Politically speaking, the moment Blue and White leader Benny Gantz realized that the conditions Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was demanding for a unity government made it impossible for him to reach an agreement without going "bankrupt," he should have done something – anything – else to translate the result of the election into a victory.
Even if a transitional government won't last long, Gantz should have jumped on the opportunity to replace Netanyahu after 10 straight years in power. But leadership is not measured merely by how a leader seizing opportunities. Establishing a minority government with the support of the Arab parties would mean divesting himself of any vestige of real leadership.
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Gantz, a former IDF chief of staff, should have red lines – boundaries that are not to be crossed if he cares about the good of the state. The fake applause he'll get if he topples Netanyahu will soon turn out to be meaningless. Although Netanyahu is accused of being cynical, when put to the test, he has proven that there are lines he does not cross.
Not only in politics, but also when it comes to security and defense. He insists on not making national security a slave to political needs – even during an election, when he knows that his electorate could revolt against his helplessness, his infuriating money transfers to Hamas, and his neglect of our fallen soldiers, who have not been brought back to Israel for proper burial.
Recently, we have found ourselves in the middle of a campaign. A third election hasn't been called yet, but the campaign has started. Propaganda is being activated to prepare the groundwork for bringing the Arab parties into a coalition, and painting that as a legitimate move, as if decades of wrongdoing will be fixed if a government under Gantz is dependent on the Joint Arab List. The opposite – for years, those parties were outside the coalition consensus by their own choice. They chose to take a nationalist line representing the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria and their aspiration of ousting the Jews from lands that belong to Israel.
The current campaign seeks to make the public forget that and focus on the ills in Arab society, as if any of the Arab parties have ever worried about them. What used to be the most marginal of matters in their work has become a major issue, all in the name of the goal they share with the Left – to bring down Netanyahu. It's amazing to see how Gantz, Gabi Ashkenazi, Yair Lapid, and maybe even Moshe Ya'alon are willing to drop any of their values for the sake of a passing political aspiration. It's even more astonishing how other members of the party, like MKs Yoaz Hendel and Zvi Hauser are showing more of a backbone and more awareness of history than their party's obsessive, hate-filled leaders.
