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A new scheme dishonoring victims of Oct. 7 — hatched by Israel’s own government
The Israeli government has finally launched an investigation into the failures that led to the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023 — but not the independent state commission of inquiry that Israeli law, democratic norms, and public sentiment demand.
Instead, it is pursuing an internal investigation — a scheme central to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to escape political consequences for the catastrophe, and an evolution of his broader project to weaken Israel’s checks and balances.
To understand how we got here, we must recall the argument the government now uses against a state commission: that the public supposedly “does not trust” any effort involving the Supreme Court. This narrative is new, and also false. Until only a few years ago, polling consistently showed that the Supreme Court was one of the most trusted institutions in Israel.
But as soon as criminal indictments for corruption were filed against him in 2019, Netanyahu launched a sustained campaign portraying the court as a bastion of left-wing activism, suspect in its motives at every turn. His claims on this front have, from the start, been false. But a falsehood repeated often enough can shift public sentiment. That appears to be part of the plan.
When Netanyahu addressed the Knesset last week, he claimed that the “vast majority” of the Israeli public “does not believe” in establishing a state commission. This is a transparent lie. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, 74% of Israelis — including 75.5% of Jews and 68% of Arabs — support establishing a fully independent state commission. Among leftists and centrists, support is above 85%.
Families of Oct. 7 victims stood and turned their backs on him. But while the lies may sound obvious, they have had a measurable effect, particularly on the right. This intentional erosion of trust aims to weaken oversight, expand executive power, and delegitimize any institution capable of restraining the government.
Israel has an accepted mechanism for drawing lessons from national disasters, established by the State Commissions of Inquiry Law of 1968. Under that act, commissions are chaired by sitting or retired Supreme Court justices endowed with sweeping quasi-judicial powers and full independence from government control.
The Agranat Commission after the Yom Kippur War and the Bejski Commission after the early-1980s banking crisis are remembered as credible precisely because they were insulated from political manipulation. Their conclusions reshaped national understanding and restored institutional trust, although the Agranat Commission is criticized for largely clearing Golda Meir’s government of blame.
A Sunday decision by the government to instead establish its own probe will, by contrast, allows ministers to determine the mandate, membership, and powers of a “government commission.” In practice, that means those under scrutiny will choose their own investigators, and can limit the scope of the enterprise.
The need for a true reckoning — not this parody of corruption run amok — could not be more urgent. The Oct. 7 attack revealed systemic collapse across Israel’s entire security and political architecture.
Internal reviews since have made clear that longstanding assumptions about Hamas — particularly the belief that the group was deterred and more interested in governance than conflict — were catastrophically misguided. The military left the Gaza border with minimal protection, with much personnel diverted to the West Bank to try to contain provocations against the Palestinians by militant settlers backed by the government. The Defense Minister, Chief of Staff, head of Military Intelligence, head of the Shin Bet, and other senior officials from that period have all resigned or been removed.
These failures were not solely operational; they were strategic, doctrinal, and political. For years, Netanyahu’s Gaza policy — allowing Qatari cash into the Strip, sidelining the Palestinian Authority, insisting that Hamas could be “managed” and finding a benefit in having the Palestinians be politically divided — shaped Israel’s thinking.
Netanyahu, however, has refused to even hint at accepting any responsibility. During the Gaza war, he argued that any inquiry must await its conclusion. Critics howled that such a claim incentivized his prolonging of the war — but thus did Netanyahu buy two more years of time.
Now, with the war seemingly over, comes this latest machination.
Critics across Israeli society have already labeled the government’s decision a whitewash and a cover-up. The Movement for Quality Government decried “a transparent attempt to evade a real and independent investigation.” The October Council — representing bereaved families, survivors, and relatives of hostages — condemned the move as an attempt by those in power to “absolve themselves of punishment.”
The refusal to establish a state commission is not an isolated decision. It sits alongside ongoing efforts to dilute the Attorney General’s authority, undermine independent media, and reshape public understanding of Israel’s core institutions. Internationally, Netanyahu benefits from an American political climate less committed to defending liberal democratic norms. President Trump’s letter to his counterpart Isaac Herzog last week, urging him to pardon Netanyahu and end his bribery trial, underscored this new reality.
In this reality, the election coming up within a year is emerging as a referendum on the fundamental, existential question of whether Israel wants to remain a true democracy, or join the ranks or elected dictatorships, ranging from Viktor Orban’s Hungary all the way to the worst-case scenario of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
And if Israel votes to save itself from Netanyahu and his cabal, expect the new government to decommission the whitewash — and appoint a state inquiry commission.
The post A new scheme dishonoring victims of Oct. 7 — hatched by Israel’s own government appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Says US Will Sell F-35s to Saudi Arabia Ahead of White House Talks With Crown Prince
US President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman shake hands during a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing ceremony at the Royal Court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
US President Donald Trump on Monday said he plans to approve the sale of US-made F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, announcing his intention one day before he hosts Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House in Washington, DC.
The high-stakes meeting comes as rumors swirl about the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia, long-time foes who in recent years have increasingly cooperated behind closed doors, normalizing ties under a US-brokered deal.
“They want to buy. They are a great ally. I will say that we will be doing that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We will be selling them F-35s.”
Reuters reported earlier this month that Saudi Arabia has requested to buy as many as 48 F-35 fighter jets in a potential multibillion-dollar deal that cleared a key Pentagon hurdle.
Such a sale would be a policy shift for Washington, which primarily sells the F-35 to formal military allies, such as NATO members or Japan. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has the elite fighter jets, in accordance with longstanding bipartisan policy for US administrations and the Congress to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region. Saudi Arabia’s acquiring them would at least somewhat change the military balance of power.
However, Axios reported over the weekend that Israel does not oppose the US sale of F-35s to Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil producer — as long as it’s conditioned on Riyadh normalizing relations with Jerusalem.
“We told the Trump administration that the supply of F-35s to Saudi Arabia needs to be subject to Saudi normalization with Israel,” an anonymous Israeli official told the news outlet, adding that giving the fighter jets without getting any significant diplomatic progress would be “a mistake and counterproductive.”
It has been widely reported that Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of a deal to establish formal diplomatic ties until the discussions were derailed by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Saudi officials have said that they will only agree to a normalization deal if Israel commits to a path toward a Palestinian state.
Saudi Arabia’s close partners Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were among the Arab states to normalize ties with Israel in 2020 as part of the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords. Trump has said he is intent on expanding the accords to include other countries, above all Saudi Arabia.
“I hope that Saudi Arabia will be going into the Abraham Accords fairly shortly,” Trump told reporters on Friday.
The F-35 deal and possible Israeli-Saudi normalization are expected to be central to the agenda when bin Salman, widely known by his initials MBS, meets Trump.
It will be the crown prince’s first trip to the US since the death of prominent Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul in 2018. US intelligence concluded that bin Salman approved the capture or killing of Khashoggi, although Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader has denied ordering the operation.
Seven years later, Washington and Riyadh, longtime strategic partners, are looking forward, with bin Salman set to receive full ceremonial honors at the White House. Their meeting comes six months after Trump secured a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the United States.
Beyond investment, Riyadh has been eager to reach a security agreement with Washington expanding arms sales such as advanced missile-defense systems and drones, and deeper military training partnerships. Most importantly for Riyadh, however, is the US offering certain guarantees ensuring the kingdom’s security. Many observers have suggested that such a defense deal could be part of a broader arrangement to broker Saudi-Israel normalization.
Trump and bin Salman are also expected to discuss broadening ties in commerce, technology, and potentially nuclear energy.
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Catholic Church in Berlin Condemns Antisemitism as Anti-Israel Agitators Vandalize Historic Crucifix
Illustrative: Hamas supporters at a rally in Cologne, Germany, on Oct. 22, 2023. Photo: Reuters/Ying Tang
As antisemitic incidents continue to rise in Germany, the Catholic Church in Berlin has taken a firmer stance against anti-Jewish hatred by issuing new guidelines prohibiting its members from expressing racist, antisemitic, or extremist views.
On Saturday, the Archdiocese of Berlin, the governing body of the city’s Catholic Church, announced that all candidates for leadership positions must sign a special declaration rejecting racism, antisemitism, and extremist views.
“With this decision, responsibility falls where it belongs. Anyone seeking to serve on the diocesan committees and run in the elections must actively uphold the values of our Church,” Karlies Abmeier, president of the Diocesan Council, said in a statement.
The Catholic Church’s latest move aims to ensure that anyone seeking a leadership role within the institution commits to rejecting “racism, antisemitism, ethnic nationalism, and hostility toward democracy.”
“It is crucial for us that such statements never come from those in positions of power within our Church,” Marcel Hoyer, executive director of the committee, told the German Press Agency.
Candidates would also be prohibited from belonging to any party or organization that the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution has designated as extremist.
The archdiocese’s announcement comes amid a climate of rising hostility and radicalization in Germany, where the local Jewish community has increasingly become a target.
Last week, anti-Israel protesters vandalized a church with paint in the Vogelsberg district of Hesse in central Germany.
According to local media reports, a crucifix was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, including the slogans “Free Palestine” and “Jesus is Palestinian,” and the church walls were also defaced with red paint.
Pastor Ingmar Bartsch denounced the incident, describing himself as “angry and bewildered.”
“What affects me most is that it’s a historic depiction of Jesus, at least 200 to 300 years old, and truly one of a kind,” Bartsch told the German newspaper Bild.
He explained that the crucifix will require a professional restoration, with initial damage estimates reaching into the thousands of dollars.
Local police have launched an investigation into the incident as a case of property damage, noting that the items involved hold religious significance.
As the restoration process begins, Bartsch said the church will remain closed for now, reopening only for religious services.
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Columbia University Rejects Latest Israel Divestment Proposal
Columbia University on Sept. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ryan Murphy
Columbia University said on Friday that it will not divest from Israel and other corporations which anti-Zionist activists denounced for selling materials to the Israeli military.
The university’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI) stated its position on the matter as a response to a group which submitted three proposals calling for the policy in December 2024, when the institution’s campus was being roiled by anti-Israel protests and a deluge of antisemitic incidents. The group had charged that Israel is guilty of “human rights violations” and “war crimes.”
Israel argued it went to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties during the latest war in Gaza, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targeted them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. It noted that Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group it was targeting, embedded its fighters within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeered civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
In three separate statements, Columbia said that the group behind the boycott proposals lacks consensus support on campus and has reduced one of the most complex geopolitical conflicts in the world history to “vague and excessively broad” categories, sewing partisan division and confusion where a university would, ideally, aim to promote clarity and sober analysis of fact.
Additionally, ASCRI said that the group’s proposals are of “similar … substance” to other ideas put forth by the notorious Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) group, a spinoff of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) which Columbia resolved neither to recognize nor correspond with due to its culpability in antisemitic assaults, hate speech, and a slew of illegal occupations of campus property.
“As noted in the ASCRI’s decision on the CUAD proposal last year, members of the university have a wide range of views on contentious issues,” ASCRI wrote. “Hence, it will be difficult or unprecedented for the university, with such diverse views, to sponsor shareholder proposals of the kind this proposal envisages.”
It added, “There is significant opposition in the Columbia University community to divesting from companies that are involved in Israel, as evidenced by the actions of many students, faculty, and alumni.”
Columbia University has begun implementing a series of reforms it says will address campus antisemitism.
In a statement issued in July, university president Claire Shipman said the institution will hire new coordinators to oversee complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech.
Shipman also announced new partnerships with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other Jewish groups while delivering a major blow to the anti-Zionist movement on campus by vowing never to “recognize or meet with” CUAD, a pro-Hamas campus group which has serially disrupted academic life with unauthorized, surprise demonstrations attended by non-students.
“I would also add that making these announcements in no way suggests we are finished with the work,” Shipman continued. “In a recent discussion, a faculty member and I agreed that antisemitism at this institution has existed, perhaps less overtly, for a long while, and the work of dismantling it, especially through education and understanding will take time. It will likely require more reform. But I’m hopeful that in doing this work, as we consider and even debate it, we will start to promote healing and to chart our path forward.”
Columbia University had, until that point, yielded some of the most indelible examples of anti-Jewish hatred in higher education since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel set off explosions of anti-Zionist activity at colleges and universities across the US. Such incidents included a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
Amid these incidents, the university struggled to contain CUAD, which in late January committed infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete. Numerous reports indicate the attack may have been the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, ADP reportedly distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students.
Columbia has since paid over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secures the release of over $1 billion dollars the Trump administration impounded to pressure the institution to address the issue.
“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to retain the confidence of the American public by renting their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,” US Education Secretary Linda McMahon McMahon said at the time. “I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.