Eisenkot: Netanyahu unworthy of nation; unfit to preach unity

In direct attack on key election rival, Netanyahu brands Eisenkot as too cautious

PM says ex-IDF chief, former war cabinet member warned against ops in Gaza, Lebanon, would have left ‘all of Hamas’ intact; Eisenkot: Netanyahu ‘blindly’ led us to ‘historic low,’ lies, evades responsibility

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night attacked the ostensible security positions of former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, casting his rising election rival as too politically cautious to have ordered key operations that, the premier says, have reshaped the battlefield against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Asked at a press conference to respond to recent criticism by Eisenkot of his handling of Lebanon, Netanyahu argued that the Yashar party leader and his political allies had opposed key wartime moves, including the IDF’s entry into Gaza’s Rafah, its seizure of the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, and its expanded operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Eisenkot, then part of Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party, joined Netanyahu’s coalition to form an emergency government after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack and served in the war cabinet until he resigned in June 2024 in protest of Netanyahu’s handling of the war.

“I remember what Gadi Eisenkot said, and what others said, when we were still in Gaza.… They said we should stop while we were still in Khan Younis,” Netanyahu said. “Not enter Rafah. Not take control of the Philadelphi Corridor. They said we should simply make a deal, bring out the hostages, and leave Gaza – leave all of Gaza. And then, two or three years later, we could come back to it.”

Following that advice, Netanyahu claimed, would have meant that “all of Hamas” and top officials assassinated by Israel during the war “would still be there, still alive, still in control.”

Netanyahu claimed this also would have prevented the IDF from expanding operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, as it did in late 2024, nearly a year after the Lebanese terror group first began attacking Israel in support of Hamas.

“It also means that we never would have entered Lebanon at all. We would not have carried out the [2024 beeper] operation,” he continued. “We would not have eliminated [former Hezbollah leader Nassan] Nasrallah. We would not have destroyed 90 percent of Hezbollah’s missile stockpile.”

“We would have left all of Radwan Force’s terror tunnels right here on the border,” Netanyahu continued, referring to the elite Hezbollah force, and added that recent expansions of Israel’s self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon also wouldn’t have been carried out.

“So from the perspective reflected by Gadi Eisenkot and his colleagues, they essentially wanted us to end up with nothing,” he claimed. “Today, we control nearly 70 percent of the Gaza Strip. We are squeezing Hamas. And we are holding this strong security zone in Lebanon.”

Netanyahu charged that in order “to preserve his political future,” Eisenkot would never have been willing to act more aggressively militarily on these fronts.

“I believe the right thing to do is whatever is necessary to ensure Israel’s security and the security of the north. The alternative was to leave 150,000 rockets and missiles in Lebanon,” he said, adding that today there are “kilometers upon kilometers of tunnels there. And today we are destroying them. So I am doing what is right.”

Claims he now seeks ‘broad national government,’ unity

Netanyahu further argued that there is “broad agreement” on several issues that would help create the “broad national government” he hopes to form, pointing to what he said is a growing public consensus against Palestinian statehood and a shared desire to avoid “civil war” over divisive domestic issues such as Haredi enlistment.

“In my view, there is far more unity among the people than what you see in the Knesset,” he said. Netanyahu’s effort to legislate the ongoing mass exemption of ultra-Orthodox men from the army is widely opposed by the Israeli public.

Netanyahu added that he seeks an “agreement on the issue of [Haredi] military service,” saying he thinks “this is possible, and I intend to do it.”

He said it would be counterproductive to send police into “Haredi-hesder” yeshivas to arrest students for not drafting, as this would simply prevent Haredi men from ever wanting to serve: “We have seen an enormous response from the Haredi public. Young Haredi men want to enlist. But when arrests are carried out in places of Torah study, it produces the opposite result,” he claimed, though there have been no such reported arrest operations. It is also not clear what he meant by “Haredi-hesder” yeshivas.

“If I told you that in some country in Europe, police were entering yeshivas, taking young men studying Torah, and putting them in prison, you would be shocked,” he said.

Eisenkot: You continue to lie about Gaza and Lebanon, and block state probe

Hitting back, Eisenkot branded Netanyahu as the “prime minister who blindly led us to a historic low, who works day and night on division and incitement, who invests all his energy in encouraging draft dodging,” saying that he is “unworthy of this nation and certainly not fit to preach morals about unity.”

“This evening too, you continued to lie about Gaza and Lebanon – things that could have been thoroughly investigated in a state commission of inquiry that you’re also afraid of,” he said in a post on X.

Netanyahu “was in the role of prime minister on the morning of the October 7 massacre and has been fleeing responsibility ever since,” Eisenkot added, vowing: “We will establish a government with a Zionist and national majority that will safeguard Israel’s interests. We will reconnect the people of Israel. Because Israel must win”

A recent poll by Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, showed Eisenkot’s Yashar party surpassing the ruling Likud party for the first time and becoming the largest party in the Knesset.

The survey saw Yashar winning 23 seats if elections were held today, with Likud at 21. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s Together are at 17, Yisrael Beiteinu 11, Shas 10, Otzma Yehudit 8, United Torah Judaism 7, The Democrats 7, Hadash-Ta’al 4, Religious Zionism 4, Ra’am 4 and Blue and White 4. The Reservists party and Balad both failed to cross the electoral threshold.

The poll gave Zionist opposition parties 62 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, enough to form a coalition. Other polls have shown the Zionist opposition just short of a Knesset majority.

Eisenkott in the past two weeks has been polling narrowly ahead of Netanyahu when respondents are asked who is more appropriate to serve as prime minister.

Israel is set to hold national elections no later than October 27, 2026.