Bereaved families, former military officials, and defense experts debated the IDF’s handling of its October 7 investigations on Tuesday, during a panel at the Israel Bar Association’s annual conference in Eilat that focused on transparency, accountability, and public trust in the military.
The panel touched on the growing tension surrounding the army’s internal probes into the failures of October 7: the families’ demand to know what happened to their loved ones, the military’s need to preserve candid operational debriefings, and the broader public interest in understanding how the Hamas attack unfolded.
Eyal Eshel, father of Sgt. Roni Eshel, an IDF observer killed at the Nahal Oz base on October 7, said the families had faced deep frustration over what he described as missing information and incomplete answers from the defense establishment.
“Our stomachs are full – the rage, the frustration, the grief, the bereavement that took all of us to other places,” Eshel said. “Roni entered the Nahal Oz command center, and already then the concealment of information and the cutting of corners began.”
Families not given full picture of base's danger
Eshel said that, in his view, the families were not given a full picture of the danger facing the soldiers at the base.
“No one in the defense establishment told any of the families that this entire enclave was an extermination zone. They hid this information from us,” he said. “We understood that they were lying to these girls, but also to us.”
The Nahal Oz base has become one of the central symbols of the failures of October 7, particularly because of the warnings raised by female observers before the attack and the heavy losses suffered at the base during Hamas’s assault.
Attorney Talik Gvili, mother of St.-Sgt.-Maj. Ran “Rani” Gvili, a Yasam police officer killed fighting in Alumim on October 7 and whose body was taken to Gaza, said she came to the IDF investigations seeking answers, but left unconvinced. Gvili’s body was recovered in January.
“I am not only a mother; I am also a citizen who grew up her whole life with the belief that we have the strongest army in the world,” she said. “But apparently, at some point, a loose process developed among army officers or command, instead of giving strength to those who are going in to defend. It became a culture of ‘when do we go home.’”
Gvili said the number of failures on October 7 left her struggling to understand how they could all have occurred at once.
“There was such a large sequence of failures that happened that day,” she said. “I heard that the fence was open, that they broke into so many places, and that there were no satellites that saw what was happening.”
Regarding the probes into her son’s death, Gvili said: “I came to the investigations about Rani, and they simply spun me around. I am standing there and saying to them: I do not believe you. And if you do not correct this investigation, I am going to the press.”
She said she did not believe the military could be expected to fully hold itself responsible from within.
“We are naive if we think that someone inside the army will come and say, ‘I failed.’ It will not happen,” she said. “We are naive if we think someone inside the army will say, ‘I was wrong.’ It will not happen.”
Criticism of IDF may weaken military, researcher says
BRIG.-GEN. (res.) Guy Hazut, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and head of the ground forces’ operational learning system during the war, acknowledged the scale of the failure, but warned against criticism that he said could weaken the army rather than repair it.
“The motivation of some of the IDF’s critics is dangerous,” Hazut said. “They are not coming to repair – they are coming to destroy. Their motives are hatred, revenge, and a desire for all responsibility to fall on the army. In my eyes, these are dangerous people, because if they dismantle the IDF, we have nothing else.”
Hazut described October 7 as “the gravest failure in the history of Zionism,” but said the public discourse should also recognize the IDF’s continuing role as the central institution responsible for Israel’s security.
“The central problem is organizational culture,” he said. “The IDF lacks a culture in which people say what they truly think. The courage to express an opinion and the ability to maintain a real culture of investigation have been damaged over the years. As long as this culture does not change, we will continue to be in trouble.”
Dr. Ariel Heimann of INSS said the public debate over trust in the IDF should be understood carefully, arguing that the picture was more complex than the term “crisis of trust” suggested.
“When looking at the question of trust in the IDF, we need to remember that the studies show a more complex picture,” Heimann said. “Since 2022, surveys point to roughly 85% of the public expressing trust in the IDF, even if trust in the senior command is lower.”
Heimann said there remained broad trust in combat soldiers and in the IDF’s role, even as the senior command faced criticism.
Col. (res.) Avi Halabi, head of the military defense system’s representation unit for October 7 events, said he himself lost trust in the army on October 7, but joined the process in order to better understand what had happened.
“I lost trust in my army on October 7,” Halabi said. “I looked for a way to understand better how it happened, so one of the things I did was go and lead this system.”
Halabi said he had met officers who did acknowledge mistakes, and argued that responsibility for October 7 should not be understood narrowly.
Col. (res.) Orly Yaron, a former president of a military court, said October 7 exposed an army that failed to listen to its own observers.
“I saw and still see a body that is not connected to its eyes,” Yaron said. “It took young women, placed them in the role of its eyes in a place it itself defined as dangerous, and when they told it what they saw, it did not listen to them. So why did you put them there?”
Yaron said she supported making the probes public, while acknowledging the purpose of confidentiality in encouraging truth-telling.
“The investigation is confidential so that we can learn from it and so that people will tell the whole truth,” she said. “But the commanders here did not arrive in that situation. They already arrived with lawyers, and lawyers by nature advise what is best for their clients. If suspicion of a cover-up has arisen, we need to examine it thoroughly.”