Knesset speaker apologizes for violence against bereaved families at Oct. 7 probe debate
Ohana doesn’t address October Council’s demand for state commission of inquiry into Hamas onslaught, defends his husband over video of him flipping off pro-hostage deal protesters
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana apologized on Friday to bereaved families who were violently prevented from entering the parliament’s spectators’ gallery during a debate earlier this week on forming a state commission of inquiry into failures leading to the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023.
“I bow my head” to the families, who have paid “the dearest price for the nation, the country and our ability to live here,” wrote Ohana in a lengthy post on X.
The speaker said he had received, and would act on, the results of a probe he ordered into the Monday fracas.
The post did not address the families’ demand for a state commission of inquiry, which the government opposes, and he also accused a “not small group of bandwagoners” of “pouncing” on the chaos at the Knesset to rail against the government.
The violence on Monday erupted when about 40 members of the families group, known as the October Council, tried to ascend a stairwell leading to the gallery. The group represents some 1,500 October 7 survivors, former hostages, and victims’ families demanding a state commission of inquiry.
Members of the group were pushed, hit and grabbed in what quickly devolved into a chaotic scrum. Video of the incident shared by the group showed one guard wrestling a man to the floor and pulling him aside — with his forearm across the man’s throat. Three people subsequently required medical treatment, according to Hebrew media reports.
Several of the relatives were seen crying and comforting each other after the violence and before they were finally allowed into the gallery, with some reciting the Kaddish prayer for the dead.
The father of Yarden Buskila, who was murdered on October 7 at the Nova festival, fainted during the clash and required medical attention. In a video shared online, Shimon Buskila said he was “broken” by the incident.
The group had informed the Knesset authorities the previous day that they wanted to attend the debate and had registered to do so. The visitors’ gallery, which holds 200 people, was empty at the time of the confrontation.
Ohana attributed the violence to a limit he had placed on the number of people in the spectators’ gallery. He said the Knesset Guard was ill-equipped to handle the crush of people who demanded to enter the gallery despite the audience cap.
משמר הכנסת מרביצים למשפחות שכולות ומשפחות חוטפים
כנסת ישראל 03/03/2025
צילום: מועצת אוקטובר pic.twitter.com/2tOtLdd48S
— אלימות ישראל (@Alimut_Israel) March 3, 2025
Some family members shoved the Knesset guards, “at least one of whom spent the night in the emergency room with a concussion and eye injury,” said Ohana.
The speaker said he had placed a cap on the Knesset audience after an earlier discussion in which three spectators banged on the glass screen separating the gallery from the plenum. Ohana did not specify when that discussion happened or who the spectators were.
According to Ohana, an expert opinion commissioned after that discussion had determined there was a risk the glass would break and harm lawmakers below.
Ohana added that ahead of the discussion on Monday, the Knesset had fielded requests to relax the audience cap, but the move was unanimously rejected by a committee including the parliament’s speaker, executive director and the head of the Knesset Guard.
During the chaos on Monday, Ohana said, he had dispatched the executive director and Knesset Guard chief to break up the violence and let families enter the gallery despite the audience cap, “while reinforcing the gallery with Knesset guards to prevent the danger of pressure on the glass.”
All bereaved families who wanted to do so were able to enter the gallery before Netanyahu and Opposition Speaker Yair Lapid’s speeches, according to Ohana.
The speaker said he has met with dozens of bereaved families since the start of the war in Gaza, and that the legislature building has provided bereaved families unparalleled support and unprecedented leeway to voice their pain, “except for a few, exceptional cases.”
Following the violence on Monday, opposition figures assailed Ohana, and the October Council called on him to resign.
The speaker has previously been criticized for barring the entrance to parliament of Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker and a prominent Netanyahu critic, and several bereaved family members have been forcibly ejected or otherwise treated disrespectfully at committee hearings.
The Knesset debate on Monday was convened under the so-called 40 signatures mechanism, in which that number of lawmakers can summon the premier, once a month, to address a certain issue.
At Monday’s discussion, opposition lawmakers demanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explain his resistance to a state commission of inquiry into the Hamas onslaught.
Opposition leaders have accused the premier of seeking to shirk responsibility for the shock assault, when thousands of terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
State commissions of inquiry — Israel’s highest investigative authority — are selected by the Chief Justice and headed by a retired Supreme Court justice.
Netanyahu, whose government has led a campaign to weaken the judiciary, said in his speech on Monday that such a commission would be skewed against him.
Ohana’s post on X came as a video circulated online of his husband Alon Hadad raising a middle finger at protesters gathered outside the couple’s apartment in central Tel Aviv to demand Israel secure the release of the remaining 59 hostages.
In the footage, taken on Wednesday and published Friday morning, Hadad could be seen standing on the apartment balcony, making the gesture and waving a flag of Netanyahu’s Likud party, of which Ohana is a member.
Responding to the footage, Ohana’s office said Hadad was specifically flipping off a “protester from the ‘Brothers in Arms’ movement who has been coming intentionally early every morning for several weeks, to wake up his children and the entire neighborhood’s children, using a megaphone.”
The statement accused the unnamed protester of “cursing at [Hadad] while he accompanies the children on the way to school,” and said Ohana intends to file a request for a restraining order against him.
רביעי בבוקר,
קבוצה קטנה של שכנים בשכונת ביצרון מקריאה (כמדי בוקר) את שמות החטופים מתחת לביתו של אמיר אוחנה.
רק שאז קורה משהו בלתי נתפס. ממרפסת ביתו של יו״ר הכנסת יוצא אדם עם דגל הליכוד ומניף אצבע משולשת למקריאים על רקע שמות החטופים.
כן כן. זה החומר האנושי! pic.twitter.com/rN36wMiua7
— Ran Harnevo (@harnevo) March 7, 2025
Brothers in Arms is a group of reservists opposed to the government’s attempt to weaken the judiciary. The group was prominent in weekly mass demonstrations against the effort before the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu and his government frequently accuse the group of having invited the Hamas onslaught by calling on Israelis to stop volunteering for reserve duty if the judicial overhaul was not scrapped.
During the war, “Brothers in Arms” activists can also be seen at weekly protests demanding a ceasefire-hostage deal with Hamas.
An agreement was concluded in January with the mediation of Washington, Cairo and Doha. However, protests were stepped up this week following the expiration of the agreement’s first phase on Saturday, as prospects for a second phase appear unclear.
The 42-day first phase saw Hamas release 33 women, children, civilian men over 50 and those deemed “humanitarian cases.” A second phase would see Hamas release 24 hostages still believed to be alive — all of them young men, including soldiers, abducted on October 7, 2023.
Netanyahu has largely held off on negotiating the second phase, which would require Israel to withdraw from Gaza — a red line for the premier’s right-wing flank, which has threatened to topple the government.
