An October 7 Commission of Inquiry Is a Sacred Cow That Will Achieve Virtually Nothing - Opinion - Haaretz.com
Of the myriad issues for which the protest movement must keep fighting, a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 debacle should be the last. For the "anyone-but-Bibi" camp, it is another attempt to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It's doubtful this will happen even if the commission is established.
A state commission of inquiry is a guaranteed waste of time, a distraction from what's most important, a stupid sacred cow that could actually play into the prime minister's hands.
The anti-government has already started daydreaming: The Agranat Commission, which examined the failures that preceded the 1973 Yom Kippur War, will be revived, and Netanyahu will resign, as Golda Meir did.
That won't happen.
A gang of exalted judges and geriatric generals will hold soporific sessions for two or three years, at the end of which the public will receive convoluted conclusions, most of them technical: They did or didn't deploy tanks; the SIM cards in Hamas members' cellphones were or weren't activated.
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No commission will dare touch the root of the problem, which is the policy of all of Israel's governments, not just the present one, in their approach to the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian people. After all, they wanted only to manage the conflict; not a single one thought to solve it. The commission will not address this issue.
Focusing on the establishment of a commission of inquiry is pointless. Its specific definition – state, government or system-wide – is also a marginal point. In today's political reality, any commission of inquiry, even a state commission, the highest level, will disappoint those who expect to see Netanyahu ousted ignominiously from all his official roles – the main, and possibly the only, desire of the people calling for its establishment.
You don't need a commission in order to understand that there was a fiasco. You don't need years-long discussions in order to determine that "the Israel Defense Forces did not maintain its ability to contend with a surprise war," as was determined this week by the Turgeman Committee.
A commission won't help fulfill the desire to pin all the blame on Netanyahu. The Agranat Commission absolved political leaders from all blame and even praised them; the Kahan Commission, which investigated the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, led to Ariel Sharon's removal as defense minister, only for him to become prime minister less than a decade later.
Neither of these commissions of inquiry – the most successful ones we've ever had – contributed anything in the way of effecting necessary change. The Agranat Commission did not change Israel. Rather, Prime Minister Menachem Begin changed the state a few years later by signing the peace treaty with Egypt. Had it been up to the Agranat Commission, it would have been enough to restock the emergency warehouses, enlarge the army and add more air force squadrons.
No commission would dare find that there was a context to October 7 that must be fundamentally transformed. This would have to be the most important recommendation of any commission, but the commission that would be willing to handle that hot potato has yet to be born (and will never be born). Just look at what they did to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who dared to say this a few days after the disaster.
Haaretz Cartoon, November 12, 2025Credit: Eran Wolkowski
Hundreds of witnesses will appear before such a commission and tell of the preparations that failed and the intelligence that went astray. We've known this for some time now. They will talk about the transfer of money to Hamas (which also happened before the current Netanyahu government) and about the army that disappeared while everything was going up in flames.
No commission will ask: What did you think of doing with the Gaza Strip in 10 or 20 years? And if it does ask that, it will not get an answer. Because Israel has no answer to this question. And for that, you don't need any commission.
One can empathize with the bereaved families who are campaigning for the formation of a commission. What else do they have left other than the wish to punish those who brought about their tragedies? But the protest movement must abandon its comfort zone of struggling for the return of the hostages and for the establishment of a state commission.
If it truly wishes to bring about repair, it must boldly propose an alternative concept, even at the price of losing some of its support. A state commission of inquiry will only provide more of the same. Best-case scenario – Netanyahu departs and Naftali Bennett takes over.