Debriefing October 7: How will Israel analyze how and why the Hamas attack happened? - opinion

As we pass the one-year mark of the Gaza war, here are some thoughts about how to best proceed with the crucial analysis of what happened and why.

This is desperately urgent. Because the political jockeying to investigate October 7 and evade culpability has begun. In fact, it began on October 8. 

Israel’s justice minister jockeys to appoint his own candidate for Supreme Court chief justice. Why? Because it is he or she who will head, and appoint the members of, a National Commission of Inquiry – and a grateful appointee will be likely to appoint those favorable to the government and its head. 

The state comptroller jockeys to investigate the IDF. Why? For many, in order to pin the blame fully and solely on the IDF and absolve his employer, Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Words matter. An inquiry into October 7? Who was responsible? Whom to blame? With more lawyers on all sides than at Harvard and Yale combined?

Or a focused, time-limited debrief – what happened, why it happened, how to fix it? 

In an interview on Channel 12, former IDF Intelligence chief Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror explained in a crystal-clear manner why appointing a National Commission of Inquiry would be fruitless. As an example, he gave the Agranat Commission, formed in 1974 to investigate the Yom Kippur War debacle, and headed by Supreme Court chief justice Shimon Agranat. 

The commission absolved the government, pinning the blame on then-IDF Intelligence head Eli Zeira and three subordinates. The public was furious – and then-prime minister Golda Meir resigned in the wake of the ensuing turmoil. Amidror believes that the necessary reforms in the IDF after October 6 were hampered and delayed by this failed, flawed debrief. 

Perhaps we paid the price on October 7, 2024.

In my previous column “Broken Trust” [The Jerusalem Report, October 7], I described how drastically public trust in democratic institutions has collapsed, beginning long before October 7, in both Israel and the US. But I failed to explain how that trust can be restored.

One major way would be to debrief October 7 in a dispassionate, professional manner by identifying and initiating all the necessary reforms that fix what was broken. Let the chips fall where they may. 

But the goal should not be to assess blame. Because when assessing blame becomes the major objective, truth goes out the door and defensive prevarication dominates. 

The goal should be to ask what happened and why it happened, not whom to blame. When this is done well, using the principles of debriefing used by the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli Air Force for decades, we will begin the long road to restoring our trust.

IAF’s debriefing culture

Writing in Forbes magazine, former pilot Inbal Arieli, now an entrepreneur, explains that the debriefing culture in the Israeli Air Force is “imprinted into its DNA: rapid, transparent debriefing to learn from every single event. For a small country like Israel …it has to be like this.“ 

In the IAF, Arieli notes, “it doesn’t matter the size and severity of the event; each and every IAF activity, each and every maneuver, is debriefed in the same manner.”

Israel needs to embrace and embed a debriefing culture. Not a witch hunt. Not to place blame. But to identify failures, analyze successes, and rapidly repair or strengthen them to achieve success. 

This is a crucial point. A proper debriefing does not humiliate those involved. On the contrary, it strengthens the cohesion and efficacy of the group involved. And it relies crucially on truth-telling – in which, in a legal procedure, with blame lurking outside like the Angel of Death, truth is very scarce indeed.

How to debrief – with excellence

There are several key principles used by the IAF and the US Air Force in managing an effective, effectual debrief. They are:

• Do the debrief as quickly as possible after the event. Because memories fade. 

Understandably, one cannot demand that the IDF carry out a thorough, effective, and complete debrief while it is fighting a multi-front war. This is just one more reason why Israel should end the Gaza war, so it can conduct the debrief and begin to repair what is broken at once. Appointing a national commission will drag this process out for years, as happened with the Agranat Commission. We have no time to waste.

• State the objectives of the debrief clearly and follow this closely. The October 7 debrief should identify and communicate precisely what happened, why it happened, discuss what went wrong and what must be changed. 

Identify the root causes – including the “conception” that Hamas was deterred. 

Root cause analysis peels the “onion” and digs down deep into the layers of the cause of the debacle. Why do we consistently underestimate the intentions and aggressive capabilities of our enemies? Why do we disbelieve when they telegraph their intentions to attack us? Why do we assume our fanatical, revenge-obsessed enemies are “deterred”?

Child psychology

In researching this column, I found some hard-to-find answers to the cause of Israel’s crumbling social cohesion in an unusual source: a child psychologist named Dr. Becky Anderson. She counsels parents on how to repair broken relations with their kids. And healing and repair is precisely what is needed today in Israel, after our trust in those who lead and protect us was betrayed.

Dr. Anderson explains that repairing broken trust is not done with an apology. “I’m sorry” often ends dialogue rather than begins it. A much deeper process is needed. In the Israeli Air Force, after every flight a debrief takes place, and ranks are ignored. The goal is always to analyze what went well, what went wrong, what should be fixed, and how? Blame does not get a place at the table. When blame and guilt become the goal, what, why, and how questions become wrapped in fog and denial. 

When blame is assessed, rancor results and echoes through the generations. Right-wing Israelis still seethe at Ariel Sharon’s decision to pull settlers out of Gaza in August 2005, nearly two decades ago. That seems to be a driving force behind the Levin-Rothman proposed judicial reform. 

Grievance politics focuses on blame and revenge. The politics of hope focuses on how to do better in the future. 

The futility of apology

We hear incessant demands for our leaders to apologize for October 7. Many have apologized. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an infrequent apologizer. He issued a rare public apology to the families of the six hostages who were executed by Hamas on September 2. Earlier, on October 29, 2023, Reuters reported that Netanyahu took a jab at his intelligence chiefs on the X platform, saying they never warned him that Hamas was planning its wide-scale attack on October 7, but he later retracted his comments and issued an apology.

In an interview with Time magazine, Netanyahu said this when asked if he apologizes to the Israeli people:

“Apologize?” he asks. “Of course, of course. I am sorry, deeply, that something like this happened. And you always look back and you say, ‘Could we have done things that would have prevented it?’” 

Author Erich Segal’s novel Love Story is famous for this line: “Love is never having to say you’re sorry” – one of the dumbest things ever written. 

Love is always saying you’re sorry – and making amends. You have to say you’re sorry to those you love and who love you. 

But the real process only begins with an apology, it does not end with it. Apology is not even the forshpeiz for a true, deep debrief. Anderson notes that often an apology, “I’m sorry,” ends a real dialogue rather than initiates it. 

At the onset of the New Year 5785, many Israelis face the future with fear and trepidation. Former US president and Republican nominee Donald Trump, undisputed king of unhinged hyperbole, warned that Israel may not exist in two years, and that Jewish American voters would be partly to blame if he loses the November 5 election to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate.

“If I don’t win this election – and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because if 40%, I mean, 60% of the people are voting for the enemy – Israel, in my opinion, will cease to exist within two years,” Trump told the Israeli-American Council National Summit in Washington on September 19.

The pessimists are all wrong. Israel will endure and prevail. As we Jews have done through the ages.

We will debrief October 7 with X-ray skill, laying bare our past failings that led to October 7, repairing them all, and emerging stronger for it. We will do this, if we must, even while fighting a war on several fronts. Let us strive to do it without the rancor that threatens to tear us apart. ■

The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion. He blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com.