Israel owes its citizens — and the victims of Oct. 7 — an unflinching accounting of how the worst catastrophe in the country’s history was allowed to unfold. Instead, the government has chosen a path that all but guarantees evasion and mistrust: a politically appointed commission of inquiry, controlled by the very coalition that presided over the failure.
This is not accountability. It is choreography.
The attack that shattered Israeli lives, communities and assumptions was not a lightning strike that came out of nowhere. It was the result of years of strategic misjudgments, intelligence blind spots and political choices that placed quiet, coalition stability and ideology ahead of hard security realities. Investigating such a collapse requires independence, subpoena power and public confidence. A commission handpicked by politicians with direct responsibility for those decisions offers none of these.
Opposition leaders have been blunt — and rightly so. Yair Lapid has warned that the proposed body is designed to “bury the truth,” not uncover it. Benny Gantz has described it as a strategy of delay and evasion, substituting political theater for national reckoning.
Former judges, senior security officials and legal scholars have echoed the concern: When politicians control the witnesses, the scope and the conclusions, the outcome is effectively prewritten.
Israel has faced disasters before and understood the stakes. After the Yom Kippur War, the Agranat Commission — flawed but independent — was empowered to follow the evidence wherever it led. After the Second Lebanon War, the Winograd Commission exposed failures at the highest levels precisely because it was insulated from partisan pressure. Those inquiries were painful. They were also essential.
The current proposal abandons that tradition. By design, it blurs responsibility, fragments testimony and shifts blame away from decision-makers toward abstractions: “systems,” unnamed bureaucrats, or even the judiciary. The result will not be clarity but confusion — an official narrative that claims closure while leaving the central failures untouched.
This is not an academic debate. Israel remains at war. Soldiers and reservists are still being sent into harm’s way. Families are still mourning. Hostage remains have not been returned.
Public trust is not a luxury at such a moment; it is a strategic necessity. A compromised inquiry corrodes that trust precisely when Israel can least afford it.
There is also a moral dimension. Democracies do not honor their dead by managing optics.
They honor them by confronting failure honestly, even when the findings are painful or politically inconvenient. Anything less sends a corrosive message: that power protects itself, even after catastrophe.
Supporters of the government argue that a state commission led by the judiciary would politicize the process. That argument doesn’t make sense. Courts did not control troops on Oct. 7. Judges did not approve cash transfers to Hamas. Justices did not dismiss intelligence warnings or hollow out readiness along the Gaza border. Blaming the judiciary is not accountability; it is deflection.
Israel needs a commission that can compel testimony, preserve evidence and publish conclusions without fear or favor. It needs a commission Israelis across the political spectrum can trust. And it needs it now — not after memories fade and responsibility dissolves into fog.
A nation strong enough to survive Oct. 7 is strong enough to face the truth. A government that fears an independent investigation has already answered the most important question of all.
Responsibility for Israel’s many failures on Oct. 7 will be debated by historians until the end of time. Even a century from now, long after the contemporary political players are dead, it’s doubtful that there will be any sort of consensus that will satisfy everyone. The idea that the answer can be arrived at through a process that is indistinguishable from the campaign of lawfare that Netanyahu’s critics have been waging against him simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Until history renders its verdict, the only meaningful jury that can have its say about Netanyahu is composed of the country’s voters. In 2026, Israelis will return to the polls when this Knesset’s term expires, after having lasted longer than most of its predecessors in the country’s inherently unstable electoral system.
At that point, the voters will have their say about Netanyahu and Oct. 7—and that will have to suffice.