Guarding the guardians: Will Israel's leaders accept responsibility for October 7? - opinion

Since the Simchat Torah massacre by Hamas on October 7, 2023, Israel has struggled to regain its sense of direction. The issue is not only pain and fear, but a profound sense that our entire national defensive wall cracked at once.

At 6:29 a.m., we lost our national sovereignty for several hours, and the result was unbearable. We were reminded again of the unimaginable price of losing national liberty – the destruction of individual liberty. Anyone who, during those hours, was not under Jewish sovereignty became utterly vulnerable. Murder, rape, and abduction were all symptoms of a brief collapse of independence.

How did this happen? How did the state, with all its agencies, fail in its most basic duty: protecting our lives? How and why did we lose our sovereignty, even for a few hours? The security doctrine collapsed, but this was merely the final symptom of a deeper malady.

The army, Shin Bet, judiciary, Knesset, government, media, academia, the cultural sector, and extra-parliamentary bodies all took Israel’s national existence for granted. Instead of cultivating a shared good with responsibility, each became preoccupied, in its own way, with small-minded politics driven by the pursuit of power, money, and prestige.

Yet, as time passed, we slid back into old habits. Former chiefs of staff are already arming themselves with slick lawyers. Political factions have resumed tearing each other apart over what kind of commission of inquiry should be established.

This returns us to a foundational problem in political thought: Who will guard the guardians? Who oversees those who hold power? Plato trusted in the education and virtue of the guardians themselves and offered no robust institutional answer. Modern democracies attempted a different approach: separation of powers, mutual oversight, a free press, and commissions of inquiry.

In Israel, however, the boundaries between branches of government have blurred in unhealthy ways. The dispute over a commission of inquiry illustrates this vividly.

The government prefers a different mechanism in which it would have significant influence over the appointments. This alignment of interests between the opposition and the judiciary distorts the democratic process.

Instead of negotiation, persuasion, and compromise between the coalition and opposition, most disputes have migrated to the courtroom. Within such a structure, the opposition has little incentive to agree on a compromise regarding the commission. It assumes, with considerable justification, that by refusing all compromise, the court will eventually grant it the outcome it desires.

Yet, the court itself is among the institutions that must be investigated. The opposition’s argument that those responsible for failures should not appoint the investigators applies equally to a state commission of inquiry appointed by the court, which would then be asked to examine itself.

The question of who guards the guardians is thus not an abstract philosophical puzzle. It is a concrete political and civic challenge: How can authority be constructed in a society in which nearly every central institution is entangled in struggles over the rules of the game themselves?

First, the coalition appoints one representative, and the parliamentary opposition appoints another. Second, these two representatives must jointly and unanimously select all commission members who are independent of both sides. No actor can impose its own loyalists, because every appointment requires the consent of its rivals. This is an institutional answer to the question of who guards the guardians: no one appoints the investigators unilaterally.

A commission formed in this manner cannot limit itself to the military and intelligence domains. It must also examine the media’s role in fostering the illusion of stability; the ways segments of academia contributed to a language that blurs distinctions between aggressor and victim; the political incitement and refusals to serve that sought to shatter the rules of the democratic game; and the permissiveness shown by law enforcement authorities toward the erosion of the rule of law.

It must examine the diplomatic conception and the security doctrine, from the flawed ethical code, through force building, to the application of military power. The massacre by Hamas on Simchat Torah was not merely a border failure; it was a failure of national consciousness. If we investigate only operational failures on the front line, we will miss the heart of the matter.

Still – and this is the heart of it – even the most courageous and professional commission cannot replace something else: leadership. Ultimately, the central question is not only who will investigate, but who is willing to stand before an investigation. Here, our tradition offers a sharp lesson.

Both Saul and David sinned. Both stood before a prophet. Saul, when asked to give an account, shifted blame onto the people, onto circumstances, onto public pressure. In doing so, he relinquished the backbone of leadership. One who refuses responsibility loses legitimacy. Therefore, the prophet Samuel removed the crown from Saul.

David, by contrast, after the sin with Bathsheba, hears the prophet Nathan’s parable of the poor man’s lamb. He is horrified by the injustice and calls for the guilty man to be punished. Then he hears the words: “You are the man.”

This is the moment of truth. David could have, like Saul, escaped responsibility. This would have been a natural human response. Instead, he responds: “I have sinned before God.” Only after this confession does the prophet grant him life. Though the punishments are severe, the dynasty endures.

David embodies a different model of leadership, not one of feigned righteousness that pretends to be immune to error, but of strength to bear responsibility rather than flee it. This is the kind of leadership Israel needs today. Leaders who will stand before the commission and say not only “others erred,” but “here is where I erred.”

Without an agreed-upon mechanism, any commission will be dismissed as a partisan document. Without cultivating responsibility rather than scapegoating, we will not learn from our mistakes.

This is the true challenge that October 7 presents us with: not merely establishing a commission, but meeting the moral test of accepting responsibility. An independent commission, one that is not subordinate to the government, the opposition, or the judiciary, can create the conditions for national repair.

If we can construct an inquiry mechanism unbound by vested interests, and empower leadership willing to bear responsibility for its actions, then perhaps from the catastrophe of October 7 a path to renewal may yet emerge.