The writing was in the sky • What do October 7th and the flight incident teach about the next systemic failure?

Three years have passed since October 7. Beyond the difficult questions about conception, intelligence, command and control, a deeper question remains: how does an entire system, made up of professional people, highly experienced organizations, and veteran politicians, reach a moment when the information exists, the threat exists, and yet the picture does not connect in time?

On that bitter morning, faced with the collapse of the systems, the great strength of Israeli society was revealed. Citizens, fighters, alert platoons and volunteers, showed up even before they were called. This was the great hour of the Israeli public, and we should be proud of it. But this is precisely where the danger lies. Civilian resilience is a critical national asset, but it is no substitute for a functioning state.

Three years after the disaster, when an independent state investigation committee has not yet been established to examine the full range of failures, the "Fly Dubai incident" presents us with a disturbing picture. The dimensions of the events cannot be compared, but precisely because of this, the common systemic pattern stands out, the gap between the existence of information and the ability to turn it into preventive action.

According to the latest reports on the flight incident, a co-pilot, about whom critical security information had emerged, arrived in the cockpit of a passenger plane en route to Israel. The chain of questions screams to the heavens: who had the information? To whom was it transferred? Which Israeli body was responsible for connecting the dots? It is possible that each body acted properly according to its narrow definition of its role. This is precisely the most disturbing possibility. Systemic failure is not necessarily the negligence of individuals, but a situation in which everyone does their part, but no one holds responsibility for the complete picture. The great danger lurks in the seams, between organization and organization, between intelligence and execution, and between what is known and who is authorized to act.

This is the direct professional connection to October 7. A national commission of inquiry is not required just to point fingers at past culprits, but to investigate the architecture of the failure, how a concept was established, how contradictory information was given weight and blocked, and where areas were created for which no one saw full responsibility. This is the defense system of the future. It is difficult to accept the fact that a country that experienced the most serious disaster in its history is entering its fourth year without a national investigation process, one of the goals of which is to reduce the risk of the next disaster.

The flight incident sets off a red light. A system failure almost never appears as a pre-planned horror scenario; before it happens, it looks like an unhandled detail, untransmitted information, an unupdated procedure, or a wrong decision that no one challenged in time. This time, fortunately, disaster was averted thanks to the resourcefulness of crew members and passengers. Once again, the public stood up where the prevention mechanisms had failed.

This is a source of pride, but also a grave warning. A serious state cannot turn the heroism of its citizens into a mechanism for correcting systemic failures. There is a profound difference between civilian resilience that complements the functioning of the state and resilience that is required to replace it in moments of crisis. A concept of security cannot rest on the assumption that there will always be the right, brave, and available person to pull the system out of the mud.

A near-disaster is a rare opportunity to learn without paying the full price. A country is measured not only by its ability to respond after the scenario has materialized, but by its ability to identify weaknesses in advance, define a clear owner for each risk, and courageously ask, what are we missing?

The debate over the commission of inquiry goes far beyond the past of one war or another; it touches on the question of whether Israel is capable of creating a real learning mechanism for the future. The next failure, whether it comes from cyber, from the sea, from critical infrastructure or from another arena, will not look like its predecessor. Threats change, but organizational weaknesses of division of responsibility, conceptual stagnation and lack of decision-making on the part of the political echelon tend to repeat themselves.

Three years after October 7, the question is not just who failed and who knew, but what mechanism made the failure possible, who was responsible for connecting the ends of intelligence, regulation, and operations, and who failed to turn early warning into preventive action on the ground. The Israeli public has proven itself beyond any doubt. Now it is the state’s turn to prove that it has learned, not through declarations, but through a courageous willingness to open systems for independent review, to connect arms, and to fix what is inconvenient.

Because if three years after the disaster we are still arguing about the very investigation, while a new failure almost ended in disaster, the chilling question is no longer what happened to us then, but what will happen next time. The public can be the last line of defense. The state must not make it the first line of defense.