Peloni : Also, don’t forget the detailed expose on Gantz prepared by Yossi Baum earlier this year.
How America is using ex-IDF Chief Benny Gantz as its Trojan horse to impose U.S. demands—and ensure Israel’s defeat in Gaza
Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz arrives at the U.S. State Department in Washington DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images
In the eyes of the Biden administration Hamas is the smaller problem. The bigger problem is Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. is willing to live with Iran’s proxies everywhere, as part of its “regional integration” policy—i.e., appeasing Iran. But they are unwilling to live with Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. The stubborn Netanyahu clearly does not want to learn from his would-be tutors like U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken how to “share the neighborhood” with genocidaires in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, and Tehran, whom his electorate understands to be bent on murdering them.
If the Netanyahu problem is too big to contain, then it follows that it must be solved. And it seems that the Biden administration has zeroed in on what Tony Badran has called a Herodian solution: finding a local proxy who will impose the U.S. agenda on a reluctant Israeli electorate.
King Herod the Great won his throne because the Roman Empire stepped in and helped him defeat his Israelite adversaries. The American empire wants to help install Benny Gantz as Israel’s next prime minister for the same reason: The plan is for the administration to help him defeat Netanyahu, then for him to assemble a dovish coalition that will return Israel to the two-state track negotiations—which, though unlikely to produce two states, would nevertheless help “de-escalate” in Gaza, the last hot spot in the region where Iran’s power is actually challenged.
Since the whole Democratic Party’s Middle East policy is at stake, the pressure on Israel has been relentless. Never before has an American administration worked so systematically to undermine Israeli democracy and sovereignty, an effort that is especially shocking in the context of an existential war for survival following a heinous, large-scale terrorist murder spree. Wars provide opportunities, and it seems clear that the opportunity that the Biden administration saw in the Oct. 7 attacks had less to do with ensuring Israel’s security than it did with stifling any remaining resistance to Washington’s pro-Iran regional integration policy.
The U.S. is holding Israel on a leash by rationing the American-made ammunition on which the war effort depends; it has forced us to supply our enemies with “humanitarian aid” which Hamas controls and which sustains its ability to fight; the U.S. is building a port to subvert our control of the flow of goods into Gaza; it refrained from vetoing an anti-Israel decision at the U.N. Security Council at the end of March; it leaked its intention to recognize a Palestinian state unilaterally; it allowed Iran to attack us directly with a barrage of over 300 rockets and drones without paying any price whatsoever; and then told us that Israel’s successful defense against that strike (which was mostly stopped by a combination of superior Israeli tech and faulty Iranian missiles that crashed all over the Middle East, and to some extent by U.S. interceptors) should be considered “victory”; it consistently protects Hezbollah from a full-fledged Israeli attack; it did all it can to prevent the ground invasion of Rafah, which is necessary for winning the war; it is trying to stop the war with a hostage deal that would ensure Hamas’ survival.
The U.S. is not protecting Israel from the kangaroo courts in The Hague which now threaten to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and others. Instead, it is goosing those warrants, in part by itself threatening to impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF, thus subverting the chain of command and pressuring IDF units to comply with American demands rather than with orders from their superiors. At one point, Secretary of State Blinken outrageously asked for a one-on-one meeting with IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi (he was refused), treating the commander of Israel’s armed forces as if he was answerable to a delegate of a foreign power.
Meanwhile, the entire Democratic Party apparatus from Joe Biden on down has continued directly attacking Netanyahu in the harshest, most personal and demeaning terms, publicly proclaiming their contempt for Israel’s wartime leader. Biden called Israel’s elected prime minister “a bad fucking guy,” while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer went so far as to explain to Israelis they made the wrong choice in their elections. Senior Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler went Schumer one step better, proclaiming Netanyahu to be the worst Jewish leader in “2,000 years”—i.e., in the period since Herod.
The White House appears to be pushing prominent Jewish Democrats to attack Israel’s prime minister in order to avoid charges of being “anti-Israel” or “antisemitic”—a charge that could damage Democrats in key states like Florida, Arizona, and Michigan as Jewish voters see their children pushed off campuses by a combination of anti-Jewish DEI bureaucrats and pro-Hamas mobs. But it’s not hard to see through this ploy. In fact, the White House has its own proxy mobs of demonstrators inside Israel, which it regularly encourages to take to the streets at key moments. According to the leaders of the Never-Bibi demonstrators, the White House is in constant touch with them for coordination.
What all of these shockingly openly subversive moves against a key U.S. military ally have so far not produced is the desired result—a subservient government run by the would-be King Benny. The American candidate for the Herodian role kept straying from the script (which is reportedly why he was summoned to Washington to be reprimanded).
There were reasons for his straying, though. Whenever the attack on Israel’s sovereignty, democracy, or even on Netanyahu personally, became too blunt, Gantz who understands his electorate well enough, rallied to defend Israel’s sovereignty and our right to choose our own government. This is not because Gantz has given up on replacing Netanyahu: It’s just that he knows he cannot win an election in Israel by appearing to join the U.S. in attacking Israel’s most vital interests or in undermining our independence. Most importantly, any attempt to topple Netanyahu in the name of imposing a two-state solution is bound to backfire, especially with the post-Oct. 7 Israeli electorate.
Now, however, it seems that Washington and its would-be Herodian candidate are finally on the same page. This may be because the administration learned how to drape its attacks in the clothes of Israel’s interest: Emphasize “Saudi normalization” and “international coalition,” downplay “two-state solution,” stress “saving the hostages,” tone down talk of ending the war, and so on. Or it may be that Gantz has received assurances from the U.S. that it will turn its maximum pressure campaign against Netanyahu all the way up, by facilitating the delivery of ICC indictments. Whatever the reason, Gantz has finally thrown down the gauntlet.
Gantz announced his open challenge to Netanyahu in a strained, grammatically tortured tweet burdened by the need to pretend that his new position is not a betrayal of his old one. It is a jumble of contradictions revolving like space debris around a dying star. It reads:
The incursion into Rafah is important in the long struggle against Hamas. Returning our hostages, who were abandoned by the government of October 7, is of far greater importance. If a responsible deal for the return of our hostages, with the backing of the whole security establishment, and not conditioned on ending the war, will be prevented by the ministers who led the government on October 7, then the government would no longer have the right to continue to exist and direct the war.
The gist of it is not hard to decipher: Let’s end the war but call it something else. Otherwise, we’ll topple Netanyahu. But the packaging is no less instructive. First Gantz accepts the terminology of the permanent Never-Bibi protest, which keeps blaming this government for having “abandoned” us on that terrible Shabbat. Gantz further emphasizes that the responsibility lies solely with Netanyahu and his government of Oct. 7—that is before Gantz and his party joined the coalition.
That’s precious, because Gantz himself was an active party to, and in important cases the main author of, the misconceptions that led to the failure of Israel’s defenses on Oct. 7. He was deputy IDF chief of staff, IDF chief of staff, minister of security, and also “alternate prime minister” with Netanyahu.
As chief of staff, Gantz drastically cut the IDF’s ground forces in line with the vision of “a small technological army” based on the false assumption that large-scale ground wars are a thing of the past. He was the highest-ranking member of a security establishment that pushed their belief that Hamas could be pacified by allowing in Qatari money and letting Gazans work inside Israel. As minister of security, Gantz oversaw the inauguration of the high-tech security barrier on the Gaza boarder, which he assured the West Negev residents will protect them from Hamas and allow them to flourish, and that, he said, will be “our great victory” over the terrorists. So confident was Gantz in the effectiveness of the high-tech barrier that he ordered disarming civil defense squads in small villages and kibbutzim in the Negev due to repeated theft of assault firearms. We know what that led to. The places that disregarded Gantz’s orders and retained their weapons were able to hold out longer and save many more lives.
The Mufti of W DC is an Islamo-Gauchiste!
Israeli generals are not competent to be political leaders.
So many examples are available to prove it. They created major problems for the country.
Israelis are smart enough to reject Gantz for he failed them.
I agree with Gadi Taub, Peloni and Bear Klein about this. Gantz is a real stinker. He was a major author of the concepzia that led to Oct. 7.
@Schumuel, I concur with you about Gantz. His initiatives in the past took away weapons from civilians in places near Gaza (as pointed out in the article above).
I think Gantz is a dangerous person because he is basically weak and has bad instincts. He is to apt to say yes to the Americans and others who have their own interests which do not necessarily conform to the Israel interests.
Former general Gantz is a most dangerous sycophant working hand on hand with the Obama regime. Over a period of years he built a cadre / network of such “generals” that pretty much control military and special security operations. The “cease fire” entent.
October 7th is, in my belief, the end result of years of such individuals gnawing away our ability and desire to defeat the enemy.