Railing against civilian probe, Likud MK Tally Gotliv points finger at Shin Bet over Oct. 7 onslaught

Railing against an independent investigation into the government’s failures that led to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, Likud MK Tally Gotliv points a finger at the Shin Bet security service for failing to prevent the devastating onslaught.

Her comments came after she earlier in the day insinuated that the Shin Bet knew about the massacre and allowed it to happen.

“If you were serious about your work, about this civilian probe, you would have first brought members of the Shin Bet and asked them questions,” she says during a meeting of the Knesset’s State Control Committee, going on to claim that she herself had published a warning on October 3, four days before the onslaught, about a Hamas drill in Gaza.

“I want to know,” she says, addressing the relatives of the victims of the Hamas massacre who established the Civilian Commission of Inquiry, “are you capable of asking the Shin Bet, ‘Where were you?'”

The civilian probe issued a scathing report last week alleging that the entire government had “failed its primary mission” and that the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet, and other organizations “completely failed to fulfill their sole objective — protecting the citizens of Israel.”

In an interview ahead of the meeting with the Galei Yisrael radio station, Gotliv said, without foundation, that “there were more than 1,000 people murdered because of the Shin Bet.”

Asked if she was she was stating that senior Shin Bet officials knew ahead of time  of the Hamas plans, Gotliv replied, again without foundation, “No one in the world can imagine a betrayal of their homeland, right? Do you think 4,000 terrorists could just come in here? There were people inside the system who had a malicious hand in the matter.”

Asked again if she thought the Shin Bet knew, she replied to the radio hosts: “Stop defending the system. Does it seem normal to you that the Shin Bet chief lies to the prime minister?”

In the Knesset meeting, the firebrand MK also voices opposition to the establishment of a state commission of inquiry, the body that enjoys the broadest powers under Israeli law, as she charges it would be unable to reveal the truth because it wouldn’t have access to the appropriate intelligence material, and instead calls for another civilian probe.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly put off the establishment of any substantive inquiry, claiming that all investigations must wait until the fighting in Gaza ends, and has opposed a state commission of inquiry.

He is reportedly attempting to promote legislation that will ban the establishment of a state commission into the October 7 onslaught in favor of a political probe chaired by one coalition lawmaker and one opposition lawmaker with the participation of senior security officials.

During her comments in the Knesset committee meeting, Gotliv also says that 4,800 terrorists burst into Israel from Gaza during the Hamas massacre.

The IDF estimates that some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault. This figure includes only armed terror operatives and not the waves of Gazan civilians who took advantage of the enormous gaps in the fence to also make their way inside later in the day.