Father of soldier killed on Oct. 7 calls for boycott of ‘governmental whitewashing committee’

Speaking at the Habima Square rally, former minister Yizhar Shai, whose son Yaron was killed fending off the Hamas-led invasion on October 7, 2023, calls on Zionist opposition leaders to vow not to serve in any government that doesn’t commit to establishing a state commission of inquiry into failure surrounding the attack, and urges potential investigstors and witnesses to refuse to cooperate with the probe that the government intends to establish in the commission’s stead.

“I call on the leaders of the opposition parties to officially commit not to join after the election any government that does not promise in its basic guidelines to establish a state commission of inquiry immediately upon taking office. I call on anyone who might be called up to serve as investigators in the governmental whitewashing committee to preemptively announce they won’t serve on it. I call on anyone who is called to testify to the whitewashing committee to refuse to appear before it — don’t appear before a committee that has a mark of shame hanging over it and the blood of the fallen and murdered smeared on the hands of its creators,” says Shay.

Adi Zakuto, whose father Avi was murdered in the southern city of Ofakim during the onslaught, says what “burns me today, more than the pain, is the thing my dad hated more than anything — evading accountability.”

The ministerial panel established this week to determine the scope of the governmental probe is “a political commission of the investigated trying to decide who will investigate them,” she says.

“My father was murdered because of a debacle. There are people who are responsible for that debacle. It is the same debacle that developed over the course of the years, that specific people are responsible for, that someone has to pay the price for,” she says. “Whoever was part of the failures can’t write the rulebook of the investigation. Whoever took Israel back to the age when citizens were prey cannot determine what can be asked and what can’t be probed.”

“In the name of my father, in the name of everyone who is no longer, who was kidnapped, rescued, wounded… don’t let them get away,” says Zakuto. “Don’t let them rewrite history. Don’t let them turn October 7 into another campaign.”

“Truth will come out; I won’t let anyone bury it,” she says.

Tali Biner, who survived the massacre at the Reim-area Nova music festival, stresses what she says is the non-partisan nature of the demand for a state commission of inquiry — which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects because it is established by the judiciary, which his government has sought to weaken.

Addressing the government, Biner says: “We are not the enemy, and this is not politics.”

“Whoever tries to portray this as political is a person who despises truth,” she says.

“We are the citizens whose security you were responsible for,” she says. “Now is the time to check where, when, and how the disaster could have been averted.”