The Losers: Gantz Overachieves, but Comes Up Short

The election result for the Blue and White party, led by Benny Gantz, is an excellent example of the old adage that the operation was successful but the patient died.

Gantz, along with Yair Lapid, Moshe Yaalon, and Gabi Ashkenazi, notched a truly impressive result by winning 33 mandates (as of press time), finishing neck and neck with Likud, which won 35. It’s doubtful that anyone dreamed of such an impressive outcome 45 days ago, when the four joined forces to challenge Likud’s Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister since 2009. But ultimately, they failed to upend Bibi, due to trends in the Israeli electorate and to reasons specific to the campaign.

Costly Miscalculations

In order to disrupt Netanyahu’s long rule, Gantz would have had to bring two or three mandates from the right to the left. And indeed, he put ideal people in place to accomplish such a result. While Netanyahu repeatedly tarred Gantz as a “weak left” candidate, Ashkenazi, who is portrayed as a “Rambo”-like character on one Israeli satirical news program, could not be tagged as either weak or left. Moshe “Boogie” Yaalon, also a former commander in chief of the IDF, is less popular, but he recruited to the party figures like Tzvi Hauser and Yoaz Hendel, Netanyahu’s former cabinet secretary and director of the prime minister’s hasbarah network, respectively. These are men not easily dismissed as left-wingers.

But the campaign failed to put Ashkenazi in the spotlight — even though he is considerably more charismatic than Gantz — and Yaalon emerged as a rather bland figure who was incapable of generating much enthusiasm. The Blue and White campaign also suffered from a lack of message. The Likud branded itself as the “strong right.” What was Gantz’s message? It’s not clear.