Father of Oct. 7 victim says state has ‘unceasing and unforgivable debt’ to investigate failures that led to Hamas-led attack

Liad Baram, whose soldier son Neta was killed at the Nahal Oz military base in the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, tells anti-government protesters at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square that the state still has an “unceasing and unforgivable debt” to probe “the circumstances and incidents that led to the largest and worst disaster since the state was founded.”

Roughly 250 people attend the weekly protest tonight to demand a statutory state commission of inquiry into the attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected such a commission because its members are chosen by the judiciary, which he claims is biased against him.

“Instead of leadership… we come up against a wall of obtuseness and evasion of responsibility,” says Baram, a member of the October Council of families that lost loved ones in the massacre and demand it be probed by a state commission of inquiry.

“The system that’s in power demands, and keeps making sure, to blind us,” he says. “It refuses to investigate, and will continue to do so if, God forbid, it’s reelected.”

Baram also references recent Hebrew media reports that IDF surveillance soldiers and returning residents of devastated Gaza border communities have warned of unusual movements in the Strip — “occurrences across the fence just like before October 7,” he says.

Parents of IDF soldiers in the area, worried about a repeat attack, “want to intervene” on behalf of their children but “are afraid to, because their sons and daughters are threatened with military trials and incarceration,” Baram says, adding: “It’s better to be in a military jail than in a military cemetery.”

“The past few days prove beyond a doubt: We can’t wait” for a state inquiry, he says. “We won’t be silent or stop demanding truth and transparency… because we have no other land.”