Interested in hearing an updated definition of chutzpah? Try this: The government under whose watch the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust took place now wants to establish its own inquiry committee to investigate how that catastrophic failure came about.
Talk about the cat guarding the cream.
But that is precisely what the cabinet decided on Sunday: to appoint its own probe into October 7, rather than agree to the establishment of a state commission of inquiry, Israel’s highest investigative authority. The mandate and scope of the government commission will be set not by independent figures but by a panel of cabinet ministers.
And here is where it really gets rich.
The head of that panel will be none other than Justice Minister Yariv Levin, the judicial overhaul zealot whose rigidity and refusal to compromise helped plunge the country into months of internal strife before October 7, a vulnerability Hamas eagerly exploited.
And among those joining him are Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Amichai Eliyahu, and Orit Strock – ministers whose incendiary and irresponsible rhetoric has caused the state untold diplomatic damage. These are the people who will now decide what gets investigated and, more tellingly, what does not.
According to the government, the panel has 45 days to recommend the topics and time frames to be probed.
This, obviously, will not stand. It will not withstand public scrutiny, nor will it survive High Court review, which has already given the government 30 days to update the court on why a state commission of inquiry has not been established.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset last week that a commission appointed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Isaac Amit would lack broad public support and be rejected by “at least half the country.” His argument is that an Amit-appointed commission would be biased and its conclusions predetermined.
But does the prime minister seriously believe the public will accept the findings of a panel whose mandate is set by him, Levin, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir?
Israeli society suffers from severe collapse of trust in virtually all institutions
Israel is already suffering from a severe collapse of trust in virtually every governmental and judicial institution – a crisis deepened by the Sde Teiman affair – and this committee will not restore that trust. It will corrode it further.
Get real. This will not pass.
In the end, a state commission of inquiry – like the one established after the Yom Kippur War – will be formed. It has to be formed. Common sense, public pressure, and basic national self-preservation all demand it. Israel cannot survive in this cruel neighborhood unless it is willing to confront its failures impartially and learn from them.
Such a commission will not, of course, be established by the current government or its head, both of whom understandably fear what it might conclude. But this government has an expiration date: October 2026.
By then, elections will be held, and a new and very different coalition will emerge, with one of its first acts likely being the establishment of the very commission this government is now so desperate to avoid.
If that outcome is so clear, then why is the government making noise about setting up its own inquiry?
Because we are in an election season, and Netanyahu does not want to enter the campaign cast as the man standing in the way of an impartial investigation into October 7. By floating this idea, he can claim: “I’m not hiding from an inquiry; I just want an impartial one.”
But no one should be fooled.
What the government proposed this week is not oversight. It is not accountability. It is an attempt to preempt accountability – to define the questions in a way that avoids the answers it does not want to hear.
And that, in the face of the deadliest failure in modern Israeli history, is not just chutzpah; it is much worse. It is an abdication of responsibility. It is an insult to the victims: the soldiers who fell, those still fighting, the bereaved families, and the returned hostages.
Sooner or later, a true commission of inquiry – independent, authoritative, and beyond political manipulation – will be established. It has to be. Both because the truth of October 7 cannot be whitewashed and because the country cannot afford to let anyone try.