Israel cannot wait for state investigation into October 7 failures - editorial

Why was the country stunned? Because in a land where political tensions and feuds rarely remain behind closed doors, this one somehow did.

For all except a handful of close observers who had noticed growing policy disagreements between Hanegbi and Netanyahu in recent months, Hanegbi was widely perceived as one of the prime minister’s most loyal confidants, constantly at his side on trips abroad and in meetings with senior foreign officials.

Until Tuesday.

The truth? We don’t yet know.

What we do know is what Hanegbi himself wrote in his resignation statement. He said that he shares responsibility for the failures of October 7, and that those failures “must be thoroughly investigated to ensure that the appropriate lessons are learned and to help restore the trust that has been damaged.”

In other words, Israel needs an official inquiry into October 7 – a call that polls show an overwhelming majority of Israelis support.

Why? Why would the government resist investigating the most devastating national security failure in Israel’s history – something essential if the country is to learn from the mistakes that led to that day and avoid repeating them?

By law, the president of the Supreme Court appoints the members of this commission, one that wields broad powers, including subpoena authority and the ability to issue findings and recommendations that can make or break careers.

But the coalition – and a significant segment of the public – does not view current Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit as an impartial figure. It fears that allowing him to determine the commission’s makeup would tilt the process and badly politicize the results.

This dispute over who gets to appoint the investigators has thus become another front in Israel’s long-running war over judicial power.

The underlying issue remains unresolved: how to define the balance between the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive in a way most Israelis view as fair. That debate will likely continue through the next election – and may only be resolved by a future broad-based government capable of forging a national consensus on the matter.

But Israel cannot wait that long to investigate October 7.

The failures of that day – military, intelligence, political – demand a full and transparent accounting, not to point fingers, though that will naturally be done, but to identify what went wrong and ensure it never happens again. This has long been one of Israel’s greatest strengths: its willingness to examine its mistakes and learn from them.

For that to happen, compromise is needed – something generally in short supply in this country’s political system, and even more so when it comes to the judiciary-Knesset tug-of-war.

But if the coalition’s objection to a State COI lies with who appoints it, then there are workable alternatives. Perhaps Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg could select the panel, or if not Sohlberg, then another figure whose integrity commands broad public trust.

Israel has figured out how to shoot down a ballistic missile fired 2,000 kilometers away. It should be able to devise a mechanism to form an inquiry commission acceptable to all sides of the political spectrum.

That commission should then get to work immediately, armed with the full powers and privileges of a State commission, to conduct the kind of investigation the public deserves.

For a nation that prides itself on its problem-solving capabilities, this is hardly an unsolvable problem. It must be solved so that the commission can begin its work, the county can learn from its still unfathomable failure, and Israel can move forward with greater strength.