The government’s commission of inquiry into failures surrounding October 7 will probe “the judicial system” and others who “weakened our deterrence,” Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, a member of the ministerial panel appointed to determine the mandate of the government’s controversial commission of inquiry, declared on Tuesday.
The coalition announced on Sunday that it was setting up its own comission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the Hamas invasion and massacre of October 7, 2023, rather than a heavyweight state commission of inquiry. The government has steadfastly opposed the establishment of a state inquiry into the onslaught, in which Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians murdered amid horrific acts of brutality, and abducted 251. It was the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust and the worst disaster in modern Israeli history.
State commissions of inquiry have been established in the past to look into major military failures, including the events of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon in 1982.
In a lengthy post on X, Eliyahu, of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said Israel will have to “look the truth in the eye,” and the commission “will have to deal not only with what happened, but with how we got there: the moral, strategic, and tactical failure that led to the greatest security collapse in the state’s history.”
“I will enter that room with one goal: to ensure that the commission investigates the full truth. The commission I will fight for will not be another out-of-touch committee of those who have lived their whole lives in an ivory tower, but a commission that will include those who know firsthand the smell of gunpowder, who know what it is to fight the enemy, sometimes with their hands tied,” he continued.
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Rather than dealing with tactical issues such as “which outpost fell and when,” the government’s investigation will focus on “the rotten root, without ignoring the elephant in the room: the role of the state prosecution, the judicial system, former [IDF]chiefs of staff, and all those who weakened our deterrence.”
“The commission will also have to investigate those who imposed absurd and delusional moral rules on the IDF, rules that tied the hands of the soldiers; those who led the IDF to a mindset of victory in only one arena: the competition to be the most moral army in the world, a competition in which the only participant is the IDF,” he added.
There has been little evidence to suggest Israel’s judicial system had a significant role in determining the government’s policy in Gaza in years past. Critics of the government accuse it of seeking to set up a commission that will shift the blame away from the current and previous governments of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a debate at the Knesset in Jerusalem, November 10, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Despite being touted as an “independent” investigation, the government commission’s mandate will be determined by a group of cabinet ministers, led by Justice Minister Yariv Levin. The special ministerial panel will have 45 days to submit its recommendations to the government regarding the commission’s mandate, including the topics and timeframes that will be probed.
In his post, Eliyahu rejected allegations that the government investigation will be a “political commission,” stating that it will comprise security professionals rather than being “dominated by jurists,” and says that it will be a “broad investigation” focusing on the period “from Oslo until today.”
The Oslo peace accords in the 1990s created the Palestinian Authority to administer parts of the West Bank and Gaza. The PA was then ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007.
The commission, Eliyahu asserted, will provide “real accountability” by “identifying those who created the conditions for this terrible disaster.”
Monday’s announcement of the composition of Levin’s ministerial panel was slammed by government critics, with Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman arguing in a statement on Tuesday that the probe’s “sole purpose” was for the government to “escape responsibility and place all the blame on the IDF and the security establishment.”
“The very existence of the cover-up committee is a desecration of the memory of the murdered and a spit in the face of the entire people of Israel,” Liberman argued.
Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman at a faction meeting at the Knesset on November 10, 2025 (Sam Sokol/Times of Israel)
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid charged Sunday that the judicial overhaul spearheaded by Levin caused Israel’s security to be neglected in the months before the Hamas invasion and massacre, and that this was a factor in enabling the devastating onslaught.
The controversial judicial overhaul plans, unveiled by Levin in January 2023, triggered mass demonstrations against the proposals, which came to a halt with the Hamas onslaught.
Some activists who served as reservists in the IDF had threatened to stop showing up for duty should the overhaul become law, and allies of Netanyahu have seized on those threats to pin the blame for the Hamas onslaught on the anti-government movement.
At the time, Israeli security officials and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant warned Netanyahu that the overhaul and the resulting social and political upheaval posed a risk to national security.
Security chiefs had also warned against Netanyahu’s years-long policy of letting Qatar send millions of dollars in cash to Hamas on a weekly basis, which the premier — whose top aides are under investigation over their allegedly illicit ties to the country — has said was earmarked for government salaries.
In a statement listing his grievances against specific members of the panel, Lapid slammed Eliyahu as the minister “who offered to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza,” a reference to his 2023 statement that the use of nuclear weapons against Hamas in Gaza would be an option. Eliyahu’s comments were later cited by South Africa in a motion accusing Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Shiri Bibas (left) and her sons Ariel, 4, (top-right) and baby Kfir, who were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 and murdered in captivity. (Courtesy/Foreign Ministry)
“These are the ministers Netanyahu has appointed to whitewash his own blame and dissemble his own responsibility for the October 7 massacre,” said Lapid. “It won’t work.”
In an angry post on Facebook, Ofri Bibas, the sister of released hostage Yarden Bibas, asked why these “heartless people” who “abandoned” her family in captivity should be in charge of shaping the investigation.
“These are the people without morality and justice who are supposed to establish the committee, determine what it will investigate, how and to what extent,” she asks, slamming Eliyahu for his July 2025 call to delay the release of the hostages until “victory” has been achieved over Hamas.
Bibas’s sister-in-law, Shiri Bibas, and nephews Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9 months, were taken hostage in the Hamas invasion of October 7 and murdered in Gaza.
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