Gantz & Lapid: Similarities across the Center

By Yaakov Katz

February 1, 2019 05:00

 

Gantz is soaring right now in the polls and has turned his party into the greatest threat to Netanyahu’s continued reign. Nevertheless, the Center-Left bloc doesn't have the numbers to beat him. 

 Benny Gantz makes his maiden campaign address for prime minister at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds on Tuesday night. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM) 

Sound like Benny Gantz at his coming-out speech on Tuesday? You’re right, it does. But it wasn’t Gantz who made the above statement. It was Yair Lapid, leader of Yesh Atid, who made the comment during a speech in the Knesset over a year ago.

This is what Gantz said on Tuesday: “There was already a king who said: ‘The State is me.’ But no, not here. No Israeli leader is a king. The state is not me; the state is you. The state is actually us – the state is all of us.”

Here is another example. On January 3, Lapid posted the following on Facebook: “Mr. Netanyahu, do you know what happens when a ruler forgets that he serves the public? A civil revolt.” Below the text, Lapid posted a photo of France’s King Louis XIV and the famous words attributed to him: ‘L’etat c’est moi’ – ‘I am the state.’

In his rollout speech on Tuesday night Gantz said: “The basic values of Israeli statehood have been converted into the mannerisms of a French royal house.”

And one last comparison: on Tuesday Gantz said: “A strong government governs to unite and doesn’t govern in order to separate… I feel that the time has come for new leadership, which will create a united, unified, cohesive society.”

A few weeks earlier, in Rishon Lezion, Lapid said: “Israeli society’s strength doesn’t come from separating in order to govern; it comes from uniting in order to govern. That is what we will do – unite and govern.”

I DIDN’T list these similarities because I suspect that Gantz lifted parts of his speech from Lapid. That is not the case. The reason the speeches are similar is because Lapid and Gantz’s positions are similar – and they both are appealing to the same constituents. As a result, they will naturally voice the same messages – disgust with corruption, the need for unity, and the importance of hope.

They represent a demographic of Israelis who want security but are fed up with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They want Israel to be strong, but can’t stand the divisiveness of the Likud Party and its members; they want their politicians to stop attacking one another, and instead present the people with a positive vision: one of hope.

Gantz is soaring right now in the polls and has turned his party – Israel Resilience – into the greatest threat to Netanyahu’s continued reign. Nevertheless, the Center-Left bloc that he belongs to still does not reach 61 Knesset seats, the number needed to defeat Netanyahu. As the post-speech polls show, Gantz’s new votes came from Lapid and Labor, not Likud or the New Right. What this means is that Lapid voters are pretty much Gantz voters and vice versa.

And that is basically the main challenge: how to pull votes away from the right-wing bloc that according to this week’s polls still stands the best chance of winning the election and having one of its representatives – likely Benjamin Netanyahu – tapped to form the next coalition.

 
T IS NOT even clear that a merger between Gantz and Lapid would move votes between the blocs. For now, Lapid won’t agree to step down from the No. 1 spot – and neither will Gantz.

On the one hand, it’s understandable. On an emotional level, Lapid looks at Gantz and gets upset. He has put seven years into politics and now, all of a sudden, a former chief of staff comes and steals his votes. On the other hand, Lapid knows that this is how politics is played, and recognizes that Gantz is basically what he was in 2013 when Yesh Atid surprised everyone by winning 19 Knesset seats. For an eventual merger to happen, the two will likely need to agree on a rotation as prime minister if they win: two years Lapid and then two years Gantz, or the opposite.

If and until that happens, the deal Gantz made with Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon is critical for his potential success. While his party is mostly up in polls because of the star effect of his speech, the alliance with Ya’alon shores up Gantz’s right-wing credentials, and is the best defense against claims – already voiced by Likud – that he is left-wing and dangerous to the State of Israel.

Полная версия: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Similarities-across-the-Center-579376