gshc2020.com

Israelis demand accountability over 7 October failures three years after attacks

ByLucy Williamson

Middle East correspondentReporting fromJerusalem and Kfar Aza

As the sky began to lighten over Israel's border with Gaza on Wednesday, the people of Kfar Aza moved silently towards the armoury at the centre of the kibbutz.

It was there, shortly after 07:00 on 7 October 2023, that Hamas-led attackers killed half the community's 14-member civil defence squad. They were among 64 killed and 19 kidnapped from the community that day.

The pain of those attacks is still fresh here. But three years on, there are questions about who else should pay the price for Israel's security failure.

"I need my country to take responsibility," said Inbar Goldstein, whose brother and niece were killed, and four other relatives kidnapped from Kfar Aza.

The 7 October attack was the deadliest Israel had suffered since its creation in 1948. About 1,200 people were killed across southern Israel by gunmen who broke through the border fence and attacked communities there. Another 251 people were taken back to Gaza as hostages.

Three years on from Israel's biggest security failure, there is still no independent state inquiry into how it was allowed to happen.

And the man in charge at the time of that failure - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - is running for election again, with the same campaign promise: to be stronger and tougher than anyone else in protecting Israel from its enemies.

"Nobody investigated the roots [of the attack]. It didn't start or end on October 7th - it's a long process of abandonment," Goldstein said.

Aside from Hamas's responsibility for the attack itself, there are growing questions in Israel around what caused the country's intelligence failure, what information was passed to military and political leaders in the run-up to the attacks, and what Netanyahu himself knew.

For months beforehand, young female soldiers posted at bases along the Gaza border to watch for suspicious activity had warned their superiors about possible preparations for an attack.

Among them was Roni Eshel. She was killed with 14 other members of her unit when gunmen overran their base at Nahal Oz, just next to Kfar Aza.

"There are so many questions," her uncle Elad Levy told me. "Were the Egyptians warning the prime minister? The Emiratis? Were there no other warnings Netanyahu ignored? We need to find out what happened – not just on the day, but the year before, and five years before that."

"The truth should be clear," he continued. "If we don't inquire into this, it will happen again and again."

Over the past three years, there have been mounting reports of warnings being given to Netanyahu - by his own security chief, as well as by regional neighbours – which he denies.

Last month, Israel's Haaretz newspaper published extracts from a new book, alleging that the leader of the United Arab Emirates had called Netanyahu 10 days before the attack to warn of Hamas plans for a major operation.

Netanyahu's office has dismissed the report as "an absolute lie" and has said he will sue the newspaper.

Amir Ohana, a member of Netanyahu's Likud party, said in a social media video last month that it was "preposterous and absurd" to suggest that Netanyahu could have known about the attack when the former Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, had only told a handful of people.

Israel's prime minister, he said, had since reshaped the Middle East and did not give up, "even when voices inside and outside Israel called on him to stop".

Netanyahu has blamed his own security chiefs for the failures that led to the 7 October attacks, accusing them of deliberately choosing not to wake him in the hours beforehand, for fear that he would order a massive deployment of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and escalate the situation.

"God forbid we wake up the prime minister and he says, 'Wake up the entire IDF immediately, scramble the air force!'" he told Israel's right-wing Channel 14 television network.

"What would have happened if they had woken me? This would not have happened," he said, suggesting that his response would have better protected Israel from the attacks.

Yaacov Katz, a journalist and author of several books on Israel's defence, has written about the growing concerns over Hamas activity that emerged in the hours leading up to the assault.

In his book, While Israel Slept, he describes calls between senior military figures and intelligence chiefs in the early hours of the morning, the sudden recall of commanders from leave, and the dispatch of an elite intelligence unit to the border.

He told me their expectation was, at worst, a small, limited incursion by Hamas fighters.

"So why would [Netanyahu] order a massive pre-emptive strike by the IDF, if every security chief is telling him this is not what this is going to be? Waking him would not have made a difference."

But he said Netanyahu faced other questions about his failure to spot what was happening.

"You were the prime minister, you set the policy," he said. "You created a doctrine and a policy of containment that trickled down to the last soldier manning the watchtower on the border with Gaza: contain Hamas, separate the Palestinians, and keep Hamas in power to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."

For years, Netanyahu oversaw a policy of containing - not confronting - Hamas in Gaza, during which Israeli governments allowed Qatar to provide hundreds of millions of dollars of aid for Gaza.

A month after the 7 October attacks, he told a German newspaper that claims he wanted to strengthen Hamas were "an absolute lie".

"On the contrary we wanted to continue to weaken Hamas as much as we could," he told Die Welt. "But the money was meant to avoid a civilian catastrophe - that is the only reason."

Months after the attack, the IDF's then-chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, publicly apologised for the failure to defend civilians, saying he carried that weight on his shoulders and in his heart.

He resigned. A raft of military commanders were later fired, and Israel's domestic intelligence chief left his position.

Netanyahu has so far rejected any personal responsibility for the attacks.

Col Richard Hecht was the IDF's international spokesman on 7 October. He told me the refusal of political leaders - including Netanyahu - to accept responsibility was part of the reason he resigned six months later.

"It's a disgrace," he told me. "When you look at accountability, within the IDF I don't think there's a problem. And that's the pain. That's one of the main causes of bad blood between the political echelon and the military."

At a memorial ceremony in Jerusalem on Monday, the father of one of those killed on 7 October stood up to challenge the prime minister.

"You didn't protect my son, you didn't protect all those who were murdered," he said, before security guards led him away. "Shame! Disgrace!"

Three years on from the attacks, calls for accountability are growing. Campaigners have asked Israel's highest court to force the government into establishing a state commission of inquiry.

Yizhar Shai, a former minister and opposition politician whose youngest son Yaron, a soldier, was killed on 7 October, is part of that campaign.

"We are going into these elections almost blindfolded as it relates to October 7th," he told me during a protest in Tel Aviv last week. "Our prime minister has never given a detailed, thorough explanation under oath, where he would be asked all the tough questions and have to explain everything."

Netanyahu has consistently refused a state inquiry led by Israel's Supreme Court, arguing recently that the country's judiciary would be biased against him.

Before calling an election, his government proposed an alternative "national commission of inquiry", whose members would be appointed by political parties.

But despite passing a raft of other legislation before parliament ended its session in July, Israel's government said it ran out of time to pass a bill setting out its plans for the inquiry.

We approached several members of his Likud party for an interview, without success. We also requested that the party respond to their critics, and are waiting for their response.

Netanyahu's denial of responsibility has now become an election issue, as he prepares to run for re-election later this month.

A video game called Sleepy Bibi, released by the team of his main opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, asks players to help the prime minister avoid responsibility by dodging warnings of an attack and "making it to bed safely".

Netanyahu has styled himself for decades as Israel's "Mr Security", and despite presiding over the worst security failure in Israel's history, is running on the same security platform again.

For the past three years, he focused on waging new wars against Israel's enemies - Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

Polls suggest a close race, and that the 7 October attacks are central to many voters' decisions.

Yaacov Katz says the legacy of 7 October is a coin with two sides.

"There are the failures, the mistakes that led to the Hamas invasion," he told me. "But there's the other side, which is Netanyahu's argument; that [he] has re-engineered the Middle East and made Israel a safer place today. And that is an argument Israelis take with them to the polls."

The shadow of the attacks hangs over this election, dividing Israel once again along political lines.

For supporters, it confirms that Benjamin Netanyahu is still needed to keep Israel safe.

Critics say his political survival puts Israel at risk.