Benny Gantz lost his political composure long before he appeared Saturday on Channel 12’s “Meet the Press.” But on the program, viewers were treated to an astonishing meltdown directed at interviewers who had simply lobbed straightforward questions his way.

“Don’t you understand what’s happening?” Gantz screamed at his two interviewers. “Can’t you see that the country is coming apart at the seams?”

Raising both hands to his head in frustration, Gantz continued his tirade. “You’re stuck on, ‘Bibi yes, Bibi no,’” he yelled, his voice rising further as he referenced the persistent question of whether he would join a coalition with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Bibi must go home,” Gantz went on, wagging his finger and snapping at the hosts. “Don’t interrupt me. He is to blame for what’s happening here. He must go home. But that, by itself, is not enough…. A Zionist national unity government must be established.”

None of this should come as a surprise. None of us has ever been in Gantz’s shoes, and perhaps what we witnessed was the natural response of someone who came within spitting distance of the premiership – secured by a signed political agreement backed by guarantors – only to fall into Netanyahu’s trap.

Under that fateful pandemic-era deal, back in April 2020, Netanyahu was slated to serve as prime minister for 18 months before automatically handing the reins over to Gantz.

Instead, Netanyahu famously engineered an escape hatch, exploiting a constitutional loophole by deliberately refusing to pass a state budget. This triggered the automatic dissolution of the Knesset, collapsing the government and forcing a new election before Gantz’s turn arrived.

Today, Gantz finds himself at rock-bottom in every poll, fighting to cross the 3.25 percent electoral threshold needed to enter the Knesset. Effectively, he is begging Netanyahu – the very man who set him up in 2020 – to save him from political oblivion.

Gantz is sending profound distress signals, and he is doing so with a hysteria unlike anything the Israeli public has seen from him before. Once again, it is hard to judge him. Gantz wants Netanyahu to invite him into the government right now, at this very moment, as a partner in an emergency cabinet before the Knesset dissolves, perhaps hoping to salvage his dying career at the last minute.

But Netanyahu does not need Gantz now. He needed him in April 2020 to form a government, and he needed him on October 11,........

© The Times of Israel