From the Liveblog of
Monday, December 22, 2025
Gantz: Government’s planned Oct. 7 probe doesn’t serve the country’s needs
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Blue and White chair MK Benny Gantz takes aim at the government’s proposed alternative probe into October 7, saying it serves narrow interests rather than those of the nation as a whole
“Is there anything more anti-national than the ‘national’ inquiry committee [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu wants to establish? A committee whose members will be chosen by the parties that were in the government and cabinet on the eve of the failure?” Gantz asks during a press conference ahead of his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, and after the Ministerial Committee for Legislation voted to back a Likud bill establishing a contentious “national state investigation committee” into the failures surrounding Hamas’s onslaught.
“Coalition members say the problem is that the judicial system needs to be investigated. What are you talking about? Did [High Court Chief Justice] Isaac Amit forbid the IDF from positioning soldiers at the border on 7.10? Did [former court president] Aharon Barak say to bring suitcases of money from Qatar? Did [former attorney general Avichai] Mandelblit know about [Hamas’s plan to invade southern Israel] and not inform the political echelon?”
“It must be said clearly: the judicial system bears no responsibility for the October failure,” Gantz declares. “What we see here is a strategy of delay and evasion” so that those in the government can escape responsibility.
Asked about his recent statement seemingly indicating that he does not consider himself part of the anti-Netanyahu “change bloc,” Gantz tells reporters that he wants Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replaced.
Gantz recalls how he both served in Naftali Bennett’s government which temporarily replaced Netanyahu and in Netanyahu’s next government, which he temporarily joined after October 7.
“But we serve all of Israel” and “we will lead in the formation of a government of 70+ Zionist Knesset members who will isolate the extremists and serve the State of Israel,” he says.
The Times of Israel Community.