I’m writing this at about the same hour I woke up three years ago. That Saturday morning the walls of my apartment in Jerusalem started shaking from booms, and at 8:15 the sirens went off. It was Shabbat, and it was also Simchat Torah, the holiday where we finish reading the Torah and start again from Genesis. It should be the happiest day of the year.
I had no idea what was going on. We get rockets in Jerusalem sometimes, but this was different. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of secular people, and my neighbors had their radios and TVs on full blast, so I got the news in pieces through the walls and the open windows. Terrorists in Sderot. Terrorists inside kibbutzim. A death toll that was higher every time I heard it.
It wasn’t until that evening, when I finally got online, that I understood how bad it was. I’m not going to describe the videos. If you saw them, you know. If you didn’t, I’m not going to be the one who makes you.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas and other armed groups from Gaza broke through the border fence and murdered about 1,200 people, most of them civilians. At the Nova festival alone, they killed hundreds of young people. Then they went house to house in Be’eri, Kfar Aza and Nir Oz, and dragged 251 people into Gaza as hostages, babies and grandmothers among them. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The last hostage, Ran Gvili, only came home this past January, when the IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel’s domestic security service) recovered his remains from a cemetery in northern Gaza. That was 842 days later.
The army put out its three-year numbers this morning and I think everyone should read them. Since October 7, the war has killed 970 soldiers, reservists and local security volunteers, and wounded 6,424 more. Our enemies have fired more than 31,500 rockets, missiles and drones at Israel. About 10,200 came from Gaza, at least 5,000 of them on October 7 alone. Another 20,000 came from Hezbollah in Lebanon, 1,200 from Iran, and smaller numbers from Yemen and Syria. That doesn’t include the ones that fell short.
The Defense Ministry says more than 30,000 wounded soldiers and security personnel have gone through its rehab department since the war started, and roughly 63 percent of them are getting treatment for psychological injuries like PTSD. Nearly a million Israelis have called a mental health hotline. The IDF expects combat reservists to do 80 to 100 days of reserve duty this year. These are people with jobs and kids and mortgages, and they keep going back.
Then there’s the stuff nobody counts. Families from the north and the south who had to leave their homes for months. Friendships that didn’t survive the arguments. And the belief most of us had that somebody was watching the border and the army would show up if something happened. On October 7 it took hours, and in some places it got there far too late.
And in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry says the war has killed more than 74,200 people, though it doesn’t separate fighters from civilians. None of that had to happen, and none of it would have if Hamas weren’t so craven and so set on killing Jews.
We marked the Hebrew anniversary last week, on Simchat Torah. So the happiest holiday on the calendar is now also the worst day in the history of this country, and that’s going to be true for the rest of my life.
Three years and no investigation
There is still no state commission of inquiry. If you don’t live here, this needs some explaining.
When something goes catastrophically wrong in Israel, the government sets up a state commission of inquiry. The president of the Supreme Court picks its members, not the politicians, and the commission can compel testimony. After the Yom Kippur War in 1973 we got the Agranat Commission. After the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 we got the Kahan Commission, which found that Ariel Sharon bore personal responsibility, and he had to resign as defense minister. That’s how the system should work.
From 1969 to 2009, Israel set up three to five of these commissions every decade. In all the years Netanyahu has been prime minister, his governments haven’t set up a single one. That’s according to Hebrew Wikipedia, and it’s not a coincidence.
Instead, the government is pushing a bill for its own commission, where politicians in the Knesset would choose the members. Likud MK Ariel Kallner wrote the bill, and back in 2018 he said that “we have a strategic interest in Hamas ruling Gaza.” That’s the guy designing the investigation. The bill passed a first reading in July. The opposition boycotted the vote, and so did the bereaved families. The High Court has already issued a conditional order telling the government to explain why it hasn’t set up a real one.
Here’s my problem with that. You don’t get to pick the people who investigate you. Nobody gets to do that, and the prime minister least of all.
This isn’t ancient history either. On September 30, the copilot of flydubai flight FZ1073 tried to bring down a plane full of Israelis, and the passengers stopped him. Since then we’ve learned that the Transportation Ministry, which is responsible for vetting foreign flights into Israel, hasn’t been doing it despite years of warnings. Tal Schneider at the Times of Israel lays out the pattern: the Meron disaster in 2021, October 7, and now flydubai. Each time, the government ignores the warnings and then blames someone else. That’s exactly why the people under investigation can’t run the investigation.
October 7 didn’t come out of nowhere. For years, the people running the country and the army assumed Israel had deterred Hamas and that Hamas cared more about money than about killing Jews. In Israel there’s a word for that kind of wishful thinking: the konseptzia, “the conception.” It’s the same word people used after 1973. We already paid for it once, and we paid again. A real commission needs to look at all of it, the army, the intelligence services and the politicians, and the years of policy that got us there.
Most Israelis agree. A poll Channel 12 published this week found 66 percent support a state commission appointed by the Supreme Court president, and 65 percent say Netanyahu bears a great deal of responsibility for the massacre. Support for the commission is down from 85 percent in June 2024, which tells you the government’s strategy of waiting it out is working on some people. It hasn’t worked on the families. In a statement this morning, they said they want it “not for revenge, not for politics, for the truth.”
Twenty days
Israel votes on October 27. I’m not here to endorse anyone, but I can tell you what I’m looking for.
A government that sets up a real state commission in its first weeks, not after the next disaster. People who care about running this country competently and honestly, and who don’t blame somebody else every time something goes wrong. Leaders who still think peace is possible and are willing to do the hard and unpopular work, because I don’t want my kids growing up thinking another October 7 is just a matter of time. And honestly, I’d like a government that gives people some hope. A lot of us lost that too.
None of this brings anyone back. Three years later I’m still angry and I’m still sad. I’m also still here in Jerusalem, so, like the good Zionist that I am, I have not lost any hope, and I’m going to vote.
May their memories be a blessing. Am Yisrael Chai.
― Tom Robbins
