The Blogs: Benny Gantz and the fraternity of the nerds

In January 2023, a group of political actors set out to remake the system that had, in their telling, excluded them. The judicial overhaul led by Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman appeared to follow a psychologically and politically recognizable script: resentment translated into authority, grievance into action. A sense of retribution framed as correction.

This was described somewhere as Revenge of the Nerds. But the analogy flatters its subjects. What we are witnessing is not clever underdogs reclaiming dignity, nor a justified settling of accounts. It is a form of violent nerdiness: a politics driven by wounded self-perception, expressed through aggressive institutional dismantling. The language may be legalistic, even procedural, but the effect is unmistakably coercive. Courts are weakened. Norms are hollowed out.

This kind of overtly forceful politics tends to provoke resistance. It is visible and abrasive. The hand that strikes is recognizable, and opposition gathers accordingly. Violent nerdiness has a paradoxical clarity. It looks like what it is: destructive. And so, we took to the streets.

But a more troubling development has emerged since.

Alongside this confrontational strain, another form of nerdiness has taken shape that presents itself not as vindictive but as reasonable, conciliatory, even morally superior. This is the nerd who does not seek revenge or dominance, but affection and approval. All this not to gain ideological representation, but political survival. And it is here that the story shifts from revenge to fraternity of the nerds.

For some time, I thought of Benny Gantz as Forrest Gantz, a well-intentioned but naïve player, repeatedly carried into moments of consequence without ever quite mastering them. That characterization, as Uri Misgav notes this week in Haaretz, is no longer relevant. What once appeared as naïveté has hardened into something more consequential: passive-aggressive enabling.

Gantz is not a bully. He does not relish confrontation, nor does he speak the language of domination. Instead, he absorbs political slaps – often publicly administered by Benjamin Netanyahu – and always comes back for more, in the name of unity and as a self-styled antidote to polarization.

The cost of this became clearest last week.

When the language of inclusion stops at the Arab parties, it is not moderation but the normalization of exclusion. This is not a one-off misstep, but a pattern of conduct driven by a deep need for positionless relevance.

Here lies the greater danger. The aggressive nerds require legitimacy – or at least silence – to proceed. That silence is supplied by their passive-aggressive counterparts. While one side dismantles institutions with visible force, the other urges restraint and civility. One breaks the tools; the other asks us not to raise our voices while they shatter.

Overt bullies and trolls like Tali Gotliv and Itamar Ben Gvir make no effort to soften their rhetoric or disguise their intent. They are easy to identify and easy to oppose. Levin and Rothman’s streak of aggressive nerdiness is easy to identify as well. The Gantz-type nerd is different. He seeks empathy while enabling harm. He does not threaten; he sulks. And sulking, when elevated to political strategy, can be profoundly disarming. The language of exclusion clings stubbornly to Gantz. Like a child who always got picked last, he refuses to leave anyone out – not even a government that is systematically dismantling democracy.

One cannot help but wonder which other nerds are aiding this process. President Herzog’s solemn appeals to unity and restraint, and his posture of statesmanship during a democratic emergency, raise a central question: do they amount to the kind of leadership the situation requires?

In moments of democratic crisis, nerdiness becomes a liability. Gantz’s refusal to step aside even as polls collapse and the opposition warns of the consequences is not stubbornness but consistency: the final expression of a passive-aggressive nerd, clinging to his chair while catastrophe remains imminent.