Israelis wrestled with how to examine national failures as IDF Lt. Hadar Goldin was finally brought home to Israel after 11 years in Hamas captivity. At the same time, the IDF released a new critical review of the probes into the failures surrounding the October 7 attacks.
Meanwhile, the parents of many returned hostages demanded an official inquiry into those same failures, even as the government reiterated its refusal to approve the kind of independent commission typically established to investigate these kinds of disasters.
Hadar Goldin: The end of an 11-year struggle
Goldin was killed and kidnapped in 2014 during Operation Protective Edge, when Hamas terrorists emerged from a tunnel and attacked his patrol in Rafah in southern Gaza. The body of another soldier, Oron Shaul, was also kidnapped during Operation Protective Edge, in the neighborhood of Shuja’iyya.
Since then, Goldin’s family has fought for his release, but repeated efforts to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas failed.
After the October 7 attacks, Goldin’s family and many Israelis demanded that he and the three other hostages taken during and after Operation Protective Edge be included in any ceasefire agreement. The body of Oron Shaul was found and retrieved by Israeli forces shortly before the ceasefire in December.
Goldin’s body was finally included in this last ceasefire. With his return on Sunday, the bodies of four Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza.
At the funeral on Tuesday, Goldin’s father, Simcha, spoke about his son’s compassion and belief in respecting others. “In Hadar’s siddur (prayer book), he recited a prayer every day: ‘Grant that we may each see the virtue of our friends and not their shortcomings, that we may speak each one to his fellow in the straight and desirable way and do not raise any hate from one against his fellow.'”
“For the past 11 years, we abandoned Hadar’s way,” Simcha said. “We abandoned him in the hands of the enemy. We were addicted to prestige, money, and power, and we forgot the rock from which we are hewn. We, the Goldins, saw this great, cowardly decline through the abandonment of Hadar…We did not manage to convince Israeli society, which abandoned the fallen and the wounded, until Simchat Torah, October 7, 2023…Hadar said ‘in order to succeed, we need understanding, ability, and will.’ This is exactly what the soldiers did in the past two years.”
“The soldiers and commanders of the IDF [and] the operatives of the Shin Bet brought Hadar back to his land, atoned for the shame, and strengthened the people of Israel,” Simcha said. “To the thousands of soldiers, you proved to us what kind of generation you are. You are the generation of Hadar. You defeated the abandonment, the fear. You will fix Israeli society. We, the Goldins, believe in you. We will continue this struggle until it is fixed. This is possible.”
Idan Amedi, an Israeli singer who was wounded during the war and has advocated for Goldin’s return throughout the years, eulogized the soldier at the funeral and lamented that it took so long to bring him home.
Amedi recalled that a decade earlier, he had met with Goldin’s father and listened as he described the list of failures and shortcomings he saw concerning efforts to bring his son home. “I shamefully admit that I sat across from him and thought to myself that he was a bereaved father, that perhaps the pain was causing him to see a flaw in everything. I never imagined then that every word he said would turn out to be the complete truth.” He detailed how, over time, he discovered that the return of Hadar and the other hostages wasn’t being treated seriously.
“On every side of this long road, we have discovered one shortcoming and another,” Amedi said. “Step by step, I lost trust in prime ministers, government ministries, cabinet members, ministers, generals, journalists and media outlets. Everyone, regardless of political affiliation, looked at us with blank eyes. Some said that it was important but not strategic. Some said that the broader picture was more complex. Some said that one does not go to war over corpses. And we repeatedly said that those who abandon the fallen will one day sacrifice the wounded and the living.”
Amedi also criticized Israel’s decision over the years to provide aid and entry permits to Gaza without attaching a condition for the return of Hadar and the other hostages held by Hamas.
“October 7th wasn’t a disaster; it was a failure. ‘Disaster’ is a word used for natural storms, fires, accidents. October 7th was a failure, an intentional blindness despite all the signs written on the wall. This was not the war of rebirth. Rebirth is a painful process of an individual or a people who recognize their trauma and crisis, who admit to their fall and their destruction, who don’t sweep facts under the carpet. Rebirth will be possible when we actually recognize this, that we failed, when we will be ready to investigate and fix the internal issues. Only then will we rise again. “
“We will not stop until they are obliged, under oath, to give answers”
Additionally, on Sunday, IDF Staff Sgt. Itay Chen — an Israeli-American whose body was returned to Israel last week — was buried at Tel Aviv’s Kiryat Shaul cemetery.
At the funeral, Chen’s father, Ruby, condemned the army officials and politicians who he said had failed to prevent the October 7 massacre.
“Your commanders misled you (Itay), telling you that the next significant battle was going to be in the north,” he said. “Our politicians also gave Hamas the motivation to attack because they didn’t want to listen to the army commanders who came and told them that danger was coming, and that they needed to unite the ranks and lower the heat in the public discourse.”
“Here over your grave I promise you: Mom and dad and many others, we will pursue those guilty of putting you in an unprotected base and without reinforcements, and the commanders who stayed behind and did not come to fight with you – and also the politicians who were supposed to be the responsible adults, the ones ultimately responsible for the security of the country,” Chen said. “We will pursue them all and we will not stop until they are obliged, under oath, to give answers to the entire people of Israel, and to bear their responsibility, within the framework of a state commission of inquiry.”
“In my eyes, victory is not the fantasies of conquest of a minority in Israeli society, which always sees a bleak future intertwined with constant fear,” Chen added. “Victory in this war is first and foremost the courageous and difficult decision to return the last of the hostages, which is the beginning of the path to turn a page for a better future, and then to begin a true soul-searching, which is a prerequisite for renewing the people’s trust in their government. I pray that there will be enough worthy leaders in the country who will know how to lead to this correct place.”
How should the failures surrounding October 7 be investigated?
The question of how to investigate the failures surrounding October 7 has become a flashpoint in Israeli society. Many Israelis have demanded the establishment of a State Commission of Inquiry, a special mechanism with extensive investigative powers meant to examine cases of exceptional national significance. Such a commission can only be established through a government decision.
A State Commission of Inquiry can call witnesses and compel them to testify on oath. It also conducts wide-reaching investigations, with the ability to examine all branches of government. Historically, these commissions have been viewed as independent and relatively unbiased. Members of the current government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, supported the establishment of State Commissions of Inquiry in past crises, including as recently as 2022.
However, according to the Commissions of Inquiry Law, the members of a State Commission are chosen by the President of the Supreme Court. The current government has been clashing with the Supreme Court for several years and does not recognize the current president’s authority. In light of that clash, members of the government have insisted that they will not approve the establishment of a State Commission of Inquiry because they believe it will be inherently biased.
On Monday, Netanyahu reiterated that he would not allow the establishment of a State Commission of Inquiry, insisting that at least half the country opposes it. Instead, he said that a new, external committee should be formed “with the broadest possible public support.” Polls conducted by Israeli media over the past two years have repeatedly found that a majority of Israelis support the establishment of a State Commission of Inquiry. According to a poll published by Maariv in late October, 64% of the public supports a State Commission headed by the president of the Supreme Court, with only 22% directly opposing this.
Although Netanyahu and other members of the government have repeatedly said they support such a commission over the past few months, so far, no steps have been taken towards forming such a body.
On Monday evening, i24News reported that Netanyahu had approved work on the new law that would be required to form a commission. The law, which could advance later this month, would reportedly include a clause allowing the government to appoint a senior government worker aligned with the opposition to select the opposition’s representatives if the opposition MKs are deemed uncooperative.
“We want, unlike you, to establish an investigation commission with the broadest possible public support,” Netanyahu said, addressing the opposition in the Knesset plenum. “Not a commission that is unacceptable to half the people or more. Not a commission that half the people believe that its conclusions will be written in advance. This must be a balanced commission that will hear everyone, interrogate everyone, and gain the maximum trust of the public…The investigation commission that we propose will be based on a composition that represents all parts of the people, and not just a part of it, at least the vast majority of the people, because there will always be a vociferous minority that will look for what divides them, and not what they share in common.”
Internal probe finds the IDF had enough information that October 7th shouldn’t have come as a surprise
An expert committee appointed by IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir to examine prior internal investigations into the failures surrounding the October 7 attacks presented its findings on Monday.
The committee, formed by Zamir in March, was created in light of public and political criticisms surrounding the quality and impartiality of the army’s internal investigations into the attacks.
The committee determined that while some of the prior investigations were “professional, comprehensive, and enabled learning and progress,” others failed to “identify points of failure or necessary changes,” others were “incomplete,” and others were deemed “unsatisfactory.”
The committee stressed, however, that all commanders involved in the prior investigations “acted with integrity and sincerity, driven by a genuine intent to conduct a truthful and thorough inquiry.”
The report noted six factors as the primary causes of the failures surrounding October 7:
- Conceptual failure – A gap between the strategic and operational reality in Gaza and the perception of that reality.
- Intelligence failure – In assessing the threat, understanding the situation, and failing to provide a warning
- Lack of engagement with the “Jericho Wall” plan – A 2022 document compiled by the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate outlining Hamas’ plans for a large-scale ground invasion into southern Israel, which was later executed on October 7, 2023.
- Organizational and operational culture – Marked by flawed patterns and norms that had deteriorated over the years.
- A persistent and significant gap at all command and professional levels between the defined threat and the operational response.
- Deficient decision-making processes and force deployment on the night of October 7, 2023.
The committee stressed that “the surprise of October 7th did not emerge from a vacuum or a lack of information — quite the opposite.” The experts noted that direct intelligence was collected on the night leading up to the attacks, which should have led to a significant response by the IDF. In addition, high-quality and exceptional intelligence had already been collected earlier about Hamas’s plans that should have raised an alarm.
The report additionally noted that throughout 2023, senior military officials warned that Israel’s enemies had identified internal processes (an apparent reference to the internal dispute surrounding the judicial reform and other issues in Israel in 2023) that were weakening the Jewish state and undermining deterrence. Despite these warnings, the IDF did not take the necessary action to improve alertness and readiness.
“Most of the factors explaining the failure, as identified by the committee, span several years and multiple branches of the IDF,” the experts said, emphasizing that this “indicates a long-standing systemic and organizational failure.”
The committee went into further detail, listing the failures that each branch of the military experienced leading up to and during the October 7 attacks. These included failures to prepare for a surprise attack in general, failures to properly assess Hamas’s strength, failures to prepare a coherent and efficient response to the attack, and failures to adapt to the situation during the attack.
The committee noted as well that female field observers who were stationed along the Gaza border had repeatedly pointed to unusual enemy activity in the months preceding the war. They stressed that a high-quality intelligence analysis of these signs could have highlighted the changes Hamas was conducting.
The committee provided a series of recommendations to the chief of staff for the future. These included placing a focus on the possibility of surprise attacks and increasing readiness for these types of attacks, a deep reform of the Intelligence Directorate with a focus on early-warning for wartime, a new assessment of how the different levels of command operate and exercise authority in relation to one another, and setting a command standard that upholds military professionalism.
In response to the committee’s report, Zamir stated, “We are investigating a tremendous failure — one that cost human lives, that touched countless families who lost what was most precious to them; a failure reflected in the hostages who returned and in those whose bodies are still held by the murderous terrorists in Gaza. Our responsibility is not to blur or conceal this failure, but to look it straight in the eye — and learn from it.”
“The corrections we will implement following this report will be integrated into every operational and combat activity, as well as into all working plans for the coming years — to ensure that the IDF continues to defend the people of Israel and fulfill its mission.” Zamir stressed however that “to ensure that such failures never recur, a broader understanding is needed — one that encompasses the inter-organizational and inter-hierarchical interfaces that have not yet been examined. To that end, a broad and comprehensive systemic investigation is now necessary.”
