Israelis do not usually agree on much but there is consensus on two related issues. Most Israelis feel there is a need for a commission of inquiry to investigate the catastrophic Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath, and most Israelis feel that such a commission of inquiry will not be objective, impartial, or fair. Hence the stalemate – and both points have substantial merit.
Obviously, the systemic breakdowns that allowed the invasion, massacre, torture, and hostage-taking to occur – an epic failure – need to be scrutinized if only to preclude a future recurrence. Yet, there is no foreseeable circumstance in which an objective tribunal can be formed because there is no element of military, political, and judicial apparatus that is untainted, and no establishment organ that has clean hands in this disaster. Any investigation will necessarily seek to deflect blame from the sponsors of the investigation, point fingers at the “other,” and exploit the conclusions for crass electoral purposes. The blameworthy are being asked to investigate themselves, a pattern familiar to Israel and occurring now in the purported investigation by the military prosecutor’s office of the military prosecutor’s office and its alleged fabrication of evidence in the Sde Teiman fiasco.
Who is guiltless in the wake of the Hamas massacre?
Certainly not the military leadership who failed to anticipate the invasion or respond to the initial encroachments effectively. Israel’s vaunted intelligence – whose craftiness and ingenuity have been astonishing in the last year – failed miserably in the weeks before October 7. Repeated reports by the reconnaissance scouts of unusual Hamas activity as late as the morning of October 7 were studiously ignored. Vital intelligence was not passed up the chain of command, and definitely not to the political decision-makers, another recurring phenomenon in Israel. The military’s embrace of a small, smart army relying on technology was an abject failure. The few generals and commanders who vocally objected to the complacency and indifference were edged aside, reassigned, or dismissed. Groupthink prevailed and the echo chamber was deafening.
Accountability will not be readily forthcoming, a disservice to our dedicated soldiers whose bravery and professionalism will inspire generations to come.
Led by the military’s analysts, the political class assumed that Hamas was deterred and would not dare to attack. The politicians, including the Prime Minister (but notably excluding some of the leading Religious Zionist leaders), were guilty of abetting Hamas, allowing unrestricted funding, building, plotting, and finally execution of Hamas’ nefarious plans. The politicians failed in one of the most basic calculations in military strategy – fighting a definite war today with X casualties versus fighting a potential war in the near future with 5X casualties.
The “quiet for quiet” gambit was an abysmal failure. They all guessed wrong and for more than a decade (although to be honest, had they decided to wage a preemptive war, the people would not have backed them with their sons the ones fighting..), letting Hamas fester and its capabilities metastasize, with devastating consequences to life, health, families, and not least to the Israeli psyche.
Few objected to the Hamas buildup, with prominent exceptions, among others, Betzalel Smotrich, Orit Struk and Michael ben Ari, with the latter even being banned from political life. Almost every political party left, right, and center, has a role in this debacle, including the Haredi parties whose repudiation of military service for their constituents leaves them without a coherent or credible voice on security-related matters. Of course, Binyamin Netanyahu shares this guilt as well – but so does almost every other conceivable candidate for prime minister for the next decade. The conceptziya devoured an entire generation of Israeli generals and politicians, even as they try to avoid the day of reckoning.
The mainstream media are also culpable, for unquestioningly parroting the establishment views, and especially for their relentless and obsessive hatred of PM Netanyahu as the gravest threat to the Israeli polity. As it turned out, they were wrong: the gravest threat to the Israeli polity was located in Gaza, and Lebanon, and Syria, and Iran, and in the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. The media also misconstrued the temporary calm in Gaza as something permanent and irrevocable and favored short-term solutions to Israel’s military challenges so as to better focus on their most important agenda item: getting rid of Netanyahu.
The legal and judicial establishment – particularly those nominally charged with appointing a commission of inquiry – is also guilty. They are guilty of micromanaging the IDF’s response to everything, guilty of favoring the lives of terrorists and enemy civilians over the well-being of our own soldiers, guilty of tying the army’s hands, and guilty of persecuting the Prime Minister over legal and literal nonsense. The Attorney General has assumed dictatorial powers, with the entire land of Israel her fiefdom. The military legal advocates and the courts allowed the enemy to approach the Gaza border unmolested, continue to hamstring the soldiers and are also anti-Netanyahu activists.
Is there any chance their culpability will be exposed? Not as long as the judges play a role – or actually participate – in any investigation committee. And the Kaplan protesters redefined democracy – now construed as “rule by the self-appointed elites” – and desperately, illegally, and occasionally violently protect the hegemony of the legal and judicial establishment in defiance of all democratic norms.
At the risk of offending readers, another component of society is also responsible for this calamity – we the people. We the people who prefer an illusory calm to dealing with real threats, we the people who seek quick fixes (and encourage the politicians to do the same, even as their popularity continues to be foolishly measured in weekly polls), we the people who supported the Oslo cataclysm and the Gaza expulsion, we the people who would rather be soothed by the elegant words of false prophets of “peace now” than confront the harsh reality of the neighborhood in which we live, we the people who might again be seduced by lullabies sung to us by whoever succeeds Mahmoud Abbas, we the people whose rabid support for political parties and personalities rather than ideas and policies mimics the fervor of football fans and their favorite teams.
Who can judge, when everyone is guilty, including the judges?
Perhaps, then, we should learn a lesson from Yosef. Ramban, the venerated biblical commentator, assumed that Yaakov never found out what happened to Yosef (Commentary to Breisheet 45:27). How is that even possible – wasn’t he curious, didn’t he ask, wasn’t he told?
It seems that Yosef sent Yaakov a clue at their very first interaction: “And [Yaakov} saw the wagons that Yosef sent” (ibid), on which Rashi comments, utilizing the play on words of agalot (wagons) and eglot (heifers), “Yosef informed Yaakov of the religious subject he had been studying with his father at the time when he left him, to wit, the section of the axed heifer.”
The symbolism is dramatic. As the Torah relates (Devarim 21:1-9), a heifer has its neck broken as part of the rite accompanying the expiation of an unsolved murder – a crime for which there was only a victim but no accused, no evidence, and no witnesses. In that scenario, it is the society that assumes the guilt, not any individual or faction.
This was a subtle message to Yaakov not to investigate what happened to Yosef. In essence, Yosef told Yaakov we are all guilty – you for favoring me, me for disrespecting my brothers, they for selling me. The fewer details you know, the better, because our society could not survive a fair and complete investigation. No one will walk away unscathed. The same is true today. Even if three unbiased people could be found in the entire country, the elitists will never allow an investigation whose conclusions are not preordained.
To be sure, there must be an investigation at a certain point of the October 7 devastation, if only to draw operational conclusions of what went wrong, why, and how the flawed process can be rectified. Future military and intelligence leaders must ensure that their ranks are filled with a diversity of views, especially views that challenge conventional wisdom. And there needs to be reflection on the goals we seek to achieve as a society, given our enemies across the region and our profound yearning for peace – so profound that it has often engendered the pursuit of fantasies and illusions and a headlong rush from reality. Those goals should feature the creation of a more Jewish state, a nation proud of our uniqueness and our identity, something that ironically the war has catapulted to center stage.
There will come a time when the assumption of personal and collective responsibility will be in order, without such being bogged down in politics. That time is not now. The rival committees now investigating will do little other than stoke the flames of discord by pointing the finger of guilt at their respective political adversaries. There will be an unseemly search for convenient scapegoats and a mad scramble to avoid personal responsibility.
For now, it suffices to say, as Yosef implied, we are one nation, we all have much to regret, we all have much we did wrong, we all have much to be proud of – and we all have a grand and majestic destiny to which we look forward.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, Esq. was a pulpit rabbi and attorney in the United States and now lives in Israel where he teaches Torah in Modiin, serves as the Senior Research Associate for the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy and is the author of the two-volume Chumash commentary “The Jewish Ethic of Personal Responsibility” (Gefen Publishing).
