On November 21, 2019, when the indictment against Benjamin Netanyahu was filed, the prime minister stood at the podium. Emotional, pained, and angry, he turned to the cameras and fumed: "the time has come to investigate the investigators."
On November 16, 2025, that same prime minister decided to establish a governmental commission of inquiry into the massacre and disaster of October 7. Yariv Levin, Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben Gvir, Zeev Elkin, Avi Dichter, Gila Gamliel, Orit Strock, Amichai Chikli, and Amichai Eliyahu will determine the commission's mandate, and the commission will decide which period it will examine.
The cabinet summary stated that the composition of the commission will reflect broad national consensus. The page on which those words were written nearly folded itself and ran to the shredder. Yariv Levin, the justice minister, for example, whose January 4, 2023 speech on the judicial overhaul set Israel ablaze, and who refused to meet senior IDF officials on the day the law canceling the reasonableness clause was passed and hear their warnings.
Can he appoint a commission that will generate broad national consensus? Will bereaved families, survivors of the disaster, families of the hostages, and evacuees from the Gaza border communities and the north believe this is a commission backed by the public? That it has credibility and a genuine desire to investigate itself? For some reason, I find it hard to believe.
At the Israel Hayom conference held the day before yesterday, Finance Minister Smotrich told Amit Segal that he opposes a state commission of inquiry because of his distrust of Justice Amit, yet continued honestly to say that he also opposes a governmental commission of inquiry: "Not a commission of inquiry appointed by someone who ought to be investigated," with the meaning obvious. Netanyahu repeats obsessively that most of the public opposes a state commission of inquiry. Israel Hayom and other Israeli media outlets have shown the opposite: there is overwhelming support for a state commission.
But let us set aside the polls and the supposedly momentary public mood, because the prime minister also claims he will establish a commission acceptable to the entire public. An argument so demagogic it does not require deep thought to dismantle it. Suppose I run a red light, am caught, and choose to contest it in court. I would have a winning argument: most of the public does not want to stop at red lights. The law does not matter, only the will of the people.
Seriously, Mr. Prime Minister and cabinet members who voted for this folly: Is there law in the State of Israel? Then follow it. It is that simple. A conservative Supreme Court justice like Justice Sohlberg will carry out the requirements of the law in a balanced way, without background noise, acceptable to both sides. Just as Menachem Begin and Golda Meir did when they established state commissions of inquiry even though they knew the consequences could harm them.
The prime minister would do well to stop the charade of a fake commission of inquiry that torments tens of thousands of families and fulfill the demand he shouted from every stage: investigate the investigators according to the law, including you, Benjamin Netanyahu, and reach genuinely independent conclusions that are not influenced one way or another.
