as a sweeping institutional failure across the government and security services.

“It is not surprising that these elections will revolve around October 7. The problem, however, is that to this day, none of the subsequent horrors in Gaza have penetrated the Israeli public discourse,” she added.

“That remains the sole narrative dominating Israeli media. Consequently, there is scant interest or information regarding Gaza, and it is entirely absent from the conversation surrounding the upcoming elections,” she said.

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