Netanyahu dismisses ‘irrelevant’ comptroller report on failures to provide for home front after Oct. 7

Calling it “irrelevant,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman’s report criticizing him and other senior ministers for their failure to adequately care for the civilian front in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion.

His office also calls into question the timing of its release.

“While the Government of Israel is achieving unprecedented historic successes that have changed the face of the Middle East, the State Comptroller’s report deals with marginal footnotes that have no real significance,” says a statement released by Netanyahu’s office.

The statement says Englman’s report “completely ignores the fact that this is an existential war on a scale the state has never known in all its years — a war that broke out without prior warning and with no precedents to act upon. The Government of Israel succeeded in responding immediately and created an appropriate working method for the unique emergency situation that emerged.”

It adds that the report is based on incomplete and outdated information.

Englman’s report said that government decisions after the outbreak of war largely failed to achieve their goals. He pointed to a broader trend, stretching back nearly two decades, in which successive governments “failed to appoint a body responsible for managing care of the home front in times of emergency.”

Netanyahu’s office points to the tens of billions of shekels invested in rehabilitating border areas in the north and south, and caring for evacuees, the injured, and families of hostages. It boasts that 95% of students in the north returned to study in their communities, and that “the shekel has strengthened, the stock market is at a peak, and Israel has attracted more foreign investment in R&D than any other country, except the United States.”

Inspections performed by Englman across the country revealed shortages of manpower in essential factories, a lack of psychological care professionals, insufficient government representatives at evacuee sites, and deficiencies in distributing grants and compensation.

“The Prime Minister rejects the unfounded conclusions raised in the report and views it as an irrelevant document,” says the PMO.

“The timing of the report’s publication — on the eve of the entry and takeover of Gaza City, a critical stage in Hamas’s defeat — is puzzling and raises questions about the purpose of the publication and the conclusions drawn in the report,” it adds.