Comptroller said to put former top officials on notice over Nova festival probe

The State Comptroller’s Office sent drafts of findings from its investigation into the Nova music festival massacre to former senior officials, Hebrew media reported on Tuesday, as the probes of the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught continue.

The investigation, like the other probes the comptroller’s office is conducting of the October 7 attack, is controversial because the government has blocked the formation of a higher-level state commission of inquiry.

State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, who leads the office, has no legal background and was appointed under a Netanyahu-led government. The IDF has also sought to stop his probe.

Channel 12 reported late Tuesday that Englman sent drafts of his conclusions regarding the Nova festival, where terrorists killed more than 300 people and took scores of hostages, to a number of former officials, including former IDF chief Herzi Halevi and former Israel Police commissioner Kobi Shabtai. The report said that the drafts constitute “warnings” to the officials about what will be made public once the full reports are published.

The network reported that some of the former officials in question protested that they had received the conclusions before being interviewed by the comptroller’s office, which said they would have a chance to give testimony after reading the drafts.

Channel 12 did not detail the contents of the draft reports.

In a response to the report, the military said that it has “fully cooperated with the investigation, including in the audit of the Nova party.”

“However, the state comptroller chose to draw personal conclusions about some of the commanders without meeting with them and without hearing their comments on the issues raised by the investigation, as well as in other audits,” the IDF added.

“The IDF is formulating its response to the draft and will forward it to the State Comptroller’s Office,” the military said.

The IDF also releases the results of its own internal probe of the Nova massacre in April, as part of a series of investigations of its performance at each October 7 attack site.

Also responding to the report, the State Comptroller’s Office said: “The draft reports are based on dozens of meetings with the officials being looked at regarding the core of the investigations… Unfortunately, the IDF spokesperson responds in a way that does not correspond to the truth.”

The comptroller’s office said that, under the agreement reached in May, “the IDF understood that meetings and interviews may take place after the drafts have already been sent.”

“The State Comptroller’s Office operates exactly according to the guidelines and in accordance with its legal authority. All auditees are required to comply with the requirements of the law and cooperate with the audit so that it can provide answers to the citizens of Israel about the most serious failure in the history of the country,” it added.

It was the second public spat between the State Comptroller’s Office and the IDF this week, after the army on Monday demanded that the comptroller halt an investigation into the “core issues” surrounding the army’s failure to prevent the October 7 attack and other events in the ensuing war.

Days earlier, Englman sent a letter to IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir complaining that the army wasn’t cooperating with his investigation, saying he was having difficulty obtaining the documents he needed and getting senior officials to agree to meet with him.

Responding to the IDF’s filing on Monday, Englman strongly criticized the Military Advocate General’s office and said he would nevertheless continue to advance his audit.

The comptroller’s probe is currently the only state-sanctioned comprehensive investigation into the October 7 attack, in which thousands of Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 to Gaza as hostages, sparking the ongoing war.

Netanyahu has resisted setting up a state-commissioned inquiry over the last 22 months despite widespread public demand for an official probe, saying that it would be inappropriate while the war with Hamas was still ongoing and insinuating that such a probe would be biased against him and his government.

Englman’s investigation, which began in January 2024, was suspended for over a year when trying to probe the IDF and Shin Bet, due to the ongoing war and opposition from senior officials. With the appointment of Zamir in March 2025, a framework for the probe was established and endorsed by the High Court of Justice in April, allowing it to proceed.

Disagreements between the IDF and the state comptroller over how best to investigate the events surrounding October 7 are not new, and have persisted since Englman first announced the probe into “multi-system failures” in December 2023.

The military claimed that the probe would divert the attention of senior commanders from prosecuting the then-active wars with Hamas and Hezbollah — a position backed by Halevi, the IDF chief of staff at the time.

Emanuel Fabian and Stav Levaton contributed to this report.