State comptroller: Public given only ‘partial picture’ of Oct. 7 responsibility

State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman said Thursday that office holders, including political and military officials, have “exposed to the public” only partial details about his review of the failures surrounding the Hamas-led invasion and atrocities in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

He appeared to be referring, at least in part, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent release of a 55-page document of his answers given to Englman for his probe, which included selectively chosen excerpts from years of security cabinet meetings regarding the situation in Gaza before October 7.

Englman made his comments in his response to High Court of Justice petitions asking the court to order him to end his review and not publish the conclusions and reports on the key issues of the October 7 failings.

The comptroller has not released findings from his investigation, which the court ordered him to freeze in December. Netanyahu released his document earlier this month, pinning the failure to prevent the onslaught on political rivals and security chiefs while presenting himself in a positive light and deflecting his responsibility for the attack.

“This conduct is improper since in this state of affairs, in which the audit procedures were terminated before the reports were completed and published to the public, the public was exposed to a partial picture, as provided by the aforementioned officials, instead of receiving complete and final review reports, which include the findings of the state comptroller,” said Englman.

The State Comptroller’s Office said that its response to the petitions “disproves one by one” the claims made against Englman’s probe, “and details the damage done to the public interest that has already taken place due to the court order, and the damage which is likely to happen if the court rules in favor of the petitions.”

Netanyahu’s office responded by saying the premier aimed to show the truth to the public with his document.

“The prime minister published the protocols in accordance with his authority in order to reveal the truth to the public after the High Court of Justice halted the comptroller’s investigation,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. “The only way to reveal the entire truth is through an equal and independent investigative committee, which will represent the entire public, and all materials will be presented to it.”

Yoav Gallant, defense minister on October 7, said after Netanyahu released his 55-page document that “the prime minister is a liar” who had stitched together a false narrative of the events leading up to the Hamas invasion and massacre.

The comptroller’s probe was controversial from the get-go, facing claims that it is severely flawed, would taint evidence and the investigative process, and that only a state commission of inquiry could properly investigate the disaster. It also drew scrutiny because Englman was appointed under a government led by Netanyahu.

The Military Advocate General’s Corps’ Military Defense unit and Movement for Quality government petitioned the High Court in September, alleging that there were “substantive flaws” in Englman’s information-gathering processes, and argued 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 processes of the agencies under review but not to examine policy and strategy.

Opinion polls have regularly shown a clear majority of Israelis support a state commission of inquiry, Israel’s highest investigative authority, which Netanyahu opposes because it is appointed by the judiciary, which he argues would be biased as his government is pushing to curb the courts’ powers.

During the October 7 attack, terrorists who burst into the country from the Gaza Strip killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251, also mostly civilians, who were taken as hostages to Gaza. The attack triggered a war, which eventually ended with a US-brokered ceasefire in October 2025. All of the hostages, dozens of them dead, have been returned to Israel.