Netanyahu is using a desperate Benny Gantz to do his political dirty work

Benny Gantz lost his political composure long before he appeared Saturday on Channel 12’s “Meet the Press.” But on the program, viewers were treated to an astonishing meltdown directed at interviewers who had simply lobbed straightforward questions his way.

“Don’t you understand what’s happening?” Gantz screamed at his two interviewers. “Can’t you see that the country is coming apart at the seams?”

Raising both hands to his head in frustration, Gantz continued his tirade. “You’re stuck on, ‘Bibi yes, Bibi no,’” he yelled, his voice rising further as he referenced the persistent question of whether he would join a coalition with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Bibi must go home,” Gantz went on, wagging his finger and snapping at the hosts. “Don’t interrupt me. He is to blame for what’s happening here. He must go home. But that, by itself, is not enough…. A Zionist national unity government must be established.”

None of this should come as a surprise. None of us has ever been in Gantz’s shoes, and perhaps what we witnessed was the natural response of someone who came within spitting distance of the premiership – secured by a signed political agreement backed by guarantors – only to fall into Netanyahu’s trap.

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Under that fateful pandemic-era deal, back in April 2020, Netanyahu was slated to serve as prime minister for 18 months before automatically handing the reins over to Gantz.

Instead, Netanyahu famously engineered an escape hatch, exploiting a constitutional loophole by deliberately refusing to pass a state budget. This triggered the automatic dissolution of the Knesset, collapsing the government and forcing a new election before Gantz’s turn arrived.

Today, Gantz finds himself at rock-bottom in every poll, fighting to cross the 3.25 percent electoral threshold needed to enter the Knesset. Effectively, he is begging Netanyahu – the very man who set him up in 2020 – to save him from political oblivion.

Gantz is sending profound distress signals, and he is doing so with a hysteria unlike anything the Israeli public has seen from him before. Once again, it is hard to judge him. Gantz wants Netanyahu to invite him into the government right now, at this very moment, as a partner in an emergency cabinet before the Knesset dissolves, perhaps hoping to salvage his dying career at the last minute.

But Netanyahu does not need Gantz now. He needed him in April 2020 to form a government, and he needed him on October 11, 2023, four days after the Hamas massacre in Israel’s southern communities, when he brought Gantz into the war cabinet to present a united front to a grieving and enraged public.

Netanyahu does not want Gantz in the government now, but he absolutely wants him in the upcoming election. Netanyahu is running Gantz like a wild card who can deliver the goods from every possible direction.

Gantz declares everywhere that Netanyahu must be replaced, and from the prime minister’s perspective, this is excellent. Let him continue. That way, Gantz will draw the votes of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of centrists and members of the “anyone but Bibi” camp who still trust him.

If Gantz and his Blue and White party cross the four-seat electoral threshold, all the better for Netanyahu: They will immediately join his government, because Gantz is, after all, consistently in favor of unity, national responsibility, bridging divides, and all that jazz.

If Gantz fails to cross the threshold, that is perfectly fine for Netanyahu, too. In that scenario, Gantz will have flushed thousands of anti-Netanyahu change-bloc votes down the drain.

This is how one skillfully builds a satellite party: place a former defense minister and IDF chief of staff at its helm, add right-wing and economic heavyweights like former Fire and Rescue commissioner Gen. Dedy Simhi and former Accountant General Prof. Yaron Zelekha, and enjoy the best of all worlds.

The most surreal part is that Gantz either fails to understand this dynamic, or he understands everything but simply continues to play the game because he thinks he has no other choice.

Chili Tropper, a moderate lawmaker who was Gantz’s closest confidant and political partner from the outset, understood exactly what was unfolding. That is why he recently split from Gantz and is no longer at Blue and White.

Incidentally, the person pushing and encouraging this electoral run by Gantz and Simhi in recent weeks – while also calling for former Likud finance minister Moshe Kahlon to come out of political retirement and join them – is Natan Eshel.

Despite being forced to resign over a sexual harassment scandal years ago, Eshel remains the prime minister’s right-hand man and a powerful backroom operator.

“I have no doubt Gantz will surprise everyone, as he did in the previous election, cross the electoral threshold, and go even beyond that,” Eshel told The Times of Israel. “People in the center and on the left are looking for an honest person and will prefer him over liars, crooks, and manipulators.”

If Gantz and Simhi do indeed announce the launch of their joint venture in the coming days, as the Kan public broadcaster reported on Sunday that they will, one has to wonder specifically about Simhi.

After losing his son Guy at the Nova music festival on October 7, Simhi became a popular figure among the moderate right-wing public, appearing regularly as a pundit on TV. Simhi could have received a guaranteed spot from Netanyahu on the Likud slate, yet he is being lured into a misadventure with Gantz, hovering dangerously close to political erasure.

In the meantime, Netanyahu is reaping a premium harvest. Gantz accuses him of bearing responsibility for the October 7 massacre but simultaneously refuses to rule him out as prime minister. Who needs a state commission of inquiry when you receive that kind of legitimacy?

הפיצוץ המלא של בני גנץ: צפו@amit_segal @BenCaspit pic.twitter.com/EhquAGYuoh

— פגוש את העיתונות (@pgosh_MTP) June 20, 2026

Calming down later in the television interview on Saturday, Gantz went on to discuss and settle scores with Gadi Eisenkot, his former party colleague and fellow ex-IDF chief of staff.

Eisenkot’s new party, Yashar, has soared in the polls to the point where it is competing with Likud and Naftali Bennett’s Together as the largest party, with Eisenkot narrowly preferred to Netanyahu as prime minister. Quite the contrast to Gantz’s decline.

Eisenkot, Gantz said, “wants one side to win” – the anti-Netanyahu Zionist bloc – “whereas I want to unify the two sides… He’ll join forces with the Arabs.”

Netanyahu, surely smiling from ear to ear, promptly seized the moment. He circulated a campaign video bearing that exact headline, featuring incendiary clips of prominent Arab lawmakers Ahmad Tibi, Ayman Odeh, and Mansour Abbas, whom the Likud frequently uses as boogeymen to scare right-wing voters.

Gantz was always considered an immense admirer of Netanyahu. Ministers who observed him sitting in joint forums with the prime minister during various government and cabinet meetings in the past have consistently testified to his self-effacing subservience before Netanyahu.

Now, this dynamic has reached astonishing levels of hysterical support mixed with feeble opposition. Netanyahu needs nothing more than that.