From the Liveblog of
Friday, September 19, 2025
Attacking bloc mentality, Gantz castigates fellow opposition members, former coalition partners
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National Unity party leader Benny Gantz launches a scathing attack on fellow opposition members and former partners in a governing coalition led by Naftali Bennett four years ago, saying its focus on opposing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been a failure.
The change government failed at its basic task, to bring change,” Gantz says at a party meeting, referring to the wide-tent 2021-2022 government he was a senior partner in. “It proved that it is impossible to build a narrow government based on opposition to a single person, without a shared vision.”
He says the “clear takeaway” from that experience is that basing political maneuverings on blocs “jams up Israel and is only good for extremists.”
He lashes out at others in the opposition who refused to follow him into the government following October 7, saying they were pushed away by the bloc mentality, which he charges is “the biggest thing preventing Israel from progressing.”
“It seems the heads of the opposition forgot that they were voted in not just to appear in TV studios and go out afterward to drink espresso, but to have an influence on the situation and represent a public,” he says.
According to Gantz, the strategy led to the current situation, in which “Israel is on the cusp of civil war,” and “Extremists have moved from the fringes to running the country.”
He also attacks erstwhile political partner Gadi Eisenkot, who split off to form his own party two months ago, saying “we are here for the long term, we don’t zig-zag in response to polls.”
His comments come as a poll of 505 respondents published by Channel 12 news shows his party largely failing to make it back into the Knesset, though a Bennett-led party garners 24 Knesset seats and one led by Eisenkot snags 10.
Using his derided bloc math, the channel predicts that were elections held today — they are currently only scheduled for next year — a Bennett-led government would have enough seats to form a thin coalition, pushing Netanyahu back into the opposition.
The Times of Israel Community.