Minister Amichai Eliyahu: Aharon Barak ‘a full partner to failure’ of Oct. 7

By Sam Sokol 6 January 2026, 5:40 pm

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Sam 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"

File: Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu speaks at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on July 7, 2025 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu accuses former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak of destroying Israeli democracy and paving the way for October 7, in response to the retired jurist’s statement on Saturday that Israel was no longer a liberal democracy.

“Are we a liberal democracy? My answer: Not anymore,” the 89-year-old, who is often accused by the right of entrenching judicial overreach in Israel during his years in office between 1995 and 2006, told an anti-government rally.

Hitting back in an op-ed on the right-wing Israel National News site, Eliyahu argues that Barak was “absolutely right. Israel did indeed cease to be a liberal democracy, but not yesterday and not because of the current government.

“Israel ceased to be a liberal democracy 30 years ago, on the day you, Mr. Barak, created what you grandly called the ‘constitutional revolution.’ It was the day you decided, without a mandate from the people, without the approval of the Knesset, and without any democratic process, that you and your legal elite would be the true sovereigns of the country,” Eliyahu writes.

According to Eliyahu, the court’s decisions since Barak’s tenure “tied the hands of our soldiers and allowed Hamas to approach the fence almost unhindered and prepare the infrastructure to blow up the perimeter fence on the day of the massacre” on October 7, 2023.

“You are a full partner to the failure that enabled the massacre,” he alleges.

Eliyahu, a member of the ministerial panel appointed to determine the mandate of the government’s controversial commission of inquiry into October 7, said in November that the panel will probe “the judicial system” and others who “weakened our deterrence.”