A travel report | Insights from Israel on the 2026 election

From 15 to 29 October 2026, the director of the Fritz Bauer Forum, Dr Irmtrud Wojak, and the photographer Richard Lensit visited friends and discussion partners in Israel to mark the Knesset elections.

It is a journey to a country in turmoil with a traumatised society. On 27 October, Israel will elect a new government. This is the first parliamentary election since 7 October 2023, following Hamas’s brutal attack on the kibbutzim on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip and the subsequent brutal war in Gaza. It is therefore also a decision on the tenure of the right-wing conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right and national-religious coalition partners.

Over the course of two weeks, Irmtrud Wojak and Richard Lensit met with a wide variety of people, visited places of remembrance and kibbutzim, and gathered personal impressions surrounding this fateful election. Here, they describe their experiences for the first time, which they intend to analyse in greater depth later.

Following the talk, there will be an opportunity for a personal discussion at Café Historias in the Fritz Bauer Forum.

An event organised by the Fritz Bauer Forum