In Kibbutz Nahal Oz, the Israeli cooperative farming community bordering the Gaza Strip, Dani Rahamim offers a definition of victory that differs from the one put forward by the Israeli government.
“It’s our victory — ours, the citizens who came back here and keep on living,” Rahamim told MBN.
Three years after the Oct. 7 attack, returning to the homes of Nahal Oz does not mean, for Rahamim, that the effects of what happened are over, and he criticizes the government’s handling of the residents’ suffering.
“I have no expectations of this government,” he said. “And I see no empathy or understanding from it for what happened to us, for the terror we lived through here, and for the traumas we carry with us.”
Rahamim shows no surprise at the failure to fulfill pledges to eliminate Hamas completely, saying that “setting unrealistic goals makes fulfilling them difficult,” and that he did not believe it was possible to eliminate the group entirely or prevent it from becoming active again.
Over years of the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adopted the slogan “total victory,” which includes the goal of eliminating Hamas’ rule and military capabilities, a goal that remained central to the government’s rhetoric as operations in Gaza continued.
Nahal Oz is a farming kibbutz founded in 1951 in the western Negev, about 800 meters from the Gaza Strip border. It was among the places attacked in the first hours of Oct. 7, 2023, and the Nahal Oz military base is nearby.
While Rahamim sums up victory as residents’ ability to return to their homes and resume their lives, Ilan Morag, chairman of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, says restoring trust means uncovering the causes of the failure that allowed the attack to happen and determining who was responsible for it.
Speaking to MBN, Morag called for a commission of inquiry to examine what happened so that it is not repeated, stressing that the aim is not to look for someone to condemn in advance but to assign responsibility based on the inquiry’s findings.
He believes those who failed in their duties, on the day of the attack or in the days and years before it, should leave their posts. He criticizes Netanyahu directly, saying the prime minister “must take responsibility, but he does not.”
Morag points to the resignations of military chief of staff Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, but he believes restoring trust requires an investigation that establishes responsibility and makes those who fell short bear the consequences of their mistakes.
Halevi announced his resignation in January 2025, taking responsibility for the military’s failure to protect citizens during the Oct. 7 attack. Bar stepped down in June 2025, after acknowledging the Shin Bet’s responsibility for failures that preceded the attack.
Netanyahu, by contrast, offers a narrative centered on what his government considers the war’s achievements, foremost among them bringing back the hostages, returning residents to the affected communities and pressing on with efforts to end the rule of Hamas, which Washington designates a terrorist group.
At an official ceremony commemorating the victims of Oct. 7, Netanyahu said, “We brought home all of our hostages who were held in the tunnels of Gaza, but this is not the end of the story,” renewing his pledge to eliminate Hamas’ rule.
Netanyahu invoked the stories of victims and of families who lost their children, affirming his government’s commitment to “complete the mission” in Gaza, and linked the war to the confrontation with Iran and its allies. He said more than 90% of residents had returned to their homes and that thousands of new residents had joined them, describing what is happening in the western Negev as “unprecedented growth.”
But Netanyahu’s speech included no announcement that he was taking responsibility for the Oct. 7 security failure, nor any pledge to form a commission of inquiry into how Hamas managed to conduct the attack.
About 1,200 Israelis and foreigners were killed on Oct. 7, 2023, and 251 people were taken into the Gaza Strip as hostages, according to official Israeli figures. Most of the hostages were returned in exchange deals for Palestinian prisoners, while others were killed in Gaza. The bodies of some were later recovered.
What is known in Israel as the Gaza envelope comprises the city of Sderot and 45 villages and smaller communities within seven kilometers of the Strip’s border; 32 of these civilian communities came under direct attack.
The debate in Israel is not limited to residents of the affected communities. Reserve Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, who was the Israeli military’s point man on hostage negotiations, is raising questions about the conduct of the war and the handling of the hostages.
At a discussion hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Oct. 2, Alon said Israel could have brought back all the hostages about a year before it finally did, without any substantial effect on the war’s strategic outcomes.
He added that “maybe some hostages that got killed or murdered during their captivity” could have come home alive. “We missed it, actually,” he said, arguing that the war went on longer than it should have and that shortening it might have saved thousands of lives on both sides of the fighting.
Alon also took aim at Netanyahu’s “total victory” slogan, saying Israel needs leaders who see reality as it is and offer a realistic, balanced plan for its security and economic challenges rather than slogans.
In an apparent response to Alon’s remarks, Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs said in a post on X that bringing the hostages back earlier would have required a full withdrawal from Gaza and the Philadelphi Corridor, along with guarantees that the war would not resume.
“Those … officials know full well that returning all the hostages at an earlier stage was conditional on a full withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip … and the implication would have been a victory for Hamas and a defeat for Israel after the October 7 massacre,” he wrote.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid, meanwhile, on Tuesday criticized what he described as the government’s promotion of a “betrayal from within” theory to explain the events of Oct. 7.
Speaking at an Reichman University’s World Summit on Counter-Terrorism, he said this narrative deepens suspicion among Israelis and erodes trust within society, stressing that the continued presence of Hamas fighters in Gaza means the group has not been defeated, and that “victory over terrorism is not measured only by the number of tunnels destroyed and gunmen killed.”
