High Court begins weighing petitions to halt state comptroller’s probe of October 7

The High Court of Justice begins a hearing on petitions to halt the State Comptroller’s investigation surrounding the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023.

There have been several previous challenges to State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman’s probe of the Octboer 7 invasion and massacre. Today’s hearing is based on petitions from the Military Advocate General’s Corps’ Military Defense unit and Movement for Quality Government, filed in September, which ask the court to order Englman not to investigate issues at the heart of military and intelligence failings which led to the attack.

The petitions allege that Englman’s information-gathering processes suffered from “substantive flaws” which have prejudiced the rights of some subjects of his probe. They argue more broadly that the ombudsman has no remit to conduct an inquiry into the October 7 attack, since the role of the office is to examine the operations of government agencies, but not to examine policy and strategy.

Englman insists that the quasi-constitutional Basic Law: State Comptroller authorizes him to examine the functioning of all state institutions. He says that due to the ongoing refusal of the government to establish a state commission of inquiry into the attack, his probe is the only state-backed examination of the October 7 invasion.

The hearing comes after the High Court decided at the end of April to give the government another two months to decide how to investigate the October 7 catastrophe, in light of petitions asking that the court order the government to establish a state commission of inquiry into the attack.