New IDF probe reveals failures in five Oct. 7 investigations, which need to be redone

Zamir called for a wider inquiry into all of the government and defense bodies involved in Israel’s national security, leading up to and on October 7.

Five out of 25 of the earlier probes the IDF carried out of the October 7 disaster have failed, which will require those investigations to be redone, the military said on Monday.

Further, although the IDF’s probe of the earlier probes led by Maj.-Gen. (res.) Sami Turgeman did make private recommendations to Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir about which commanders should be fired or otherwise reprimanded for their own personal failures on October 7, those recommendations are not being shared with the public at this time.

Rather, Zamir himself, at some later unspecified date, will decide what happens to the officers in question, and he has signaled that he will avoid shaking the boat too much for officers who had significant successes with other aspects of the war, as the war drew on.

For example, all signs are that intel chief Maj.-Gen. Shlomi Binder will remain in his post, despite the fact that Turgeman has found greater failures regarding his conduct on October 7 than the original probes found.

Turgeman’s probe report runs over 700 pages and includes over 70 extended interviews and another 80 meetings or receipts of critical information from IDF officers and others covered by the probe.

The original probes were commissioned by then-chief of staff Herzi Halevi in March 2024 and were presented to the public in February, shortly before Zamir replaced Halevi.

Upon taking office in March, Zamir appointed Turgeman and 13 other senior officials to investigate whether the original probes had sufficiently analyzed and learned from the IDF’s vast October 7 errors, as well as how to discipline those officers who had failed.

Halevi had decided early on in the probes’ process that the investigations he oversaw would only diagnose and describe the IDF’s various failures, but not seek to discipline or fire specific officers for their failures.

Moreover, Halevi has said that his general message to officers who were at the center of the October 7 failures was that the whole defense establishment was responsible, and that he would trust each of them to take responsibility – meaning resign – at the point at which they felt most appropriate.

Most top IDF officials most directly involved in the October 7 failure have resigned

In March 2024, Col. “A.” and Military Intelligence analysis chief Brig.-Gen. Amir Saar resigned due to their roles in October 7.

In August 2024, intelligence chief Aharon Haliva and Gaza Division chief Brig.-Gen. Avi Rosenfeld resigned, with Unit 8200 head Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Yisraeli resigning a month later.

Halevi himself resigned in March, along with Southern Command head Yaron Finkelman.

Although by March, most top IDF officials most directly involved in the October 7 failure had resigned, many were criticized for not resigning within six months, let alone staying on for a year or more after the disaster.

Binder is one of the few top commanders who was in place on October 7 in a key post who was later promoted, and regarding whom there is no sign he will be forced to resign.

Halevi found that Binder’s failures stemmed from the flawed intelligence he was given, not his own failures, and both Halevi and Zamir have been impressed by his leading Israel through the victories over Hezbollah in fall 2024 and over Iran in June.

Five failed probes need to be redone

Regarding the five probes that Turgeman decided were failures, he said the missteps were not an active cover-up, but simply involved officers who were leading the probes who lacked sufficiently deep experience in some of the areas they were investigating.

In addition, he noted that the probes commissioned under Halevi were carried out in a “silo” – a disconnected fashion – with each investigator looking only at their specific area of focus, such as only looking at the Intelligence Directorate or only looking at the Operations Directorate.

In contrast, Turgeman has found that his staff were able to see additional critical failures that the earlier probes missed, by virtue of being able to view and analyze all of the key probes at once and as a continuous corpus of work.

The five probes they said needed to be redone included probes into the IDF’s: 1) broader strategy for Gaza, 2) preparations by the operations command relating to the IDF General Staff, 3) the decision-making process on October 6-7, the eve of the invasion; 4) the Operations Directorate itself, and 5) the navy.

Of the other 20 investigations that Turgeman’s commission investigated, one-third were found to have been performed at the highest levels, with no need for amendments, while about one-third were found to need significant revisions and supplementary follow-up, though the probes were still factually and structurally sound enough that they would not need to be entirely redone like the five failed probes.

Regarding the two-thirds of the probes that were found to be partially useful, but requiring significant revisions, sometimes the problem was that the conclusions drawn at the end of the probe were not harsh enough.

In other words, the earlier probe may have gathered all the necessary facts and analyzed all the right issues, but because of unclear reasons – some would say so as not to be too harsh on their fellow commanders – the conclusions drawn against fellow involved commanders were too lenient.

This also seems to be true for how Turgeman is likely to be critical of Binder in private to Zamir, but it appears Zamir will disregard taking harsh measures against Binder.

Besides those findings, Zamir called for a wider inquiry into all of the government and defense bodies involved in Israel’s national security leading up to and on October 7.

While Zamir did not specifically call for a state commission of inquiry according to the set law that provides for a High Court justice to lead such an inquiry, wield subpoena power, and grant the power to declare who failed, he left little doubt that he believed such an inquiry is needed.

Although Zamir did not name Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu specifically as needing to be probed, he did refer to the political echelon having joint responsibility for Israeli security along with the IDF.

Even Turgeman still did not probe the intersection of the IDF, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), and the police, such that Zamir believed that any future state inquiry would also need to investigate overlapping issues relating to all three security bodies.

Most notably, the Turgeman commission said that the probe into the Nova festival was inherently incomplete because it did not resolve the contradictory policies and jurisdictions between the IDF and the police, something which, if not directly addressed, will make it likely that the same problem could recur.

Successful probes will save Israel from making similar mistakes in the future

Previously, when Halevi and other senior IDF officers presented their resignations to the public, they virtually all called specifically for a state inquiry, saying that only such a probe would save Israel from making similar mistakes in the future at all levels of the nation.

Having said that, both Zamir and Turjeman insist on the IDF taking full responsibility for failing in its role to protect the nation on October 7, regardless of the failures of others.

Regarding Halevi himself, Zamir has not yet said anything.

Zamir is in an awkward position criticizing Halevi, not only because they are fellow IDF chiefs, but also because Halevi beat out Zamir for the post in 2023, and criticism could be seen as personal or a conflict of interest.

Still, Zamir may at some later point present Turgeman’s criticism of Halevi.

This could include that the former IDF chief could have ordered more forces into the field on the eve of October 6-7, when unusually dangerous intelligence signs were received, such as Hamas activating Israeli cellphone SIM cards in Gaza – something that would suggest a potential invasion.

Turgeman also analyzed the IDF’s failed handling of the Jericho Walls documents

In addition, Turgeman analyzed the IDF’s failed handling of the Walls of Jericho documents that the IDF seized from Hamas in 2021-2022, but regarding which most senior commanders ignored.

These documents described Hamas’s actual plans for its eventual October 7 invasion, but top IDF commanders downplayed it, viewing it as a fantasy and something Hamas would never try to carry out, since it was deterred by Israel’s military might.

The IDF said serious debates were held about multiple versions of the Walls of Jericho in 2021 and 2022, based on a 2018 version of the invasion and a 2022 version of the invasion.

However, the army said that top IDF officials involved in mid-2021 and then again in late 2022 analyzed the dangers, wrote statements about the dangers, but neither did anything large to prepare for the dangers, nor did they sufficiently highlight the document to their successors.

At one point, there was a meeting in May 2022 of the head of IDF intelligence Haliva, the previous head of the Southern Command Eliezer Toledano, the previous Gaza Division head, and the previous deputy of the operations directorate Yaron Finkelman, but when three of these officers moved on, they did not pass on information about it to their successors.

The IDF did not fully answer why Haliva did not take the issue more seriously, given that he stayed in office through October 7.

It also did not explain why Finkelman did not take it more seriously, given that he changed positions, but became the next head of IDF Southern Command – meaning that he was in a parallel post for dealing with the same issue.

Finkleman has told the Post and other select media that he wrote and analyzed thousands of issues as deputy head of the operations command, and that since neither Toledano nor his senior intelligence officers flagged the Walls of Jericho documents as important when he took over Southern Command, they essentially dropped off his radar screen.

But generally speaking, Turgeman felt that the probes managed by Halevi were too forgiving of IDF officials for ignoring Hamas’s Walls of Jericho plan.

He and his commission believe that it was gravely negligent of top IDF officials to have failed to take any concrete actions in the field to prepare for the scenario of a possible Hamas invasion once they had been exposed to that intelligence.

Also, the Turgeman commission found that the IDF had properly warned Netanyahu and the government multiple times in 2023 that the judicial overhaul debate rocking society and the IDF had weakened Israeli readiness and made Israel look more vulnerable in the eyes of Hamas.

Yet, it found that even if Netanyahu and the government did not respond to these warnings by halting the judicial overhaul push, the IDF still could have taken new measures to secure the border in light of the worsening dangers.

In contrast, critics of Netanyahu say that since he was the initiator of the judicial overhaul debate, he is more responsible for any negative impacts from that debate than the IDF, which would just be trying to respond indirectly to those impacts, without really having the ability to stop them.

Turgeman criticized the IDF’s actions leading into and on October 7 for many similar failings to those highlighted by the earlier Halevi probes.

But he did suggest even more than the Halevi probes that the culture of the IDF at all levels, even up to the high command, had fallen into a state of never being ready for a surprise ground invasion.

Regarding the air force, Turgeman reached some similar conclusions to the prior probes, which had said that the air force was not ready from either a planning or operational standpoint to help prevent an invasion on the ground.

However, Turgeman added that the air force still could have started to bomb the Israel-Gaza border much earlier than it did.

Ultimately, the air force only gave the order to bomb the border after 10 a.m. on October 7.

If the order had been given earlier, although the air force could not have stopped the first wave of Hamas invaders, which took Israel completely by surprise, Turgeman believes it could have stopped the second and third invasion waves, which would have substantially reduced the loss of life and number of hostages taken.

Zamir has directed Deputy Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Tamir Yadai to implement the lessons learned from Turgeman’s probe into the military’s structure and operations to make sure there are no repeat mistakes from October 7.

The IDF chief said that October 7 was a dark day and needed to be fully vetted, but that the IDF had arisen in many ways stronger over the course of this war and that his emphasis would be on continuing to strengthen it.