Wer ist benny gantz

Two days before the election, it’s safe to assume that Haaretz readers have already been sufficiently warned about the main danger to the liberal-democratic camp: A “full right” government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu that will include, in addition to the ultra-Orthodox parties, the far-right leaders Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir as senior partners.

People who are motivated mainly by the desire to prevent this scenario will vote for parties that clearly oppose Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir – that is, mainly Yesh Atid and leftward (leaving out the anomaly that is Yisrael Beiteinu).

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But a question that has not been resolved, despite many attempts to convince us otherwise, is whether the National Unity Party of Benny Gantz, Gideon Sa’ar and Gadi Eisenkot should be considered as being fully in the anti-Bibi bloc. Is a vote for it a sure vote against Netanyahu, and not only against Ben-Gvir?

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There are a host of reasons, related to issues of ideology and identity, for the fact that there is still support for Gantz among Netanyahu’s opponents in the political center, and even among those who define themselves as left-wing, even after the disappointment over his cooperation with Netanyahu. For example, there is the hawkishness of centrist voters who prefer Gantz (and Eisenkot) over Yesh Atid and the Labor Party. And there is also the simple, personal affection for a man who is seen as dependable and statesmanlike.

It is difficult to gauge the extent of this personal support in relation to the number of Knesset seats that will be captured for the party by right-wing voters, including refugees from Yamina and religious Zionists who do not feel at home in the Kahanist camp calling itself the Religious Zionism party.

But there is some support for Gantz in the center-left, and he is targeting this audience in a campaign designed to convince them that this time, he absolutely will not join forces with Netanyahu.

This was the purpose of his speech at the Haaretz-New Israel Fund Democracy Conference last week, in which he declared that “if Netanyahu forms a government, I will respect the people’s choice and support him from the opposition.” This was also the purpose of Raviv Drucker’s column (Haaretz Hebrew, October 24), when he argued that “a Netanyahu government with Gantz is not in the cards” (even though he admits that he would prefer Gantz and Netanyahu over Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu).

It’s easier to explain to self-identified leftists why they shouldn’t vote for Gantz. After all, they can vote for any party in the bloc, from Yesh Atid leftward. They know that with Gantz as defense minister, settler violence is thriving as never before, while Palestinian human rights organizations are persecuted. They know that Gantz IS Sa’ar, who also threatens the justice system: not for personal reasons, but definitely for ideological ones.

Voters in the center who don’t want to see Netanyahu return to power, even as the second in a rotation, and nevertheless prefer Gantz over Lapid need to ask themselves if the risk is worth it. Why let Gantz choose whether or not to keep his promise when they can simply vote for Lapid’s Yesh Atid, the large centrist party leading the anti-Bibi bloc.

Even if there’s only a 1 percent chance that Gantz will break his promise due to calls to save Israel from Ben-Gvir, why chance it? Lapid, like Gantz, is no leftist, even if his appeal is less hawkish, and in any case the two will be in the same bloc.

Centrists, and certainly leftists, leave Gantz to the right wing. The entire purpose of his partnership with Sa’ar and Matan Kahana was to siphon off votes from the statist right, not to take them from the center-left. Don’t give Gantz a chance. We’ve been down this road before.

Lieutenant General (res.) Benjamin “Benny” Gantz is currently Minister of Defense, Alternate Prime Minister, and Chairman of the Blue and White party.

Lt. Gen. Gantz has had a distinguished military career that included all command echelons, from platoon leader to becoming the 20th Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

During his tenure, Lt. Gen. Gantz was responsible for ensuring the security of the State of Israel amidst the ever-changing realities brought about by the Arab Spring: shifting regional powers, civil war in Syria, the Iranian nuclear threat, and the rise of ISIS. In the context of a drastically changing Middle East, Gantz improved the IDF‘s future military capabilities on all geo-political fronts. In addition to supervising ongoing operational activities and covert Special Forces operations, he led the IDF through three major Israeli campaigns in Gaza, which threatened Israel on both the civilian and military fronts.

In January 2019, Gantz established the Israel Resilience Party, and is currently running in the upcoming elections as the Blue and White Party.

Gantz’s Blue and White platform includes introducing prime ministerial term limits, barring indicted politicians from serving in the Knesset, amending the nation-state law to include Israeli minorities, limiting the power of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel over marriages, investing in early education, expanding health care, and re-entering negotiations with the Palestinian Authority for a peace agreement.