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Why Netanyahu Blocks an October 7th Investigation [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-31
For the last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency and Bar no longer attends cabinet meetings. Netanyahu accuses Bar of betraying his trust. Bar responded that his obligation was to help free the remaining hostages, not personal loyalty to Netanyahu. Under Bar, Shin Bet has been investigating the reasons for the success of the Hamas attack on Israeli on October 7, 2023, an investigation that Netanyahu wants to block.
The Shin Bet, which was responsible for monitoring militant groups in the Gaza Strip, issued a report acknowledging that it understood the threat posed by Hamas and accepted responsibility for its failure to prevent the attack. The report also criticized Netanyahu charging that his government’s policies facilitated the attack. According to Bar, “Shin Bat’s “investigation reveals a long and deliberate disregard from the political leadership from the organization’s warnings.” The Israeli army also accepted some blame because it underestimated Hamas’ capabilities.
To block an investigation that could expose possible malfeasance, Netanyahu has also tried to emasculate the Israel court system. In Israel, under the 1968 State Commissions of Inquiry Law, judicial commissions investigate possible government failures that impact on the Israeli people. There have been sixteen commissions since 1969 including a commission that reported on Israel’s unpreparedness for the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Under the law, the government must request the creation of the commission, but the president of the Israeli Supreme Court selects its members to ensure findings are non-political. During Benjamin Netanyahu’s sixteen years as Prime Minister of Israel, the governments he headed never established a commission of inquiry. Netanyahu’s parliamentary coalition is currently pushing a bill that would give the Prime Minister and the cabinet authority to appoint commission members instead of the judiciary.
There are a number of questions that need to be examined by a Commission of Inquiry investigating the events leading up to Hamas’ attack on Israeli on October 7, 2023. The biggest questions include: Why is Netanyahu blocking formation of a Commission of Inquiry?; What role did the Netanyahu-led government play in empowering Hamas?; How much did the military and the Netanyahu-led government know about Hamas plans before October 7?; Why was Israel unprepared to quickly repel the attack and prevent the murder of over 1,200 people and the taking of more than 200 people as hostages? Other questions include: Where did Hamas get the money, equipment, and material to build its underground tunnel network?; and How did Hamas dispose of millions of tons of dirt and debris without Israeli knowledge? Despite Donald Trump’s ridiculous claims, Hamas did not use inflated condoms supplied by a United States foreign aid department as part of the attack.
These are some things we do know. They are reasons Netanyahu fears what a Committee of Inquiry would document. My sources are American and Israeli newspaper and media reports.
The Netanyahu government permitted or at least tolerated the funding of Hamas.
I am not accusing Israel and Netanyahu of funding Hamas, but with Israel’s backing, Qatar channeled millions of dollars to Hamas. Netanyahu authorized the cash flow to Hamas, even when concerns about the use of the money were raised within his own governing coalition that the money was not being used for humanitarian purposes. Monthly payments started in 2018 and an estimated billions of dollars was delivered in cash-filled suitcases that passed through Israeli territory over the course of a decade. Israel approved the plan in an August 2018 security cabinet meeting. Netanyahu defended the decision claiming the agreement was made “in coordination with security experts to return calm to (Israeli) villages of the south, but also to prevent a humanitarian disaster (in Gaza).” It reaffirmed support for the delivery of the money from Qatar to Hamas weeks before the October 7, 2023 attack. The delivery of funds was often facilitated by Israeli billionaire Shlomi Fogel, a close associate of Netanyahu. The United States was aware of the Qatari payments to Hamas and Israel’s complicity with the project. One reason the United States accepted this is that the Gulf nation is home to a major American airbase in the Middle East.
Netanyahu’s position was not really about humanitarian aid. According to interviews with Major General Amos Gilad, a former senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, and Shlomo Brom, a former deputy to Israel’s national security adviser, support for Hamas was intended to cement divisions between Palestinian leadership on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and undermine demands for creation of an independent Palestinian state. Although the plan was not supported by Israeli intelligence services, the cabinet also believed the money flow would keep Hamas in check.
In 2015, far-right Member of Parliament Bezalel Smotrich, the current finance minister, argued that Hamas was an asset in Israel’s conflict with the West Bank Palestinian Authority. In a 2019 meeting of the Likud Party, Netanyahu made a similar point, arguing that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Hamas.
Despite Israeli and United States description of Hamas as a terrorist organization, Hamas was involved with Israel in discussions about the number of work permits Israel provided Gazan laborers. Jobs in Israel sent cash back to Gaza. At the end of Netanyahu’s fifth government in 2021, approximately 3,000 work permits were issued to Gazan laborers allowing them to work inside Israel. After Netanyahu returned to power in January 2023, the number of work permits increased dramatically to nearly 20,000.
Israel knew about the Gaza Strip tunnel network for more than a decade.
Israeli intelligence knew about Hamas’s tunnel network for more than a decade, referring to it as the “Metro.” Some of the tunnels are so large they can facilitate truck transport and stretch for miles, even up to the Israeli border. They are paved with steel infrastructure and cement walls. Israel followed construction of the tunnels through an on-the-ground spy network and with geophysical surveys and aerial surveillance. In 2014, Israel invaded the Gaza Strip in an operation nicknamed Operation Protective Edge and claimed it destroyed over thirty of the tunnels. General Yehuda Kfir, an engineer, headed an underground warfare department in the Israeli military. Kfir warned of the threat to Israel from the tunnels and called for a parliamentary committee to evaluate possible countermeasures.
Hamas constructed between 350 and 450 miles of tunnels requiring thousands of tons of concrete beneath the Gaza Strip which the Israeli electronic spy system could not have missed. A question that needs to be addressed is what did Hamas do with all the dirt and sand it excavated and how could Israel have missed its removal?
The Netanyahu government and the Israeli military ignored repeated warnings about the October 7th Hamas attack.
Israeli officials had a detailed copy of Hamas’s battle plan for the October 7 terrorist attack, code-name “Jericho Wall “over a year before it happened. Israel dismissed it as too difficult for Hamas to deploy, but it should have been leery because the blueprint included detailed information about the location and size of Israel’s military forces. The 40-page point-by-point plan opened with a barrage of rockets and a drone attack on security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, followed by an invasion via paragliders and motorcycles with other fighters on foot. There is evidence that the Hamas plan was widely circulated among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but it is uncertain whether it was ever presented Netanyahu or top political leaders.
In July 2023, just three months before the Hamas attack, an analyst with Israel’s signals intelligence agency warned that Hamas was conducting intensive training exercises along the border that followed the Jericho Wall blueprint. The analyst’s warnings were ignored. In the months prior to the October 7th attack, military spotters along the Israel-Gaza border reported that convoys of pickup trucks loaded with Hamas fighters were driving along the border and stopped to peer across with binoculars. On the day of the attack, the military spotters reported a suspicious mobilization of Hamas forces and they continued to report as the invasion commenced, but senior military officials did not respond until it was too late to repel the attack.
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