Netanyahu’s October 7 failures remain unanswered three years later - opinion

Two weeks before Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 people in Israel, the head of the Mossad traveled to Qatar with a request: keep the money flowing into Gaza.The request was part of a policy that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governments had spent years developing and defending: the theory that economic assistance would give Hamas something to lose, making it less likely to launch an attack against Israel.On October 7, 2023, that theory met reality.Three years later, Netanyahu has campaigned for another term as Israel’s indispensable protector.Exit polls released Tuesday night project his Likud as the country’s largest party, but leave his political bloc with approximately 50 seats, compared with 52 or 53 for the main opposition bloc.The aftermath of Hamas's Nova music festival massacre in Re'im, southern Israel, on October 7, 2023. Picture taken November 2, 2023 (credit: Arie Leib Abrams/Flash90)Neither bloc has secured the 61 seats needed to govern, and Israel faces another uncertain round of coalition negotiations.Netanyahu has overseen military operations that severely damaged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s capabilities. Yet he has also resisted establishing a traditional independent state commission of inquiry into the greatest security failure of his tenure.The contradiction is difficult to ignore: a prime minister who has built his political identity around Israel’s security continues to resist the investigation necessary to establish how that security failed so catastrophically under his leadership.Iran’s hostility toward Israel is neither imaginary nor exaggerated. Netanyahu has warned about the Iranian nuclear program for decades, and Israel’s operations against Tehran and its proxies have produced substantial military results.His supporters have legitimate reasons to regard those achievements as central to their assessment of his leadership.But military victories do not erase strategic failures. Nor should a prime minister be permitted to define his security record exclusively through the achievements that strengthen his political case.The decisions that preceded October 7 deserve at least as much scrutiny as the operations that followed it.Consider what has emerged about Israel’s relationship with Qatar.On October 18, TIME published previously undisclosed correspondence showing how Israeli officials encouraged, coordinated, and helped administer nearly $2 billion in Qatari assistance to Hamas-controlled Gaza over more than a decade.The money was designated for civilian purposes, including fuel, infrastructure, public salaries, and assistance to poor families. The arrangement had international support, and the reporting does not establish that the funds directly financed the October 7 attack.That distinction matters. But it does not absolve the government that helped sustain the arrangement.The documents establish that Netanyahu’s governments were deeply involved in preserving a system whose strategic assumptions proved disastrously inadequate.In 2020, then-Mossad director Yossi Cohen wrote to Qatar’s emir expressing appreciation for the assistance and its contribution to regional stability. Israeli officials privately encouraged the continuation of payments even while their government publicly criticized Qatar’s relationship with Hamas.The policy survived Netanyahu’s departure from office in 2021. His successor, Naftali Bennett, stopped the cash-filled suitcases but retained other forms of Qatari assistance.The mistaken confidence in managing Hamas was therefore not exclusive to Netanyahu.Yet the policy was developed and expanded during his long premiership. That responsibility cannot be distributed so broadly that the prime minister who presided over its development becomes merely another participant.A reasonable investigation would examine whether the financial arrangements contributed to Hamas’s governing capacity, whether Israeli officials underestimated the organization’s military intentions, and why warnings of an impending attack failed to produce an adequate response.Those are questions of evidence, not ideology. The answers could implicate military commanders, intelligence officials, and successive governments. They could also establish that some decisions were more defensible than they now appear.But Israel cannot know the full extent of those failures without an investigation, and it has spent three years arguing over who should be permitted to investigate them.Netanyahu contends that a commission appointed through the judiciary would be biased against his government. His coalition has pursued an alternative involving political participation in selecting investigators and defining their mandate.This arrangement has a serious problem. The political leadership whose decisions would be examined would also help determine the terms of the examination.An investigation into the country’s worst security disaster cannot command public confidence if the officials facing scrutiny retain substantial influence over who scrutinizes them.The High Court postponed consideration of the matter until after the election and gave the government until January 15, 2027, to explain how it intends to investigate.For a prime minister who presents himself as uniquely capable of protecting Israel, the prolonged resistance to an independent accounting is particularly troubling. Leadership carries responsibility for failures as well as successes.Netanyahu has been far more willing to claim the latter than to submit the former to independent examination.The dispute invites an obvious question: How can Israelis reach an informed judgment about their government’s role in October 7 without a full investigation of its decisions?And October 7 is only one part of the argument.For three years, Israeli soldiers and reservists have endured repeated deployments. Families have buried loved ones, businesses have lost workers, and the military has faced personnel shortages.Haredi enlistment problem for NetanyahuAgainst that backdrop, Netanyahu’s coalition supported legislation in July that temporarily prevented the arrest of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) yeshiva students who failed to report for compulsory military service.In September, all nine High Court justices struck down the law. Eight concluded that it violated the principle of equality.The issue is politically difficult because haredi parties regard full-time Torah study as a profound religious obligation. But Israel’s military requirements are not abstractions.According to figures reported by the Associated Press, roughly 13,000 haredi men reach conscription age each year, while fewer than 10% enlist.Netanyahu’s coalition has depended on parties committed to preserving exemptions. His political opponents argue that this arrangement places coalition survival ahead of a fair distribution of military obligations.That criticism deserves a serious answer.A government cannot repeatedly invoke the extraordinary sacrifices required to defend Israel while protecting a political arrangement that leaves those sacrifices so unevenly distributed.The issue concerns the country’s security, the responsibilities of citizenship, and the political decisions that determine who must bear the burden of national defense. It cannot be dismissed by pointing to a successful airstrike against Iran.Nor can the argument over Israel’s institutions be separated so easily from national defense.Before October 7, Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul generated months of extraordinary protests. Supporters believed the changes would restore authority to elected representatives. Critics feared that weakening judicial checks would concentrate excessive power in the executive.The war displaced that debate. It did not resolve it.Nor did the war settle the questions surrounding Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, in which he faces charges including bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.He denies wrongdoing and has described the prosecution as politically motivated. His legal guilt or innocence remains for the courts to determine.Taken together, these controversies point to a fundamental disagreement over the standards by which Israel’s longest-serving prime minister should be judged.Netanyahu’s supporters emphasize his experience, international relationships, the Abraham Accords, and the military campaigns conducted under his leadership.His critics point to the failures preceding October 7, his handling of the inquiry, his judicial agenda, and his dependence on coalition partners opposed to broad military conscription.The security record cannot be understood without examining both.Months ago, I wrote in The Jerusalem Post that Israel’s strategic assumptions failed to keep pace with the threats confronting it. The subsequent reporting on Qatari payments has made that argument more concrete.It provides documentary evidence of a government pursuing stability through an arrangement whose limitations were brutally exposed.What remains insufficiently examined is why the policy persisted, why officials challenged it, what intelligence reached the prime minister, and how Israel’s political and military systems failed to respond.Those answers matter regardless of who forms Israel’s next government.I believe deeply in Israel’s right to defend itself. That belief is entirely compatible with demanding a rigorous accounting of its government’s decisions.Netanyahu has played a central role in Israel’s history. His achievements are part of the historical record, as are the failures that occurred during his years in office.But three years after October 7, the independent investigation needed to establish the full extent of those failures has still not taken place.Israel’s voters have cast their ballots before the country has completed its examination of the catastrophe that occurred under Netanyahu’s leadership.With no clear majority, the exit polls suggest that Netanyahu retains considerable political support, but also that a substantial portion of the electorate is prepared to see his government replaced.Neither outcome can substitute for accountability.The election may determine who has the authority to govern. It cannot establish what happened on October 7, who made the decisions that preceded it, or why Israel’s defenses failed.A prime minister may survive an election without confronting the full consequences of his decisions. But political survival is not the same as vindication.And no campaign victory can turn an unanswered question into an answered one.The writer is an Israeli-American Modern Orthodox Jew and founder of SZM, a social media movement advocating for the safety of Jewish New Yorkers and empowering the next generation of Jewish voices.