The State Comptroller’s Office issued a summons Sunday to two former senior Shin Bet officials who were asked to meet with the office’s staff and present documents relating to its wide-ranging probe into the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught.
State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman and his office have been conducting a broad investigation into the multi-level failures surrounding the attack, and said in a statement to the press Sunday that the Shin Bet falls under the scope of the probe.
The summons was sent by the director of the State Comptroller’s Office, Yishai Vaknin, to the lawyers of the former officers in question, protesting their failure to answer previous requests for meetings.
It said it issued the new summons under a clause of the Law for the State Comptroller, empowering that office to impose sanctions on an individual who fails to comply with such a summons, including a prison sentence of up to two years.
According to the State Comptroller’s Office, requests for meetings were sent to the two former officials in July of this year. But the two failed to coordinate with the agency’s officials, the office said, despite an agreement worked out by the High Court of Justice with the IDF and the Shin Bet, enabling the State Comptroller’s probe into those two bodies. The Shin Bet is Israel’s domestic security and intelligence agency.
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Englman’s office has published a series of reports in recent months relating to the findings of its probes into the failures surrounding October 7. The reports have panned the government and military for various deficiencies that they said contributed to the lapse, such as a lack of a binding national security doctrine, issues in military readiness and economic preparedness, and neglect of civilian security infrastructure.
State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman at the Israel Bar Association’s conference on justice in Tel Aviv, September 3, 2024. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
Englman has long complained that the IDF has failed to cooperate with his investigation. The army has indeed resisted the probe, claiming it would interfere with its prosecution of the war.
As the office has conducted the probes, Englman has repeatedly clashed with several top officials over their alleged lack of cooperation, including current IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and his predecessor, Herzi Halevi.
In August, Englman publicly slammed Zamir for the army’s failure to cooperate, sparking a sharp response from the IDF, which wrote to the High Court that it was concerned by the “accelerated activity of the state comptroller regarding the events of October 7.”
IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir at the graduation of an IDF officers’ course, October 30, 2025. (Noam Revkin Fenton/FLASH90)
The army complained that the Comptroller’s Office “approached the most senior officials in the state and the defense establishment, sent questionnaires ahead of meetings for the delivery of their testimony, and even began drafting report drafts.”
Englman’s office called the military’s claims “half-truths,” and said that it had stated from the beginning of the probe that it would investigate the core issues that led to the failure to prevent the Hamas assault and atrocities.
In addition to investigating the military and security agencies, Englman has said that he and his team were seeking meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior political officials.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (not seen) in Jerusalem, December 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, Pool)
The comptroller’s probe is currently the only state-sanctioned comprehensive investigation into the October 7 attack, in which thousands of Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and abducted 251 to Gaza, launching the war.
Netanyahu has resisted setting up a state commission of inquiry to investigate the attack, despite widespread public demand for an official probe, saying that it would be inappropriate while the war with Hamas was ongoing. More recently, the government, which was in power on October 7, 2023, has taken steps to set up its own inquiry into the onslaught, sparking backlash.
Some critics, including opposition lawmakers and government watchdog groups, have likewise raised concerns that Englman, who has no legal background and was appointed under a Netanyahu-led government, may minimize political responsibility for the brutal attack.
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