I keep going back to Benny Gantz. Last night when I saw him on the otherwise unbearable talk show of Ophira and Berko when everyone talks over each other, his was the only voice we could hear. Yuval Harari, who is a psychiatrist and very wise, had to give up because they wouldn’t let him finish a sentence. What he was saying was that the level of crime and violence was primarily caused by the fact that our leaders are criminal and violent. Something I might have said on these pages.
But Gantz was given a separate section and there was no one to interrupt him except the interviewers. And Berco began with an attack – that Gantz hadn’t managed to return the bodies of Israeli soldiers in Gaza. Even though he must have known that this attack was meant to disarm him, Gantz candidly admitted his failure, as well as his efforts. He then went on to discuss his fear of the new government and delineate the reasons why it is simply dangerous.
By behaving with clarity and dignity, he managed to transform the coarse, aggressive, and anarchic interviewers into polite conversationalists.