The Knesset State Control Committee voted down a proposal Wednesday to establish a state commission of inquiry into the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack, blocking the latest opposition-led effort to launch an official and impartial investigation into failures that took place before and during the onslaught.

Committee members from the ruling Likud and ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties voted against the motion, while opposition MKs from Yesh Atid, Blue and White, and Ra’am backed it.

The coalition’s two-member majority on the committee ensured that the proposal was defeated.

The proposal would have allowed a committee, under the State Comptroller Law, to investigate the events surrounding the catastrophic Hamas-led invasion and massacre, which killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 kidnapped in the country’s worst security and intelligence failure, as well as the subsequent war.

Opposition MKs condemned the outcome as a moral failure, with Democrats MK Efrat Rayten Marom saying responsibility for the disaster “lies squarely with [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” and calling the absence of any representative from the Prime Minister’s Office at the hearing “a disgrace.”

Committee chair Yesh Atid MK Mickey Levy warned that without such an inquiry, “public trust will continue to erode.”

Bereaved family members expressed their........

© The Times of Israel