A foreign influence campaign in French local elections by an Israeli firm earlier this year presents an unprecedented attack on France's democracy, victims of the operation and people familiar with it told Middle East Eye.
Earlier this month, Reuters revealed that the French authorities were examining whether an alleged smear campaign against three mayoral candidates from the left-wing, pro-Palestinian party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed - LFI) ahead of March's municipal elections was carried out by an obscure Israeli firm called BlackCore.
The operation's broad outlines were first exposed by newspaper Le Monde in March, when Viginum, a digital interference detection service within the French prime minister's office, revealed a "foreign digital interference" scheme with "limited" reach targeting a "French political party" and its candidates in Marseille, Toulouse and Roubaix.
A joint investigation by Liberation and Haaretz then uncovered a set of tools under development for online influence campaigns on a server that had hosted a subdomain of the “blackcore.online” website for several months.
Digital traces led to two Tel Aviv-based technology companies, Galacticos and SNI Digital, whose executives deny any connection to BlackCore.
