Former general Gantz on a mission to restore honour to Israel PM’s office

Benny Gantz is a respected former military chief who says he can restore honour to the prime minister’s office.

Israel Resilience party leader Benny Gantz. Picture: AFP

Benny Gantz is a ­respected former military chief who says he can restore honour to the prime minister’s office.

The 60-year-old former paratrooper had no previous political experience when he declared himself as Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral rival in December.

The head of the centrist Blue and White alliance has since presented himself as someone who can heal divisions in Israeli society, which he says have been exacerbated by Mr Netanyahu.

For many of his supporters, he is the opposite of Mr Netanyahu, though more in personality than in terms of policies, which the two share to a large degree, particularly on security.

Mr Gantz was born on June 9, 1959, in Kfar Ahim, a southern ­Israeli village that his immigrant parents, both Holocaust survivors, helped to establish.

He joined the army in 1977, completing the tough selection course for the paratroopers. He went on to command Shaldag, an air force special operations unit. In 1994, he returned to the army to command a brigade and then a division in the occupied West Bank. He was military attache to the US from 2005 until 2009.

He was chief of staff from 2011 to 2015, when he retired as a rav aluf (lieutenant general, Israel’s highest rank) and has boasted in video clips of the number of Palestinian militants killed and targets destroyed under his command in the 2014 war with Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers.

Mr Gantz has a BA in history from Tel Aviv University, a master’s degree in political science from Haifa University and a master’s in national resource management from the National Defence University in the US. He is married to Revital and is a father of four.

A security hawk, he is determined to keep the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank under ­Israeli control and maintain Israeli sovereignty over mainly Palestinian east Jerusalem. The two main contenders are in step on external threats such as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, as well as Hamas.

Mr Gantz has pledged to ­improve public services and show “zero tolerance” for corruption — a reference to graft allegations facing Mr Netanyahu.

Regarding the Palestinians, the Blue and White election manifesto speaks of wanting to separate from them, but does not specifically mention a two-state solution. He is liberal on social issues related to religion and state, favouring the introduction of civil marriage.

After gaffes on live television appearances earlier in the campaign, Mr Gantz became less visible, and some say not visible enough. But opinion polls show he maintained support from those seeking to move on from Mr Netanyahu’s long tenure in office.

AFP