A Different View on Israel

What Really Happened On October 7th 2023? We will probably never know

Israel’s longest and most devastating war officially ended a couple of months ago, even though the army is still very much involved with cease-fire violations by Hamas terrorists, who  continuously attempt to cross the so-called “yellow Line” and are mostly eliminated.

And, even though more than two years have passed since the disaster of October 7^th (as the war is still called), the Israeli parliament still has not established a suitable committee to investigate the events that happened on that fateful day, who should be held responsible and how it will be prevented from happening again.

In the early days of the war, numerous members of parliament, including many from the coalition, insisted that a parliamentary inquiry, independent from coalition or opposition would be the right thing to do. Only then an objective inquiry could be assured, and the truth would come out for the public (through elections) to decide.

However, they did not count on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his survival wars. It quickly became clear that Netanyahu was not at all interested in an independent inquiry, and quickly the coalition partners (under pressure and/or threats), fell in line with their leader.

Netanyahu is not in the least interested in setting up an inquiry committee, parliamentary or otherwise, and nothing has been done to establish any committee (except efforts by Netanyahu) and Netanyahu and his underlings have made every effort to prevent it. It appears unbelievable, but more than two years after the biggest disaster occurring to the Jewish people since the holocaust, nothing was done to investigate its failures and prevent a repeat disaster.

Netanyahu has been busy blaming the failures on everyone possible, including the army, the mosad and others, which has resulted in the resignations of many senior personnel, including the head of the army. The Prime Minister has not hesitated to accuse almost everybody for the failures of October 7^th , except one: himself. Taking into account the various aspects of the disaster, this is not at all surprising.

As commander in chief, the Prime Minister is the responsible, and also military decisions have to be approved by the Israeli cabinet, including the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister. Thus, the ultimate responsibility for success AND failure, lies with the Prime Minister.

He hasn’t stopped at anything to prevent this from happening. The attempts to prevent the establishment of an objective investigating committee have been mostly successful, and if any committee will be established at all it will be set up to prevent the truth from being revealed and not to solve the many questions that remain.

And then last week, the Prime Minister’s office presented a “Protocol” which contains summaries of meetings that took place before October 7^th 2023, which were selected specifically to distance Netanyahu from the failures and put the blame on professionals only. Even though it quickly became clear that documents were selectively excluded from the “Protocol” when they did not support Netanyahu’s claims, and even that during wartime, reservists were called up to go through the many documents, the Prime Minister is counting on this “Protocol” to be sufficient to distance himself from any responsibility for the disaster.

Even former Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant ,a member of the Likud party could no longer hold back and called Netanyahu, on life television, ”a Liar”. However, none of the other coalition members has done so and it is clear that Netanyahu’s threats have worked.

So we may never know what really happened on October 7^th 2023, and the things that led to the disaster. But a dictator doesn’t need to explain himself, or does he?

I hope you found this article interesting and I welcome any comments you may have.

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