Group of hundreds of Oct. 7-affected families announces stepped-up campaign to form state inquiry

The October Council, made up of hundreds of families of victims and people directly affected by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, says it will step up its public campaign urging the formation of a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the attack.

At a press conference in Jerusalem, Rafi Ben Shitrit, whose son Staff Sgt. Shimon Alroy Ben Shitrit was killed on October 7 while attempting to fend off Hamas terrorists in southern Israel, urges the public to attend a demonstration near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence this coming Saturday evening.

“We will get masses of Israelis out to the streets,” he says.

Netanyahu has refused to acknowledge responsibility for the failures, has refused for over two years to form a state commission of inquiry — or any other inquiry — and is reportedly seeking to form a lesser commission whose makeup the government will be able to control.

The October Council said its steps are because “despite the war ending, the government continues to avoid forming a state commission of inquiry and is currently working to find new ways to cover up the truth, conceal responsibility and avoid a genuine probe of the October 7 failures.”

The council says Saturday’s protest is the first of a series of “public, legal and media steps” planned for the coming weeks, until an “independent and impartial state commission of inquiry is formed.”