A panel formed by former senior military officers has found that most of the Israel Defense Forces’ investigations into its shortcomings ahead of and on the day of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack are inadequate — with some deemed outright unacceptable, Times of Israel reports.
At the same time, Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir stated on Monday that while the military bears full responsibility for the failures of October 7, a wider “external” commission of inquiry must be convened — a step the government has resisted for more than two years.
Zamir avoided calling for a full state commission of inquiry — which the government opposes — despite polls showing overwhelming public backing for one. He also declared that he would make “personal decisions” about senior officers based on the external panel’s findings, including possible dismissals.
The panel’s report — handed Monday to the IDF’s top leadership and the Yisroel Katz, the Minister of Defence — was also shown to reporters. The internal investigations had been led by former Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. Within weeks of taking office in March, Zamir appointed the external team to review those probes.
That team, headed by Sami Turgeman (Major-General, retired), and including ex-Navy chief Vice Admiral Eli Sharvit and former Air Force chief Major-General Amikam Norkin, was charged with assessing the military’s top-tier investigations, overseeing implementation of findings, and recommending repeated or additional probes where needed.
The General Staff–level investigations under review covered four major areas: the IDF’s evolving strategic view of Gaza over the past decade; its intelligence assessments of Hamas from 2014 until the war; its intelligence and decision-making on the eve of October 7; and command, control and orders during battles from October 7-10.
These studies were publicly released by the military in February. Beyond the General Staff-level work, the IDF also pursued 41 separate investigations of battles and major events tied to October 7, most of which are already public. In total the panel reviewed 24 major investigations along with one major tactical probe — the attack on the Nova music festival — and evaluated them “from a systemic and integrative perspective,” something that had not been previously done.
Importantly, the panel did not examine the interface between the military and the political echelon, nor cooperation among the military, the Shin Bet and the Israel Police.
In addition, the IDF requested that any active or reserve commander who believed they held information not included in the initial investigations come forward. About 80 commanders did so; the panel also interviewed roughly 70 individuals — including former generals and chiefs of staff — who held relevant positions linked to the October 7 events.
Among the 24 top investigations, the panel rated 10 as “green” — meaning “professional, comprehensive, and enable learning and progress.” These findings are ready for implementation within the IDF.
Nine investigations — including the Nova festival probe — were designated “orange,” meaning they “provide a solid factual foundation, but do not identify the points of failure or the necessary changes.” These will require additions before they can be applied effectively.
The remaining five investigations were labelled “red,” meaning “unsatisfactory.” Those included probes into Gaza strategy, the General Staff’s operational planning, decision-making during the night of October 6-7, and the morning actions of both the Operations Division and the Navy on October 7. These will be substantially re-investigated or supplemented before their findings can be actionable.
For instance, the Gaza strategy and Operations Division investigations were judged as “red” because their commanders lacked suitable qualifications, the panel found. The probe into the Operations Division, for example, began at 6:29 a.m. on October 7 — the moment Hamas’s attack started — and omitted any prior activity in that unit. A former commander, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Turgeman, was appointed to investigate what happened in that unit ahead of the attack.
The probe into decision-making on the night between October 6-7 was also deemed inadequate — however, in contrast, the intelligence-on-the-eve probe was rated “green”.
While the Navy’s investigation did give a detailed and accurate account of what occurred on the morning of October 7, the panel rated it “red” because it lacked implementable conclusions. Similarly, the operational-planning probe in the General Staff was judged to have no actionable conclusions.
For each investigation reviewed, the panel furnished “a detailed professional assessment of its quality and attached concrete recommendations,” the military said. The IDF also reported that the commanders conducting the investigations “acted with integrity and honesty, with the intention of conducting a truthful investigation,” and that there was no malicious intent behind the inadequate or unsatisfactory work.
Beyond assessing the investigations, the panel found that several significant topics were not probed at all — and recommended that they should be. One key omission: how the IDF handled intelligence reports since 2018 that outlined Hamas’s intention to launch a wide-scale attack, dubbed “Jericho’s Walls.” The military had, for years, dismissed the plan as unrealistic, even as Hamas continued preparations. None of the major investigations delved into this.
The team also recommended that the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) — a Defense Ministry body headed by a military general and responsible for liaison with the Palestinians — conduct a formal investigation, which it has not to date. Additional unexamined topics include the IDF’s coordination with the police and Shin Bet, the preparedness of Ground Forces, and readiness for a multi-front surprise war prior to October 7.
After hundreds of hours of work, Turgeman’s team produced a 140-page document identifying the following as the main causes of the military’s failings: a disconnect between the IDF’s strategic/operational view of Gaza/Hamas and reality; intelligence failures in threat-understanding and communication; neglect of the “Jericho Wall” plan; organisation and operational culture riddled with defective norms; a fundamental and persistent gap across command levels between reference scenarios and actual responses; and flawed decision-making and force-utilisation processes on the night of October 6-7.
The team asserted that the surprise of October 7 “did not emerge from an absence of information, but, on the contrary, on the night of October 7, a variety of intelligence had accumulated which, had it been professionally analyzed, could and should have led to a warning of a significant action.” They also noted that in 2023 senior military officials had warned political figures, including Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, that Israel’s adversaries were perceiving “internal weakness” in Israeli society amid the government’s planned judicial overhaul. Although the probes concluded this was not the reason Hamas launched its attack — which it had planned years in advance — the IDF did not elevate alert levels or deployments in response to the warnings.
“Most of the factors explaining the failure, as formulated by the team, span several years and multiple systems, which, in the team’s view, indicates a longstanding systemic and organisational failure,” stated the military.
With the publication of the report, Zamir declared his support for an external commission of inquiry into the October 7 failings: “The expert team’s report presented today is a significant step toward a comprehensive understanding, one required of us as a society and as a system,” he said. “However, to ensure that such failures never happen again, a broader understanding is needed, one that includes inter-organisational and inter-level interfaces that have not yet been examined,” he added. “For this purpose, a wide and comprehensive systemic investigation is now required.”
Despite successive polls showing a large majority of Israelis favour establishing a state commission of inquiry, Netanyahu and his coalition have declined to do so. They argue that a commission should only be set up after the war ends, and reject one appointed by the Supreme Court chief, claiming it would be biased.
Zamir is also poised to decide on “personal decisions” involving officers tied to the failures, potentially including the current chief of the Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder, who on October 7 was heading the Operations Division. Binder’s appointment as intelligence chief was controversial and drew protests from some lawmakers and bereaved families.
The expert panel was not mandated to recommend personal conclusions against officers; nevertheless, Turgeman told Zamir in a recent meeting “an event of this magnitude cannot pass without personal conclusions.”
{Matzav.com}
