On January 4, 2024, only three months into the war, IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi tried to start a process to investigate the October 7 massacre. It would include former IDF chief of staff Shaul Mofaz and a mandate to assess the IDF and some related issues.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would quickly kill that process. Killing it would fundamentally weaken the push for Israeli officials at all levels of government to take responsibility for the October 7 massacre.
What was the process supposed to look like?
Mofaz was expected to be joined by former IDF Military Intelligence Directorate chief Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash and former IDF Southern Command chief Sami Turgeman.
The three, besides being top former officers, had filled the three most critical IDF roles that needed to be investigated: the role of Halevi, the role of Military Intelligence Directorate chief Aharon Haliva, and the role of IDF Southern Command chief Yaron Finkleman, as well as the role of their predecessors in those jobs.
Mofaz was IDF chief until 2002 and defense minister until 2006, so he was not part of the “strategic concept” of deterrence with Hamas, which did not take power in Gaza until 2007.
Likewise, Ze’evi-Farkash was the intelligence chief until 2006 and was also disconnected from any conflict of interest for being blamed.
Turgeman was Southern Command chief until 2015, so he was also more than eight years removed from the October 7 massacre. He also had commanded forces during the 2014 Gaza war, Operation Protective Edge, a 50-day conflict that could give him helpful perspective.
The probe was due to kick into high gear as the IDF was transitioning out of its “main war” status into low-intensity conflict fighting, after it had already beaten most of Hamas’s main forces in northern Gaza and Khan Yunis, and it would not invade Rafah until four more months.
One of the other reasons Halevi had picked Mofaz was so that someone beyond his chain of command and of at least equal standing, and in some ways higher, would probe his own actions.
But Netanyahu had other plans.
At the time, he didn’t want probes of the October 7 massacre at all.
Netanyahu was worried that a probe might harm him politically
When he relented to allow Halevi to initiate a probe two months later, in March 2024, it was only after Mofaz was dropped, the idea of an external probe that might look beyond the IDF on some issues was dropped, and the mandate was very clearly limited to current IDF officers under Halevi.
Netanyahu was worried that any probe with a mandate beyond the IDF would harm him politically and would also increase momentum for a state commission of inquiry, which might zero in on him as one of the main officials who failed leading into October 7, 2023, given that he was prime minister for most of 2009-2023.
Instead, Halevi would preside over his own “crucifixion” and that of some of his top officers and allies for their failures relating to the October 7 massacre.
Ironically, Halevi’s successor, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, would bring back Turgeman to take a second look at Halevi’s probes this past March.
But Turgeman’s mandate was very limited, and it certainly did not go any higher than looking at Halevi’s conduct.
Netanyahu trusted Zamir more than Halevi to keep his name out of the crossfire of the probes; he had appointed Zamir, and Zamir had served as his personal military secretary.
IN CONTRAST, Netanyahu had hoped to tear down Halevi, both to focus most of the blame for October 7 on him – Halevi admits to a high level of responsibility, but insists it was shared with Netanyahu, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), and others – and because he never trusted him, given that Halevi was appointed by Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s rival.
When Turgeman presented his own probe on Monday, he ironically did not even mention the Mofaz incident of January 2024, which he was originally supposed to be involved in, dryly noting only that the probes had started in March 2024.
One of Turgeman’s criticisms of the Halevi probes was that they did not draw harsh enough conclusions against top officers.
In fact, Halevi did not draw much of any public conclusions against individual officers. He had directed those handling the probes that he managed to focus more on the strategic and tactical failures of the military, rather than which officers, by name, had failed.
Had the probe started in January 2024, it might also have finished by the middle of 2024. January-February to May 2024 were among the quietest months of the war, and significant progress could have been made.
If that had happened, might Halevi and many other officers who stayed in office until fall 2024, and even until this past March, have quit much earlier?
If the Mofaz inquiry had been allowed to continue, might the original conclusions have been harsher?
Signs from the Turgeman probe are that the answer to both questions would likely have been yes.
Such results would have meant that the IDF and the country would have seen a serious taking of responsibility around the six-month point and certainly within a year of the war starting.
Instead, Halevi’s probes were repeatedly delayed by other events, such as the escalation of the conflict with Hezbollah in September 2024 and with Syria in December 2024.
This also delayed the taking of responsibility, although some IDF officers responsible for the October 7 failures did resign in March 2024, and some did in the summer and fall of 2024.
Even after the Turgeman probe, Zamir has signaled that he may not try to fire more IDF officers for their October 7 failures, even preventing Turgeman from publicizing his specific recommendations about specific officers.
Overall, this also meant that no major report came out about the October 7 failures until this past March – by which time Netanyahu was forcing Halevi out, and he could take credit for beating Hezbollah, the Assad regime’s Syrian forces, and all of Hamas’s organized 24 battalions in Gaza.
This has allowed Netanyahu to cut his deficit in the polls should another election be held, and it allowed any political harm to him from the October 7 massacre to be diluted by reams of pages of criticism of the IDF, and eventually of the Shin Bet, when that organization did its own self-probe of all of its failures.
By the time Zamir’s second-look probe by Turgeman came out on Monday, Netanyahu was in even better shape politically, having won a major conflict with Iran in June and having returned most of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
But is Israel ready for another October 7 surprise if there has been no probe of the prime minister and his security cabinet?
If some other issue arises that involves the IDF and the Shin Bet or the IDF and the police, how will new disasters be avoided about who is in charge of what, when no probe has been allowed to go forward covering the intersection between different Israeli agencies and bodies on October 7?
The Halevi probes, the Shin Bet probe, and now the Turgeman probe have all helped the country better understand how to avoid another October 7 massacre.
But nixing the Mofaz probe delayed and weakened the taking of responsibility for October 7, and until a full state commission of inquiry covers everything, it is hard to see why Israel is immune from getting blindsided again down the road.