Netanyahu concedes he bears some responsibility for Oct. 7, but says ‘everyone’ shares it

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to acknowledge he has some responsibility for the failures that enabled Hamas’s cross-border invasion and onslaught of October 7, 2023, but claims that “everyone” from the top to the bottom bears responsibility as well, and the “real issue” is what has happened since that attack and not what preceded it.

Asked during an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” how it is that all those who were in charge of security during the attack have quit or been fired except him, Netanyahu claims some departed because their terms were up, and only one or two “claimed they took responsibility, but it’s not clear what– what does that mean, you know? What is their responsibility?”

The remarks appear in an off-mic section of the interview that wasn’t aired and only appears in CBS’s full transcript.

“Let’s look at the political echelon, military echelon, the security echelon. Let’s look down at everyone, and everybody bears some responsibility. Yeah, from the top, from the prime minister down,” he says, going on to repeat his proposal for a politically appointed commission of inquiry instead of a state commission of inquiry, the country’s highest form of inquiry, which he has refused to form.

Polls have consistently indicated a clear majority of Israelis support a state commission, and Netanyahu himself backed such an inquiry into the conduct of the previous government in 2022. But the government has steadfastly refused to consider this, and has yet to okay any inquiry, over 2.5 years after the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

“But I think the real issue is, okay, that’s up to October 7th. What about since October 7th?” he continues. “[It] was clearly my responsibility to get Israel out of this horrible noose of death that the Iranians put on us. And we did, systematically, very resolutely, go [to] each one of these seven fronts, one after the other, and roll back the tide of terror.”