Bezalel Smotrich and 10/7 Failures

Imagine surviving 738 days in Hamas captivity and returning home to a new IDF chief of staff, a new American president — and the same unanswered question: What really happened on October 7? Nearly two years later, Israel still hasn’t told the full truth. Many of the official inquiries remain sealed or incomplete, and for the families who buried only fragments of their loved ones, silence is unbearable. In a startling Ynet interview, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich admitted that between 11 a.m. and noon on Simchat Torah, as Israelis were being massacred in the south, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Gallant, and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi were still debating whether the attack was real or a diversion for a northern invasion. That hesitation — born of confusion, arrogance, and years of complacency — cost lives. Israel has always struggled with accountability, from the Bus 300 affair to Jonathan Pollard, but this time the moral debt is too large to bury in a drawer. The country owes the victims and itself an unflinching reckoning: names, timelines, failures, and all. Anything less is an insult to the dead and a betrayal of those still living.