The Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack was an “epic colossal failure of the State of Israel,” former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told a crowd of more than 500 college students last Sunday at the Israel on Campus Coalition’s three-day National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. 

“Nothing worked” in Israel when Hamas infiltrated and murdered more than 1,000 people, Bennett said. “Intelligence, operational and subsequent total meltdown of institutional and governmental Israel. We failed at our most fundamental mission, which is that Jews will never again experience a pogrom.” 

The former prime minister called for Israel’s leadership to be “clear-eyed about the failure.” 

Simultaneously, out of Oct. 7 came a “remarkable story of the people of Israel,” Bennett said. 

“While the government and institution of Israel failed, the people of Israel rose,” he said. “Thousands of young men and women from all over Israel got in their cars and drove down into the inferno … to go and save lives of people they don’t know.” 

Tens of thousands of protesters in Israel who have taken to the streets in recent months to call for a hostage deal have also demanded a state commission of inquiry into the security and intelligence failures surrounding Oct. 7 as well as for an election to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

In December, State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman announced he would open an investigation into the intelligence failures, but he struggled to get cooperation from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Israeli military. In June, Israel’s High Court of Justice put the investigation on hold after reviewing classified arguments from security agencies. Last month the court decided to maintain the freeze. 

Students from more than 153 campuses attended the summit, the largest of its kind since the group started hosting the annual conference in 2022. Other speakers included Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem; and Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. 

This year’s event — which began Sunday and concluded Tuesday — focused on the theme of “Take Back The Campus” as students prepare to go back to university following a surge of antisemitic activity that overtook campuses nationwide throughout the 2023-24 academic year.