Q&A: Searching for the Guilty Party
Searching for the Guilty Party
Question
“Suppose we have an organization built like a pyramid, and a severe failure occurred in it, like the one on October 7. In that organization:
– At the bottom of the pyramid there are people who collect data and decide what is relevant.
– Above them there is a layer that analyzes that data.
– The next layer checks whether the analysis is correct and whether more information is needed.
– After that there are those who summarize everything briefly and pass it on.
– And so it continues up to the highest level of decision-makers.
Now, when it becomes clear that there was a terrible mistake, the question arises: who is really to blame?
Can you blame someone specific, or is that impossible because everyone relies on the people below them? After all, each person can claim, ‘I received incorrect or partial information, so it isn’t my fault.’
How should the question of responsibility be approached in such cases of systemic failure?”
Answer
This is too general a question, so I’ll give a general answer (though not too general). In principle, in each case one has to examine whether a reasonable person should have acted differently (in light of the data, or even in setting up the system for collecting and analyzing the data). If he should have acted differently, then he bears blame; if not, then there is no blame, though one can still discuss responsibility (ministerial responsibility).
Discussion on Answer
Absolutely not. That’s a wild generalization. How can one determine such a thing categorically for all cases?
There are situations in which the head is not guilty because he acted entirely properly and his subordinates messed up. At the simplest level, think of a situation where I appointed a qualified person to a position, someone who met all the criteria, and in the end he took a bribe or embezzled funds and acted improperly. Am I to blame? Absolutely not. And if he just messed up without taking a bribe? Also no.
A friend of mine, Menachem Finkelstein, who headed the commission of inquiry into the escape of the prisoners from Megiddo Prison, told me that in Israel no commission of inquiry has ever imposed ministerial responsibility on anyone — meaning responsibility without blame. So they always examined only the dimension of blame. He is now publishing a two-part article dealing with the question of whether there is room to expand that kind of responsibility to situations without blame. I discussed it with him at length, and in my opinion there is room for that in certain ways.
By the way, the reverse is also far from necessary. There could be a situation where the head is guilty and the subordinate is not. If the head gave him an order that he knew would lead to problematic consequences, and the subordinate had no way of seeing that, so he obeyed.
There were severe warnings,
and some of them explicit and in writing.
Listening to the testimony and investigation of Yair Lapid and Ehud Barak at the civilian commission of inquiry presents simple, verified, clear, and unequivocal proof that there were plenty of warnings,
and Bibi heard and did not convene the system to launch a counterattack, didn’t even hold meetings to make sure there were forces and the capability for defense.
He simply dismissed and ignored clear and unequivocal warnings.
A general question was asked here. I wasn’t referring to Bibi. You can discuss something without dragging Bibi into the discussion.
In my opinion, then of course those at the bottom of the pyramid are to blame, but so is the head of the pyramid. The bottom — that’s obvious. The head — because he is supposed to provide the character, the oversight, the direction, and the overall stamp of all the people in the pyramid. And if so, he is to blame for not replacing them, for not doubting what they said, and for following them blindly. Likewise, if he didn’t know about all this and accepted what they said with absolute confidence — for that itself he is also to blame. It follows that those in the middle are also to blame to one degree or another — a. for their contribution to the situation. b. for lack of doubt, criticism, and so on. The possibility of their not being guilty is if they received a direct order to be absolute robots (without questioning or raising doubts), except that this role was probably created under the inspiration of the head, so he again ends up being guilty, of course.
Michi,
Do you agree?