Tel-Chai Nation

Ruthie Blum wrote about the press reaction to Benny Gantz's interview where he parroted old cliches and justified what led to a worse situation for Israel in 2005:

When he finally stood up to speak – conspicuously adjusting the microphone to suit his stature – the anticipation was so great, and the cheering so loud, that he could have been reading from a phone book and nobody would have noticed. This is not to say that the address was poor, however. On the contrary, whoever wrote it clearly knew how to craft a campaign message.

THE TROUBLE is that the message was Netanyahu’s. To be more precise, most of the promises Gantz made in his speech are already being fulfilled by the current prime minister.

Take the Nation-State Law, for instance, which Gantz told a group of Israeli Druze that he intends “to fix.” At the outset of his speech, Gantz basically reiterated the spirit and purpose of the law. “We are one nation,” he said. “We share one flag, one anthem and one army.”

Gantz then vowed to establish a “statesmanlike and powerful government that will act responsibly, firmly and decisively.” Sounds like what Israel has today, although Gantz claimed that the incumbent leadership “feed[s] anxieties to ensure its own survival.”

Gantz went on: “…[S]ecurity is created by deeds, not by words. In the harsh and violent Middle East surrounding us, there is no mercy for the weak. Only the strong survive.”

Netanyahu couldn’t have said it better himself.

Ditto for Gantz’s next assurances, directed at Israel’s key enemies; you know, the ones whom Netanyahu has been battling with aplomb for years.

“[Iranian] President Rouhani, I know very well that you are plotting to harm Israel. I will thwart your plots in the North, South and anywhere else in the Middle East,” Gantz said. “I will work against you in the international arena, in the economic arena and in the military arena. And if you do not understand the message in words, you will understand it with painful and precise blows.”

Gantz added, “To [Iranian Gen.] Qassem Suleimani and [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah, I have a clear message: The regional rampage has ended. The Jewish people are entitled to live in peace and security, and not under constant threat. We do not threaten the sovereignty of Tehran or any other country, and we will not tolerate a threat to Israeli sovereignty. [Hamas leader] Ahmed Sinwar, I suggest you not test me again.”

He then proceeded to boast that he would allow humanitarian aid into Gaza – as though Netanyahu has not been doing so all along.

Gantz also declared that he would “strive for peace” and “not miss an opportunity to bring about regional change.” He failed to mention, of course, that Netanyahu has brought about more regional change than any other leader in Israel’s history.

It was especially amusing to hear Gantz subsequently assert that if peace isn’t possible at the moment, “[W]e will shape a new reality. Israel will be not be deprived of its status as a strong, Jewish and democratic state. We will strengthen the settlement blocs and the Golan Heights, from which we will never retreat. The Jordan Valley will remain our eastern security border. We will maintain security in the entire land of Israel, but we will not allow the millions of Palestinians living beyond the separation fence to endanger our security and our identity as a Jewish state. United Jerusalem will be built, will grow and will remain forever the capital of the Jewish people and the capital of the State of Israel.”

Sounds more Netanyahu than Netanyahu.

When Gantz ended by quoting Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” the crowd went wild. Panels of anchors and pundits in the studios of Israel’s three “mainstream” TV stations could barely hide their enthusiasm. To hear any real analysis of Gantz’s performance, one was forced to turn to Israel’s only conservative outlet, Channel 20. There, at least, the irony of Gantz’s patriotic screed receiving accolades from analysts who slam Netanyahu for being too nationalistic was not lost.

TO BE FAIR, although Israel Resilience does not pose a numerical threat to Likud, Gantz’s popularity and potential ability to head a large opposition bloc cannot be dismissed. The general thinking is that if he plays his cards right, he could become the leader of the party that comes close to what Labor was in the not-so-distant past.

But Gantz screwed up his hand this week, by arousing the ire of the very media that had been rooting for him. The fury was sparked by the granting of his first major interview – the full text of which appears in today’s Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot – to Shlomo Artzi, a singer, and Hanoch Daum, a humorist. The fact that he did not opt to be grilled by “proper journalists” was too much for the press to bear.

In a scathing op-ed on the Mako website on Tuesday, veteran broadcast journalist Rina Matzliah actually accused Gantz of “not respecting the laws of democracy, one of whose foundational pillars is a strong media.”

As if this weren’t outrageous enough, Matzliah then attacked Netanyahu for “go[ing] over our heads to address the public directly,” even though “when something he says is even slightly newsworthy, we report on it without hesitation, [because] our commitment is not to the prime minister; [it] is to the public.” Priceless.

Further patting the members of her profession on the back – saying, “[W]e …have more integrity than the politicians we cover” – she lashed out at Gantz for exhibiting behavior “even worse than Netanyahu’s – because we know a thing or two about Netanyahu, but about Gantz we know almost nothing, other than that he is tall, knows how to get a stylist to dress him nicely – and knows how to read from a teleprompter.”

Whoa.

Matzliah’s piece was upstaged on Wednesday morning, however, when Yediot released a preview of Gantz’s interview with Artzi and Daum. In the excerpt, Gantz praised Israel’s 2005 unilateral disengagement from Gaza, and suggested that lessons learned from that withdrawal would be applied to future such actions in Judea and Samaria.

The response from the Right was swift and justifiably stern. Disengagement was an unmitigated disaster. Removing any more Jews from their homes to make way for blood-thirsty Islamic terrorists and their missile-and-tunnel infrastructure would be tantamount to national suicide. No wonder the Palestinian Authority expressed satisfaction with Gantz’s remarks.

Fearing a sudden fall from Israeli grace, Gantz’s party immediately issued a denial.

“Under Gantz, no unilateral decisions will be made on settlement evacuation,” the Israeli Resilience statement read. “The issue discussed in the article of lessons learned from the disengagement had to do with the importance of preventing a schism between Israelis and maintaining non-negotiable security guarantees in any future initiatives.”

Yeah, sure.

The good news is that Gantz has little to no chance of heading the next government. He couldn’t even sustain positive press coverage for a full week.

Well, let's hope. Nevertheless, the right-wing parties will still have to unify themselves, if they don't want to be accused of bringing such a phony as Gantz into power, which is still entirely possible, and damaging representation in the Knesset for the right. Even if the buzz about Gantz is dampening, that doesn't mean he still doesn't pose a threat. So all right-wing politicians are still expected to act responsibly, and not act naive on anything.

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