Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting tooth and nail for his job and his life. He's taking no prisoners; he's not stopping on red. He has given an order to crush his rival, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, to pummel his image and turn the former army chief into a lame duck, a weakling unfit to run the affairs of state.

Netanyahu’s Likud, awash with money and other resources, is throwing everything it can at Gantz. Nothing is out off limits, including rumors and reports, some anonymous, about the contents of Gantz’s mobile phone falling into Iranian hands, vile allegations about his sexual activities and his military career. The real “ace” of Gantz’s Blue and White, the popular former military chief Gabi Ashkenazi, has also been selected for similar “treatment.”

“We did not believe it would work for them, but it is working and having an effect,” a senior Blue and White source told Al-Monitor, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We thought that we should respond to all this muck by presenting a responsible party with a level-headed leader who refuses to be dragged down into the sewers and to stoop to the level of the Netanyahu supporters. Well, we may have been wrong.”

Over the past week, the Likud has drawn even with Blue and White in the polls after lagging behind the centrist party throughout the campaign, and in recent days it has opened up a lead over its center-left opponents by one or two Knesset seats as part of the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox bloc. What worries Blue and White leaders even more is that some polls put Netanyahu within spitting distance of 58 Knesset seats and even 59 with his bloc.