Analysis: Bennett and Shaked take aim at Gantz but avoid Netanyahu
“Benny Gantz is a good person, but his worldview is that we need to play for a tie, and I say his stalemate doctrine endangers Israel,” Naftali Bennett said.
By LAHAV HARKOVUpdated: JANUARY 28, 2019 05:34Naftali Bennett (L), Benny Gantz (C) and Ayelet Shaked (R)(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
The New Right’s leaders have set their sights on Israel Resilience leader Benny Gantz in recent days, attacking his military record.Education Minister Naftali Bennett has even gone so far as to say this election about whether he, who reached the rank of major in the IDF, or Gantz, the former IDF chief of staff, will be the next defense minister.It seems like a bold tactic to claim that you have better defense credentials than the former chief of staff, but Bennett has done that repeatedly of late.The New Right released a video on Sunday asking “What Netanyahu government do you want?” and offering the options of a strong Right or a weak Left.Then it featured a quote from Gantz – “no [Palestinian] civilians were harmed in the attack, but I endangered soldiers to ensure that” – and Bennett – “I would rather we be criticized for killing people who launch fire kites than to eulogize Israeli children.”Speaking about security cabinet meetings during Operation Protective Edge in an interview on Meet the Press this weekend, Bennett said of Gantz: “He kept hitting the brakes, and if we would have listened to him, if we would have accepted his stance, we wouldn’t have destroyed 30 terror tunnels [from Gaza into Israel] and the residents of the South would be terribly abandoned.“Benny Gantz is a good person, but his worldview is that we need to play for a tie, and I say his stalemate doctrine endangers Israel,” Bennett continued. “We need to win, not to just try to go home peacefully at the end of the night.”Bennett made similar comments to ynet last week, and the party echoed his remarks with a statement that “‘General Stalemate’ prefers the life of the enemy than that of soldiers in Golani. He should keep tweeting, because he doesn’t know how to win.”Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked responded on Sunday to news that Gantz is merging his party with former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon’s Telem by saying “last time that happened it ended with 30 [terror] tunnels in the South.”Israel Resilience responded to the attacks from the New Right, saying: “Whoever surrenders and sends suitcases of money to Hamas would be better off staying silent.”
But unlike a different right-wing party, Yisrael Beytenu, and many on the Left, the New Right said nothing about Qatar being allowed to transfer money to Hamas in Gaza.And they’ve pointedly avoided mentioning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership during Operation Protective Edge, even though, back in 2014, Bennett was not shy about that matter.Even when Netanyahu lumped Bennett and Shaked in together with leftists in a video released Saturday night, in which he showed examples of positive media coverage of other politicians to say that only in his case does the State Attorney’s Office treat it like bribery, the New Right didn’t take the bait.The attacks on Gantz and silence on Netanyahu are all part of the same strategy: to expand the right-wing bloc.In a previous election year, Bennett famously invoked the term “shooting inside the armed personnel carrier” to describe fighting within the right-wing bloc, specifically Likud attacks on Bennett and his party.In 2019, Bennett and Shaked have made it their policy not to shoot inside the APC. Instead, they’re aiming outside of it, at Gantz, to try to get more seats, rather than just have seats move around inside the right-wing bloc from Likud to New Right or New Right to Likud or any other combination.Officially, the New Right says: “Our goal is to bring about the establishment of a strong right-wing government, and that depends on the New Right being stronger than Gantz’s party, so that in the next security cabinet, Bennett’s doctrine of decisive victory will win Gantz’s stalemate doctrine.“Therefore, we will try to avoid wars within the [right-wing] camp and focus on moving votes from the weak Left to the New Right,” the party stated.
