Independent Inquiry Blames Israeli Leaders for Oct. 7 Failures

For more than a year, the Israeli government has avoided holding itself to account for its failure to prevent the deadliest event in Israel’s history: the Hamas-led raid on Oct. 7, 2023.

An independent commission, founded by survivors of the raid and relatives of Israelis who were killed and kidnapped, tried to fill that void on Tuesday, releasing a scathing report that blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top military commanders for years of faulty decisions that made Israel more vulnerable to invasion.

Based on three months of interviews and public hearings, the commission’s report criticized the government’s decision to funnel money to Hamas, which allowed the group to entrench itself in the Gaza Strip in the decade before the attack. The commission, formally known as the Civil Commission of Inquiry of the Oct. 7 Disaster, condemned Mr. Netanyahu for sidelining high-level decision-making forums that might have stirred greater internal debate about the wisdom of such a policy.

The commission also criticized top generals for reducing the number of troops stationed along Israel’s border with Gaza, allowing loose discipline among the soldiers who remained, and prioritizing signal intelligence over human and visual monitoring of the Palestinian enclave.

“Netanyahu is responsible for undermining all decision making hubs,” the report said. Top military officials, it said, were to blame “for accepting the doctrine of ‘money for quiet,’ and utterly ignoring all other perceptions.”