Ben Gvir: Our Questions Make Gantz and Gallant Uncomfortable

By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS                          14 January 2024

Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir seen during a meeting with Police officers from the Riot unit, in Tel Aviv on August 2, 2023. Photo by Avshalom Sassoni

Following a Saturday night report that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had stormed out of a war cabinet meeting when his aides were asked to leave, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir attacked Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz in an interview on the popular right-wing news panel, “The Patriots.”

Ben Gvir’s main point was that Gantz and Gallant don’t like it when fellow ministers ask them tough questions during cabinet meetings.

“I’ll put it this way,” Ben Gvir told the right-wing Channel 14 panel, “There are those who try to silence us. It’s no secret that we ask questions, myself, Miri Regev, Smotrich, too. And unfortunately, there is someone out there who wants to discourage us from asking questions.”

“Yes, I have questions,” Ben Gvir added. “I ask the Chief of Staff. I’m not slamming or arguing or confronting, but it is my duty as an elected official to ask questions.”

Ben Gvir was also referencing a recent confrontation between Minister Orit Strook and the Head of the IDF Strategy Division, Major General Eliezer Toledano, Strook inquired regarding news reports that some Air Force pilots refuse to attack targets in Gaza on consciousness grounds. Toledano rebuked the minister, telling her it was a “horrible question.” (The Left Hates Orit Strook, the Woman Who’s Been Attacking the Conceptzia Since the Expulsion)

Israel’s security leadership and the leftist media are living in a bizarro world, where the fathers of the conceptzia that led to the October 7 massacre are running the war cabinet, while the right-wing politicians who have been sounding the alarm and been ignored for years are kept away from the decision making. But it gets worse: the left-wing media, which should be at least doubting the defense leadership because of its atrocious failures, are smacking the right for daring to criticize them. It’s as if Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the legendary leaders of the students’ anti-Vietnam movement were to declare their trust in General Westmoreland and Richard Nixon (God help me, I’m using 50-year-old metaphors).

Welcome to Israel, where the left worships the generals and the right is skeptical.

PRIMA DONNA

Remember about a hundred years ago, when PM Netanyahu fired DM Gallant, but the latter was saved because the left crammed the streets in his support? OK, according to reports, on Saturday night Gallant and his aide arrived late at the war cabinet meeting. When he entered, the PM told Gallant, “Just as I don’t bring in my aides, you should not bring in your aides.” In response, Gallant told Netanyahu that he is the sole executive minister in the war cabinet and therefore his aide, who implements the decisions of the civilians in the room, should stay.

Netanyahu continued to refuse, and Gallant got up to leave the meeting. Before leaving, the DM hissed at the PM, “Stop interfering with my work, you are harming the executive arm of the decisions that are made here.” And then he stormed out, and, naturally, leaked the entire incident to the media.

As Ben Gvir put it during his appearance on The Patriots, “Whoever is leaking from the security-political cabinet is also a member of the war cabinet.”

The National Security Minister went on to claim that Gallant and Gantz share the conceptzia, from which they refuse to waver: “Even though they belittle me, I continue to question them and continue to demand answers. All those who were in on the conceptzia continue to hold on to the same conceptzia. As far as they are concerned, there is one conceptzia, in the south as well as the north.”

To make his point, Ben Gvir called for a preemptive war against Hezbollah. “These days, they are talking about all kinds of arrangements with Hezbollah,” he noted, asserting, “Enough! Our enemies must be defeated. The Radwan force must be defeated and subdued, and they must be attacked, and we better be the first to attack, take charge, and lead this move.”