A controversial plan to hand an Israeli data firm with deep links to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu access to the personal data of millions of French viewers has been abruptly cancelled, after an independent French investigative outlet exposed the deal just ahead of the country’s 2027 national elections.
The deal, first uncovered by French outlet Mediapart, would have given Terrific – a 2019-founded marketing and audience measurement firm co-owned by a close Netanyahu ally – the contract to collect audience viewership data for *L’Heure de Vérité*, the flagship political program on France 2, one of France Televisions’ primary channels. France Televisions is France’s largest public broadcasting group, holding a 29.4% share of all domestic TV viewership as of its 2025 annual results, making the scope of potential data access enormous.
Multiple internal sources told Mediapart that senior management at France Televisions pushed the Terrific contract through despite repeated early warnings from staff about the national security risks of handing sensitive audience data to a foreign firm closely aligned with the Israeli prime minister, ahead of France’s 2027 presidential and legislative elections. Staff warnings were repeatedly dismissed, with Mediapart quoting internal responses as saying: “Management wants to see this project through, we have to go ahead, it comes from higher up.” The contract was only scrapped after Mediapart notified France Televisions that it planned to publish its full investigation into the arrangement.
Terrific positions itself as a global audience analytics firm, listing public partnerships with major tech giants including Google, TikTok, Meta and LinkedIn on its official website. Public corporate records show the firm was founded by Israel Grintz, who also leads NEAIG, an Israeli startup focused exclusively on political campaign marketing. Its co-shareholder is Natan Eshel, who served as Netanyahu’s chief of staff from 2010 to 2012 and remains a close personal and political adviser to both Netanyahu and his wife Sara to this day.
Mediapart’s investigation confirms that France Televisions planned to deploy Terrific’s data aggregation tool across political programming throughout the 2027 presidential campaign. The firm’s methodology combines user data pulled from tracking tools embedded in apps it develops with partner clients, allowing it to map individual users’ political leanings and enable highly targeted, personalized political advertising to specific voter segments. This capability left French media and security staff alarmed that the data could be weaponized by a foreign government to interfere in France’s upcoming democratic elections.
This is not the first time an Israeli private firm has been linked to election interference in France. Earlier in 2025, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez announced that legal action would be taken after it was revealed that Israeli company BlackCore ran a coordinated disinformation campaign targeting left-leaning candidates during France’s March municipal elections. Testifying before the French parliament, Anne-Sophie Dhiver, deputy head of Viginum – France’s national agency tasked with countering foreign digital interference and disinformation – confirmed the attack targeted French candidates who publicly opposed Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and its apartheid system in the occupied West Bank. Dhiver added that investigators have not yet been able to confirm who funded the disinformation operation.
In recent years, the Israeli government has also deepened its political alignment with France’s far-right National Rally party, which currently holds a lead in national opinion polls ahead of the 2027 elections, adding an additional layer of political concern around the proposed data deal.
Original reporting for this story was published by Middle East Eye, an independent outlet focused on coverage of the Middle East and North Africa region.