Benjamin Netanyahu's French "friend" has lost his seat. After a decade in the Assemblée Nationale, Meyer Habib (affiliated with the right-wing Les Républicains) is no longer an MP. The man who was one of the most divisive members of Parliament, where he relentlessly defended the policies of the Israeli right and its leader, Prime Minister Netanyahu, whom he has known for three decades, lost on July 7 in the 8th constituency of French citizens living abroad, to Renaissance (President Emmanuel Macron's party) candidate Caroline Yadan, who won with 52.7% of the vote.
Having come out on top in the first round, Habib suffered from a high turnout in this constituency, which includes eight countries: Israel, Italy, Malta, San Marino, the Vatican, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. Turnout stood at 24.3% in the second round, a figure that may seem paltry given the national average. But with over 36,000 voters, it was twice as high as at the 2023 by-election, called after Habib's election was voided for abuses during the previous year's election campaign.
Habib won a majority of votes in Israel on July 7. But ballots cast elsewhere, notably in Italy, cost him his seat. Yadan also benefited from a significant carryover of votes from the left, following the appeal of Yael Lerer, the candidate with the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire alliance, who was defeated in the first round.
In a video recorded in front of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem on Sunday evening, the famously outspoken Habib accused his rival of being "allied with the anti-Semitic far left." Yadan, for her part, suggested that her rival had benefited from the support of the far-right Rassemblement National, which did not field a candidate in the constituency.
During the campaign. Habib boasted of his closeness to Eric Ciotti (the right-wing LR president who joined forces with the RN against the opinion of his party) and spared the RN. Interviewed on Monday by the Israeli channel Kan, he pointed out that RN leader "Marine Le Pen has doubled her seats. I'm not in her favor, but she's not as bad as the extreme left, which hates Israel. They have appealed to France's Arabs (...) who don't even know where Palestine and Jordan are on a map."
After the Hamas terrorist attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the start of the war in Gaza, Habib described the entire population of Gaza as a "cancer." In the Assemblée Nationale, he gave his unqualified support to the Israeli government's counter-offensive, which to date has caused the deaths of more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health authorities. During the campaign, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant offered their support to Habib, with him also on screen.
You have 14.02% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.