Gadi Eisenkot must beat Benjamin Netanyahu at his own game. He must do to Bibi what Bibi would have done to him had the roles been reversed.
Eisenkot must not repeat the mistakes Benny Gantz made during his disastrous adventures with Netanyahu. He must exact a price. He must play ruthless poker.
To do that, Eisenkot needs Avigdor Liberman, Naftali Bennett, and Yair Lapid.
If these gentlemen do not come to their senses soon and establish a joint task force, it will be akin to spitting in their voters’ faces.
To all those who love this country and believe it must be saved from the opportunistic, messianic, Bibi-worshipping, post-Zionist coalition, I say: Hold your heads high. Many of you have sunk into depression, and the familiar refrain has returned: “We need to find somewhere else in the world because we cannot go on living here.”
Let’s start with the elections. It is simply not true that we accomplished nothing. We did. We accomplished a great deal. The proof is the campaign launched in recent days by Netanyahu and his servants in favor of having the election annulled.
If he won, why does he want to cancel the election? If the result was so favorable, why is he fighting it?
He did not win. Neither did we, but it is important to understand that the opposition bloc garnered roughly a quarter of a million more votes this time than in the previous election – adjusting for natural population growth.
Netanyahu’s bloc, however, received 72,000 fewer votes than last time. His coalition shrank from 68 seats in the outgoing Knesset to 53 in the incoming Knesset. Is it any wonder that Bibi wants to annul the election?
While it is true that the opposition bloc failed to reach 61 seats and did not secure more seats than Netanyahu’s, it also contains a distinctly post-Zionist element.
Of the 13 seats gathered by the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties, at least 10 belong to those who are not Zionists.
On the other hand, the opposition bloc has an undeniable Zionist majority, which must be recognized.
What could have been done differently? There were several fateful points at which the parties could perhaps have made different decisions, taken another path, and won.
The Bennett-Eisenkot merger that never happened
On the eve of the deadline for submitting electoral lists, for example, Eisenkot and Bennett discussed the possibility of merging into a joint list. They held two dramatic meetings attended by senior members of their teams. A poll was presented at the meetings, and the possibility of the two parties swapping their positions was raised. Bennett pushed for a merger. His support was sliding dangerously toward single digits. He asked to be number two on the list, to serve as finance minister, and to be responsible for AI in the government.
His demands were reasonable. Eisenkot considered the proposal, examined it, and refused.
According to Eisenkot’s associates, they had two more potential “stars” who could have joined the list. At the time, they believed Eisenkot could win 27 or even 28 seats. In the end, the merger did not come about, and neither did the 28 seats.
Was Eisenkot’s rise halted by his comments about forming a minority government? Was the failure to merge with Bennett what prevented his victory?
Polls conducted at the time projected 31 or 32 seats for a joint list.
Yet in the election, they ran separately and won 33 seats between them.
The fatal mistake of the Bennett-Lapid merger
Another pivotal event was the merger between Bennett and Lapid. On this, there can be no argument: It was a fatal mistake, born from panic.
The moment that merger took place, Bezalel Smotrich climbed above the electoral threshold, and Bennett lost the ability to attack Netanyahu from the Right. The right-wing candidate had turned Left.
Still, no one can take away from Bennett what he accomplished after making that left turn: The campaign he led in the streets, town squares, and cafés was heroic.
He managed to halt his own collapse and defy what had almost become his predetermined fate: to start with more than 20 seats and finish with only six.
He managed to reverse the trend, stop the bleeding, and begin growing again. The final result was disappointing relative to expectations, but Bennett survived.