Gantz to PM: ‘You know why you’re afraid of a state commission of inquiry’

“Repeating a lie does not make it the truth,” National Unity chairman Benny Gantz tells Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, after the former engaged in an extended tirade against the so-called deep state earlier.

Accusing Netanyahu of lying about the existence of a deep state, as well as about Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and the management of the war, Gantz says that “the truth cannot be obscured. Only after we joined the cabinet was the return of the hostages included in the war’s objectives.”

Netanyahu is working to fire both Baharav-Miara and Bar, claiming that the attorney general is working to thwart his government’s agenda and that he cannot work with the Shin Bet chief. Critics assert that he mainly wants to oust Bar because of a Shin Bet investigation into ties between PMO officials and Qatar.

“We pressured you to enter a ground maneuver, otherwise it would not have happened because you were afraid,” Gantz says. “We demanded to advance the entry into Rafah and Khan Younis, and to move north [on Hezbollah in Lebanon] sooner so as not to lose another year, and you said ‘What’s so urgent?’

“You know the truth, you also know why you are so afraid of a state commission of inquiry [into the Oct. 7 disaster] that will expose not only your failures and those of your government’s before the massacre, but also your and your government’s underperformance when the war began,” Gantz alleges.