Golan: 'A desecration of the memory of the fallen'

Contentious law for politically appointed Oct. 7 probe passes preliminary Knesset reading

Opposition MKs removed from plenum during heated session; Lapid pledges to ‘not cooperate with this shameful farce’ as coalition calls to investigate judicial system, High Court

Lawmakers on Wednesday voted 53-48 in favor of a preliminary reading of a highly controversial bill to establish a politically appointed probe into the October 7, 2023, failures instead of a state commission of inquiry, drawing heated protests and condemnations from opposition lawmakers and bereaved families.

Likud MK Ariel Kallner’s bill, which received the backing of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Monday, will now be sent to the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee for preparation for the next readings necessary for it to become law.

Several coalition members remained outside the chamber and did not vote, including Likud MK Yuli Edelstein and New Hope’s Zeev Elkin. The bill was supported by the ultra-Orthodox Shas party and Degel Hatorah faction of UTJ, while members of Agudat Yisrael either remained away from the vote or, in one case, abstained.

Kallner’s plan, a prior version of which the lawmaker floated earlier this year, calls for a majority of 80 out of 120 MKs to appoint a six-member investigative committee and its chairman. If there is no agreement after two weeks, both the opposition and coalition would be allowed to select three committee members each, who would be joined by four supervisory members representing bereaved families.

The proposal states that if either the coalition or opposition does not cooperate in the process or cannot settle on a candidate, the Knesset speaker will choose instead — giving the coalition effective control, as opposition figures have pledged to boycott the commission.

Any two members of the committee would be empowered to summon any person or investigate any entity, and all discussions would be broadcast live.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara panned the legislation on Sunday, describing it as “tailor-made” for the “personal” needs of the government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters have long rejected a state commission of inquiry, the country’s highest investigative authority, because its make-up would be determined by the judiciary, which his government does not trust and seeks to weaken through a judicial overhaul.

A ministerial committee led by the prime minister is set to decide the mandate and scope of the proposed “state-national” commission, which Netanyahu has said must also examine the 1993 Oslo Accords, the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza and the 2023 protest movement against the current government’s judicial overhaul agenda.

Opposition lawmakers repeatedly interrupted the pre-vote debate in the plenum, with ushers removing MKs including Yesh Atid’s Meirav Ben Ari, Hadash-Ta’al’s Ahmad Tibi and The Democrats’ Naama Lazimi, who held up a sign with the slogan: “No to whitewashing!”

At the same time, bereaved families protested the bill from the Knesset visitors’ gallery. Standing up and turning their backs to lawmakers, they held up images of their loved ones alongside questions they want answered, including “Why was permission given for a party to be held near the border?” a reference to the Nova festival, and “Who ignored the warnings of surveillance soldiers [ahead of the attack]?”

While successive polls have found that the majority of the public favors a state commission of inquiry, Kallner insisted ahead of the vote that “only part of the public will trust” a state commission.

“The current president of the Supreme Court is not an objective actor and therefore cannot determine the composition of the commission. This is not ideal, but reality cannot be ignored,” claimed Kallner, adding that the investigation must probe “the impact of threats of refusal [to serve in the military] on the erosion of Israeli deterrence in the year preceding the massacre, the conduct of the military echelon vis-à-vis the political echelon, and the impact of Supreme Court intervention in security matters in recent years.”

Far right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (Otzma Yehudit) sounded a similar note, reiterating his demand that the probe not only look into the political echelon but the judicial system too.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who has previously pledged not to cooperate with Kallner’s commission, accused Netanyahu of “running away” from responsibility for the failures of October 7.

“He is evading responsibility for the suitcases of dollars from Qatar,” which were for years transferred with Netanyahu’s approval to Hamas in Gaza, ostensibly to allow it to effectively govern. “He is fleeing from responsibility for the fact that the head of the Shin Bet warned him that Hamas was using the money to buy weapons, and he is fleeing from responsibility for the fact that the [IDF] chief of staff warned him weeks before the disaster that disaster was on the way; that the intelligence agencies warned him that a disaster was coming,” Lapid told the Knesset.

Netanyahu “has already said that this fictitious committee will investigate Oslo. Why only Oslo? What about the destruction of the First Temple? What about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?” he asked, pledging that “the opposition will not cooperate with this shameful farce.”

Responding to the vote, Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman accused the government of “trying to establish a governmental whitewash committee,” posting a video montage of Netanyahu’s previous public support for state commissions of inquiry into other matters.

“The people of Israel are not suckers. They demand to know the truth about the biggest massacre suffered by the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” he tweeted.

“A political inquiry committee is a desecration of the memory of the fallen and a spit in the face of the bereaved families,” declared The Democrats chairman Yair Golan. “Soon, a new government will rise with a clear mandate: to investigate the truth and bring those responsible to justice.”