The Winograd Commission, officially called The governmental investigative commission for examining the preparation and conduct of the political echelon and the defense establishment concerning all aspects of the Northern Campaign that started on July 12, 2006, was established on the basis of a government decision dated September 17, 2006. The commission submitted an interim report on April 30, 2007, about seven months after it began its work. The interim report discusses the period that preceded the war, from the withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon in 2000 until the outbreak of the war, as well as the decision-making process on going to war and the first five days of the war. During the seven months of its work, the commission heard the testimonies of 74 witnesses from the military and political echelons both present and past.
The interim report raises several issues: responsibility of senior position holders in the military and political echelons, the point of interface between the military echelon and the political echelon, and the commission’s authority to make recommendations.
Responsibility
The most controversial issue in the report is that of personal responsibility and ministerial (command) accountability of senior figures in the military echelon and the political echelon. The Winograd Commission examined the personal responsibility of the decision makers – in other words, their judgment, conduct, failures, qualifications, and knowledge – as well as the questions of the ministerial accountability of the senior political echelon and the command accountability of the senior military echelon, i.e. the responsibility of the position holders for what is done within their realm of authority. Click here for more on ministerial accountability and personal responsibility.
Similarly to the Agranat Commission (a state commission of inquiry established in 1973 that investigated the Yom Kippur War), the Winograd Commission did not distinguish between the military echelon and the political echelon in its scrutiny of the judgment employed by position holders in decision making, though it did pose different criteria for examining their performance: the professional echelon was examined in light of criteria of professionalism, loyalty, strategic perspective, and experience; while the political echelon was called upon to demonstrate judgment, responsibility, leadership, and an overall national strategic perspective.
The main difference between the conclusions of the Agranat Commission and the Winograd Commission is that the Agranat Commission imposed personal responsibility solely on the military echelon (mainly on the IDF Chief of Staff and the Head of Military Intelligence) and found that Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan employed reasonable judgment given the information at their disposal. In other words, the commission effectively relieved the political echelon of personal responsibility for the failure. Conversely, the Winograd Commission in its interim report leveled sharp criticism at the conduct of the three senior position holders – the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister and the Chief of Staff – and imposed personal responsibility and ministerial accountability upon them.
Interface between the military echelon and the political echelon
The relations between the military echelon and the political echelon was examined in the Winograd Commission's report, as in other reports of state commissions of inquiry that engaged in an examination of the defense establishment, including the Agranat Commission (1973), the Kahan Commission (1982), and the Landau Commission (1986). The institutional failures revealed by the Winograd Commission are similar to the failures noted by the Agranat Commission over 30 years ago. The Agranat Commission dedicated a considerable part of the 1,500 pages of its final report to the relations between the army and the government, and made many institutional recommendations, such as the need for a clear definition of the powers of the political echelon and the powers of the military echelon, establishing a ministerial committee on defense affairs, appointing a special intelligence advisor to the Prime Minister, establishing an independent intelligence agency in the Prime Minister’s Office, and changing the structure of the IDF Intelligence Directorate. Although in principle the government adopted the commission’s recommendations, they were only partially implemented, and some of them were carried out much later.
Ironically, the conclusions of the Winograd Commission also point to the same faults. For example, the Winograd Commission, like the Agranat Commission before it, cited the weakness of the independent mechanisms standing at the disposal of the Prime Minister and the government in decision making and noted their exclusive dependence on military sources of information. The Winograd Commission found that the National Security Council, which was established at the recommendation of the Agranat Commission at a 25-year delay (the council was established in 1999), should be strengthened. The commission stated that it should be ensured that professional staff work is carried out by the National Security Council that will provide the Prime Minister and the government with an independent basis for making diplomatic and security decisions. The commission also recommended establishing a center for managing national crises and stated that the ministers’ knowledge should be broadened so that they would be able to make informed decisions.
Stormy public discourse following the commission's report has focused on the personal aspects and neglected the institutional faults revealed by the commission, even though these faults can be rectified and have implications for the future.
The commission's authority to make personal recommendations
Much of the public has voiced dissatisfaction with the fact that the Winograd Commission did not include personal recommendations in its interim report. The question of whether or not it is a commission’s job to issue recommendations is in dispute. The Winograd Commission saw its main role as establishing findings and drawing conclusions, but it also saw itself as qualified to make recommendations pertaining to proper procedures for decision making and recommendations dealing with organizational structures and inter-organizational relations (the army and the government, for example). The commission also believed that it is “qualified to make personal recommendations, such as the recommendation that a certain person not continue to serve in his post,” but preferred to exercise caution with this type of recommendation and make them only when absolutely necessary, in order to refrain from infringing upon the authority of other agencies. The commission did not make personal recommendations with regards to military personnel, since it believes that authority lies in the hands of the Defense Minister, the Prime Minister, and the government. It also did not make personal recommendations regarding ministers, because this authority rests with the Prime Minister. The commission refrained from issuing recommendations on the political echelon in the interim report due to the fact that in its opinion, the holders of authority – in this case, the Knesset and the public – should be given the opportunity to decide on this matter. The lack of personal recommendations does not purport the “acquittal” of senior position holders but rather expresses the commission’s view on the boundaries of its public role. The commission believes that its role is to clarify the facts, examine the judgment of the decisions makers, audit them, and reveal failures so that it will be possible to rectify them. It is not, however, within its purview, as an appointed investigating and auditing body, to make professional and political decisions. In any case, the commis