Agranat in Reverse: What an October 7 Inquiry Will Find

When a state commission of inquiry into October 7 finally convenes, it will not produce a sequel to the Agranat Commission. It will produce its inversion. In 1974, Agranat found an intelligence establishment captured by a mistaken “Concept,” dismissed the generals, and declined to judge the ministers who led them. The October 7 inquiry will find that the Concept did not originate in Military Intelligence at all. It originated at the political level, as a governing strategy toward Hamas. Intelligence absorbed that strategy, echoed it back, and was never permitted to challenge it. Agranat’s question was why the analysts got it wrong. The new commission’s question will be why the analysts were asked to get it right in only one direction.

That is why the fight over whether such a commission will exist, who will sit on it, and who will write its mandate has consumed nearly three years. It is not a procedural dispute. It is a dispute about which of the two stories the commission will be allowed to tell.

Start with what Agranat actually did. Its interim report in April 1974 recommended removing Chief of Staff David Elazar and Military Intelligence chief Eli Zeira, among others. It explicitly declined to rule on the parliamentary responsibility of ministers. Moshe Dayan, the defense minister, walked away formally cleared. Golda Meir resigned anyway, not because the commission required it but because the public refused to accept a verdict that stopped at the uniformed ranks. The lesson Israel drew was an intelligence lesson. It created a devil’s advocate unit, reformed its estimate process, and diversified its sources of assessment. The lesson it did not draw was that a government can build a Concept of its own and then ask intelligence to confirm it.

October 7 is what that unlearned lesson looks like fifty years later.

The IDF’s own investigations have already done the work Agranat did. They named the Concept: the belief that Hamas was deterred, invested........

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