Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the intelligence failures surrounding the October 7 massacre should not automatically lead to his dismissal in an interview with Army Radio on Wednesday, arguing that “nobody told former US president George W. Bush to go home after 9/11.” He compared Israel’s intelligence failures to those preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, arguing that those disasters had not automatically led to the removal of the countries’ political leaders.
“There was blindness here,” he admitted, “And I can tell you: There was also blindness at Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese bombed the United States. Yes, there was blindness. There was also blindness on September 11, at the Twin Towers. Nobody said: Okay, you have to go home. They didn’t say that to Roosevelt; they didn’t say that to President Bush.” Netanyahu defended his proposal to establish a national inquiry committee with equal representation for coalition and opposition members. He argued that a government-appointed commission would lack public trust among opposition supporters, while a state commission appointed through the existing judicial framework would be rejected by many of his own supporters. He also suggested modeling the investigation on the bipartisan US commission established after September 11.
