MK Benny Gantz launched an unusually sharp attack on former President Reuven Rivlin after Rivlin told Omri Assenaheim on Channel 13 that he had warned Gantz not to enter a rotating government with Benjamin Netanyahu during the coronavirus period. Gantz wrote, “Sometimes the truth is also an option,” and said he had stayed silent the first time Rivlin “invented” such a conversation out of respect for an older man, but was now responding because Rivlin repeated what he called a lie.
Gantz insisted Rivlin “never warned me” about joining the unity government and instead had pushed and advanced its formation, including mediation talks with both Gantz and Netanyahu, some of them with other political figures present. “Sorry that he chooses to lie,” Gantz wrote, adding that he did not know Rivlin’s motive and wishing him health and a long life.
In the long post, Gantz returned to May 2020, saying he chose to enter the unity government at the height of the pandemic, when people feared leaving home and after three elections produced no clear winner. He argued that, in retrospect, the decision was right because Netanyahu, then under indictment, was prevented by the parity arrangement and Gantz’s control of the Justice Ministry from harming the judicial system.
Gantz also listed what he said were major gains from that coalition, including a budget for building up against Iran, deals for tankers, aircraft, helicopters and munitions, a signed agreement with the Trump administration preserving Israel’s qualitative edge, major security agreements with Gulf states, and the “One Soul” rehabilitation reform for wounded troops. He said Netanyahu did not give him the rotation, but “for the first time since returning to power, I took half his government,” and concluded that he knew the chance of becoming prime minister was low, but felt obliged to seek unity during the crisis.
Gantz said the lessons were political, not historical: the next government, he argued, must be broad and Zionist, because a full right-wing government brought disaster and division, while a narrow government without an ideological base collapsed within months. He said national unity mattered more than “history lessons or the imaginary reality” of any one person.
