Comptroller and Ombudsman Matan Englman giving a speech in February 2025 (@LTurkishdizi/X video snippet)
Comptroller Matanyahu Englman in February (video snippet)

A Nation Without a Compass: The Strategic Collapse Behind October 7

Details
Explainer
Audit of Failure: Israel’s Missing National Security Doctrine Exposed as Root of October 7 Collapse. Englman’s explosive report accuses years of political paralysis of leaving Israel’s defenses rudderless, exposing a nation that went to war without a compass.

In a scathing and unprecedented indictment of Israel’s security establishment, State Comptroller Matanyahu Englmanhas concluded that the Jewish state entered its most devastating war in generations without a binding national security doctrine, a failure rooted in fifteen years of political inertia and bureaucratic cowardice.

The report, titled “Lack of a National Security Concept and Its Impact on Key Processes at the Political Echelon and in the Israel Defense Forces,” paints a picture of a nation relying on instinct, habit, and nostalgia rather than vision, structure, and accountability.

Englman’s findings are not just academic. They are a national reckoning.

The Strategy Vacuum: A Nation Without a Compass

According to the audit, since the creation of the National Security Council (NSC) in 2008, not one of its directors, across multiple governments, fulfilled the council’s legal mandate to submit an updated national security concept for Cabinet approval. The result: Israel has operated for nearly two decades without an officially sanctioned doctrine.

Instead, the state drifted forward under the ghost of David Ben-Gurion’s “Security Triangle”, deterrence, early warning, and decisive victory, a doctrine conceived for the young state’s survival in 1948 but grotesquely outdated in the face of modern asymmetric warfare, cyber warfare, and Iran’s regional militias.

Without a coherent doctrine, Englman said, security policy was reduced to improvisation. Strategic planning became a patchwork of assumptions, verbal understandings, and situational reactions.

Israel’s enemies, he implies, were playing chess. Israel was playing whack-a-mole.

The Doctrine That Never Was

In 2017–2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commissioned a comprehensive “National Security Concept 2030,” a document meant to formalize Israel’s strategic pillars, military, economic, diplomatic, and social.

It proposed anchoring defense spending at roughly 6% of GDP and building an integrated national power strategy to secure Israel’s future.

But like so many visionary projects in Israeli bureaucracy, it died quietly on the shelf. Englman notes that Netanyahu never brought the doctrine to the Cabinet for approval, leaving it legally void and strategically impotent.

“The prime minister,” the comptroller wrote bluntly, “did not fulfill his responsibility in this matter.”

The Prime Minister’s Office defended itself by arguing that no law compels formal adoption, a bureaucratic answer to a strategic disaster.

An IDF Flying Blind

Englman’s report exposes how the Israel Defense Forces were left to improvise—building operational doctrines, force structures, and budgets in a strategic vacuum.

The IDF’s “Momentum” plan, launched by former Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, replaced the “Gideon Plan” without political approval or any overarching doctrine to guide its direction. Brigades were reduced, tank forces restructured, and intelligence coordination redefined, all without a single strategic vote.

Each security agency, IDF, Shin Bet, Mossad, developed its own de facto doctrine, a self-made compass in a mapless desert. Coordination gave way to fragmentation. The Comptroller warns this “do-it-yourself” approach risked contradictions between military actions and political objectives, generating strategic blind spots and false confidence.

The Mirage of Deterrence

Englman draws a chilling line from this strategic vacuum to the catastrophe of October 7, 2023.

Israel’s leadership, across parties and governments — clung to the illusion of deterrence. For years, every prime minister boasted of “restoring quiet” and “reestablishing deterrence” after each Gaza operation.

  • 2014: “We restored deterrence,” Netanyahu declared after Protective Edge.

  • 2021: “The south is flourishing,” said Bennett, handing over power.

  • 2022: Lapid promised “five years of quiet” after Breaking Dawn.

  • 2023: Kochavi called Hamas “deterred.”

Each statement, Englman’s report suggests, was built on sand, a collective delusion that collapsed on October 7. The very pillars of Ben-Gurion’s security triangle, deterrence, early warning, and defense — crumbled simultaneously.

“October 7 shattered the old doctrine,” Englman’s report concludes, “and exposed the price of strategic negligence.”

Inside the Corridors of Avoidance

Interviews with former prime ministers, defense ministers, and NSC heads reveal a grim consensus: no government ever had the courage to formalize a doctrine.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett admitted that in over a decade of Cabinet meetings, the topic never once came up.
Former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman listed three reasons:

  1. A fixed defense budget politicians feared to reopen.

  2. Six different defense ministers in eight years, no continuity.

  3. Elections trumped strategy, always.

Former IDF Chief Gadi Eisenkot went further, calling it “a failure of political leadership” to define strategic direction.

They all knew. None acted.

Englman’s Verdict: Bureaucracy Over Bravery

Englman excoriates the NSC for “chronically evading” its legal duty. From Uzi Arad to Tzachi Hanegbi, the Comptroller names each leader who passed the baton without delivering a binding national concept.

Between 2011 and 2023, the council “engaged with the issue intermittently,” but never brought a final version to the Cabinet.

Meanwhile, the IDF was left to write its own story. Operational freedom replaced strategic discipline.
The result? A defense establishment capable of winning battles, but fighting without direction in the war for Israel’s future.

A Nation Adrift, and a Chance to Reclaim Direction

Englman’s recommendations are sweeping:

  • Empower the NSC to lead a full review and draft a binding national security doctrine.

  • Mandate periodic reviews every five years or after any major geopolitical shift.

  • Define national interests explicitly, from Iran’s nuclear threat to cyber defense to social cohesion.

  • Establish a shared strategic language between the IDF, Mossad, Shin Bet, and political leadership.

The goal: a living, breathing doctrine that aligns Israel’s resources, strategies, and policies, not a forgotten document in a filing cabinet.

The Final Word

Englman’s report does more than identify bureaucratic neglect. It exposes a painful truth:
Israel, the state that built miracles from dust, has been running on improvisation when it comes to its own survival.

October 7 was not only a military failure, it was a failure of imagination, of responsibility, and of governance.

The question now is whether Israel’s leaders will heed the warning, or whether the next war will find the nation again unprepared, led by instinct instead of strategy, and courage instead of clarity.

About Us

The Judean is a digital media platform committed to exposing the truth about Israel and confronting the global wave of anti-Zionist disinformation. Through powerful editorials, featured articles, and historical investigations, we bring clarity to Israel’s story — its ancient Jewish roots, modern democratic values, and ongoing struggle for truth in the media battlefield. At a time when propaganda threatens to rewrite history and vilify Jewish self-determination, The Judean stands as a proud voice of resistance. We exist not to appease, but to assert: Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people — and that truth is non-negotiable.
Modi'in, Israel 71702
info@thejudean.com