Three years after October 7, the most basic questions in Israel are still unanswered in public view: who failed, who knew, and who should pay the political price.
Hamas remains active. Israel is an international pariah. Tens of thousands of civilians have died. Those facts now sit beside a campaign season in which the failures of October 7, 2023, and the war that followed have become central.
At the center of the fight is Benjamin Netanyahu. Avigdor Liberman, the opposition leader, said in a Thursday video on X: 'Netanyahu bears responsibility for October 7, and he must go home.' Netanyahu, for his part, recently tried to shift blame elsewhere, claiming that security officials purposefully did not wake him until hours after the attacks began.
Netanyahu has also faced criticism for repeatedly blocking the creation of a national commission to investigate the failures on October 7. That refusal matters because a society cannot restore trust by burying the record. It restores trust by forcing the record into the open.
What is true does not need an adjective. A state that promised to finish off Hamas once and for all has not done so, and a political system that still cannot settle basic responsibility is now asking voters to judge its competence.
The consequence is larger than one leader's future. When institutions fail and no credible accounting follows, incentives change. Leaders learn they can deflect. Agencies learn they can stall. Citizens learn they will be asked to absorb the cost and move on.
Say it plainly. Accountability is not a luxury item for peacetime. It is part of the security architecture. If the record is not examined, the next failure arrives with the same excuses and the same institutional habits.
That is why the question now is not only who won the battles. It is whether Israel can still recover the discipline, honesty, and public trust required to win the war that matters most: the one over its own institutions.
