The need to highlight Gantz’s terrible military record even though Netanyahu approved his appointment - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

...Many voters don't think that the contours of an agreement with the Palestinians are relevant when choosing a party since in any case there won't be a deal for the foreseeable future. So whether Blue White is "Left" or not on Arab-Israeli affairs may not matter to these voters. But they most certainly may be deterred from casting their ballot for a party headed by a man who consistently screwed up in key military roles.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
06 March '19..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=73467

Bennie Gantz’s military career was torn to shreds in a feature article in the magazine section last Friday’s edition of the left wing Haaretz.

Haaretz pulled no punches, starting with details of how Gantz screwed up on his year long assignment to prepare for then PM Ehud Barak’s chaotic retreat for Lebanon and concluding with his fiasco in failing to prepare the IDF, as Chief of Staff, to deal with the Hamas assault tunnels reaching across from the Gaza Strip.

Senior IDF sources are quoted observing that Gantz consistently doesn't plan ahead and declines to consider worse case scenarios.

Again. This wasn't in right wing Makor Rishon or B'Sheva. It was in Haaretz.

One would think that Gantz's dismal military record would be the focus of the Likud as it pushes back against the rival Blue White party he heads that now polls more seats than Likud.

Instead Likud attacks Blue White for being "Left".

Yes. It is Left. But you need at least a 15 second attention span reading their platform to understand that. And that's 10 seconds more than Israelis typically are either willing or able to invest.

So why isn't Likud citing Gantz's screw ups, failures that are so graphic in their nature that even a 5 second attention span can comprehend them?

Gantz’s dangerous ambiguity on unilateral disengagement and its consequences - by Gershon HaCohen

Surrender to a potentially hostile Palestinian state would make the defense of the Israeli hinterland virtually impossible.

Gershon HaCohen..
JNS.org..
18 February '19..

Unilateral disengagement from the West Bank, which Israeli prime-minister candidate Benny Gantz seems to support, would have far-reaching adverse implications for Israel in the security, economic, social, infrastructural and ecological spheres.

For all his efforts to keep his views on key national issues under wraps, so as to make his premiership bid appealing to the largest possible number of Israelis, former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces has indicated his readiness to apply the highly controversial unilateral disengagement formula that Sharon applied to Gaza in 2005 to the West Bank as well.

“We need to find a way in which we’re not controlling other people,” Gantz told the daily Yediot Ahronot in his first interview as a candidate. “[The unilateral disengagement] was a legal move, a decision made by the Israeli government and carried out by the IDF and the settlers in a painful, but good manner. We need to take the lessons learned and implement them elsewhere.”

Leaving aside the ambiguity of these well-worn terms (e.g., most of the world views Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem as “settlements,” while Israelis consider them an integral part of Israel) or the feasibility of evacuating some 140,000 Jewish residents from their homes with no Palestinian quid pro quo, Gantz’s thinking seems to be predicated on dated suppositions that have long been overtaken by events.

The political and strategic precepts underlying the Oslo “peace” process, which Gantz echoes, vanished long ago.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The latent agenda for Israel’s April elections? Unilateral concessions - by Dr. Martin Sherman

...whether raised explicitly during the campaign or not, support or opposition for it will be the latent agenda in the April election, and voters ought to be aware of what they are really voting for or against.

Martin Sherman..
JNS.org..
10 February '19..

The major issue is not [attaining] an agreement, but ensuring the actual implementation of the agreement in practice. The number of agreements which the Arabs have violated is no less than number which they have kept.” — Shimon Peres, Tomorrow is Now, Jerusalem: Keter, 1978, p. 255

Almost inevitably, elections in Israel revolve, one way or another, around one issue … even when everyone insists they don’t. This is the “Palestinian problem” and its unavoidable derivative, the fate of the Jewish communities across the so-called “Green Line.”

Take for example the previous elections, in 2015, in which there was widespread consensus among pundits that the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs was largely a non-issue. Indeed, barely a week before polling began, a Reuters report on the electoral campaign, headlined, “As Israeli election nears, peace earns barely a mention,” noted: “While social issues and the economy were grappled over at length, the conflict with the Palestinians and efforts to forge a two-state solution to the crisis … drew little … comment or insight.”

However, despite this apparent marginalization of the Palestinian issue, in broad brush strokes, the parties left in opposition—arguably, with the perverse exception of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party—all embraced, as matter of political preference, the idea of territorial withdrawal and Palestinian statehood.

By contrast, all the parties that comprised the coalition were ones with a political aversion to territorial withdrawal and the prospect of a Palestinian state, being ready to express grudging acceptance of the idea only with great reluctance, and subject to unrealistic and unattainable provisos.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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You too, (Et tu) Benny? - by David M. Weinberger

Lt. Gen. Gantz seems to be suggesting unilateral Israeli withdrawals and another disengagement. This is both frightening and clarifying.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
08 February '19..
Link: https://www.davidmweinberg.com/2019/02/08/et-tu-benny/

Benny Gantz, chairman of the new Israel Resilience Party, got off to a fine start last week with a smooth speech. My esteemed Jerusalem Post columnist colleague Prof. Gil Troy enthused that it was an “oratorical grand slam” and a “testament to temperament” which “showed how to dream and build.”

I’ll grant that Gantz has charmed the Israeli electorate with soaring Zionist rhetoric, and his rising poll numbers reflect this. His sunny deportment offers a counterpoint to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s negative campaign messaging. And let’s face it, Netanyahu has been in office for a very long time, and some voter fatigue is setting in.

But when evaluating Lt. Gen. (ret.) Gantz’s suitability to lead Israel, inevitably we must seek-out his defense and diplomatic worldview, and this has been hard to discern; purposefully so.

There was, however, one roaring policy hint in his inaugural speech. Gantz said that “if it turns out that there is no way to reach peace (with the Palestinians) at this time, we will shape a new reality. Israel will not be deprived of its status as a strong, Jewish and democratic state.”

‘Shaping a new reality’ is code for unilateral Israeli action in Judea and Samaria; withdrawals in the West Bank; disengagement from settlements – without peace or any diplomatic concessions from the Palestinians.

Gantz went further in an interview with Yediot Ahronot this week, where he praised the unilateral Gaza withdrawal and the destruction of Gush Katif towns, saying that it was “carried out with a lot of political consideration,” “done legally,” and “handled well.”

“We must take the lessons of the disengagement and implement them in other areas,” he added ominously.

This is both frightening and clarifying. It suggests that Gantz would willingly repeat the mistakes of Prime Minister Sharon, and that in Resilience Party parlance the self-referential term “centrist” in really means “leftist.”

Gantz’s spokesmen mightily are trying to wiggle-out of these remarks, contending that the reference to “lessons” in his interview referred only to the importance of preventing a rift in the nation (really?) and making sure that any future border decisions include strict security provisions (sure).

But Gantz’s hints at unilateral Israeli withdrawal don’t come in a vacuum. They have a pedigree. For seven years, center-left generals and Barak-Olmert era officials have been pumping plans for more unilateral Israeli withdrawals.

IMRA Weekly Observations: 7 About the Gantz Campaign - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

...Risk Israeli lives when not legally required: Gantz has boasted that he risked the lives of Golani troops when he took precautions for the benefit of Palestinians which in his own judgment were not required by the law. He did not touch on this crucial issue in his remarks.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Observations..
30 January '19..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=73452

Some observations regarding former COS Gantz's speech last night and his candidacy in general:

1. Retreat of civilians: Gantz indicated that in the absence of a deal with the Palestinians that the Israeli civilian presence in Judea and Samaria be limited to the vaguely defined "settlement blocs". There would possibly be troops deployed in the Jordan Valley (he termed it Israel's "security border") but the communities in the Jordan Valley have never been included in anyone's delineation of the "settlement blocs".

2. No contours to deal with Palestinians: Gantz's requirements were all in the context of what Israeli would do unilaterally if there isn't a "deal". Its not clear what "red lines"Gantz has for a deal..

3. No concern over Gaza arms build up: Gantz opposes the Qatari cash transfers that were already discontinued before he spoke but said nothing about the ongoing weapons build up in the Gaza Strip.

4. Muzzle criticism of senior officials and institutions? : "there shall not be wild attacks against the [IDF} Chief of Staff, the head of the police, and the attorney general...incitement against the institutions of the courts, culture and media."