Bennett calls for ‘all the senior leadership, political and military, to be replaced’
Ex-PM indicates possible return to politics, says Netanyahu’s words contradict his actions in management of Gaza war; urges Israel to take on Iran directly instead of its proxies
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett on Wednesday called for Israel’s political and military leadership to be replaced, saying the government had failed Israelis by not preventing Hamas’s October 7 attack while slamming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his handling of the war in Gaza and calling for a change in strategy vis-a-vis Iran.
“We need change. The leadership is not good — it does not have good values,” Bennett told the Israel Hayom newspaper conference in Herzliya. “The leadership often puts personal interests ahead of the good of the state, or the good of a sector above the good of the state.”
Apparently referring to public comments by coalition members, he added, “Or it insistently ignores the rest of the world and declares, ‘We’ll bomb here’ or ‘We’ll drop an atom bomb on Gaza.’ It’s childish and irresponsible behavior.”
“It will happen in the State of Israel,” Bennett continued. “I have come to the conclusion that it must be done. The leadership must be changed… the political leadership and, honestly, the security leadership too. These are people I love but they too have to be changed,” he said to applause.
Despite his sharp criticism of the country’s leaders, Bennett said that Israeli citizens, and particularly the generation of young adults currently serving in the military, have risen to the occasion.
“On October 7, the State of Israel failed in its basic mission — to be a safe state for the Jewish people,” Bennett said, adding, “For about a month, the state did not function properly.”
But, “The heroism that was revealed on October 7 is at a level [that was] unknown to me,” he said, calling young Israelis “a generation of lions.”
The former prime minister told the stories of several Israelis who rushed into combat on October 7 of their own initiative, and he noted that “all across the country, volunteering initiatives sprouted up, and the young generation made itself available again and again.”
Bennett’s remarks at the conference came after he issued similar criticism of Israeli leaders in an interview published Tuesday with New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, stating, “all the senior leadership of Israel, political and military, needs to be replaced.”
Stephens wrote that Bennett left him “with little doubt that he’s on the verge of getting back in [to Israeli politics], with the aim of toppling the ruling coalition through parliamentary maneuvers this year and going for elections.”
Bennett was Israel’s prime minister for one year in 2021-2022, before he resigned after his government fell apart, at which point he indicated that he would be staying away from politics for a while.
However, since the Gaza war broke out on October 7 with Hamas’s surprise attack on southern Israel, Netanyahu’s popularity has diminished while polls have indicated that Bennett could find success in the next elections.
During Hamas’s attack, thousands of terrorists burst across the Gaza border, murdering some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages. In response, Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza with the proclaimed objectives of dismantling Hamas and getting the hostages back.
Criticizing the strategy Israel has employed throughout the last 10 months of war with Hamas, Bennett told The Times that Netanyahu’s promise of “total victory” contradicts the reality on the ground as well as the prime minister’s repeated promises that he is committed to advancing a ceasefire-hostage deal.
“I see words that send one message and actions that are the contrary,” he said.
“I know there is a body count of Hamas combatants,” he said of Israel’s estimation that it had killed more than 15,000 terror operatives inside the Gaza Strip as of May. “When you count bodies, you are assuming a finite number of combatants, but you have a population of one million to draw on. They could have recruited another 10,000 in the meantime.”
Regarding Israel’s future steps in the war, Bennett said he saw two options: a sudden short surge of fighting against Hamas to deliver a decisive blow, or to cut a ceasefire-for-hostages deal and “fight another day.” He indicated that he preferred the first option.
Bennett also said he believes Israel has failed to address the root cause of the regional threats it faces, and has become occupied with fighting Iran’s various proxies rather than tackling Tehran itself.
Employing his frequent comparison of Iran to an octopus — Tehran being the head and its proxies the tentacles — Bennett said that “the head of the octopus is much weaker, much more vulnerable and feeble, than its arms.
“So how foolish are we to engage in war with the arms when we could engage with the head?” he said.
Iran has built “an empire of rockets and terror” surrounding Israel, the former prime minister added, warning that the only way to prevent the threat of Israel’s extinction is to “topple the Iranian regime before it fully acquires a nuclear weapon.”
At the Israel Hayom conference, Bennett also discussed artificial intelligence, noting predictions that it could surpass humans in various aspects within a few years. If that happens, he said, human attributes such as initiative, leadership and commitment will be critical.
“When I look at our trajectory 50 years forward, we’re going to succeed enormously,” Bennett said.
But, he added, “we need a change. Our leadership is neither good nor ethical. That’s a fact.”
