The mass panic with dozens of dead on Mount Meron plunges the people of Israel into deep mourning. The horror also includes the question of who is responsible for the catastrophe.
The national flags are at half mast across Israel. The government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had declared Sunday a day of national mourning, in memory of the 45 deaths of the worst disaster the country has experienced in peacetime. Triggered by a mass panic at the largest religious festival since the beginning of the pandemic, to which more than 100,000 people flocked to the holy mountain Meron in the north of the country on Friday night.
Most of the exclusively male dead have already been buried according to Jewish tradition, among them a dozen children and young people between the ages of twelve and 18. Two families lost two of their sons. But the horror and compassion are mixed up with the question of who was responsible for this tragedy. And there is much to suggest that it would have been avoided if the police and politicians had not ignored the recommended security requirements.
There have been warning voices for a long time that the annual Lag Ba’Omer celebration on the Meron, a mass event that primarily attracts ultra-Orthodox Jews, involves enormous risks. There is the tomb of Shimon Bar Jochai, a rabbi from the second century and author of one of the most important texts of the Kabbalah. In his honor and in memory of the Bar Kochba uprising against the Romans, large campfires are lit between large concert stages, around which the godly Haredim often dance to ecstasy. But the entrances to the provisional festival site are narrow and crowded. One of them became a death trap when, after midnight, panic broke out in the crowded crowd on a sloping ramp only a few meters wide and bordered by side walls.
More and more people, mostly men and children, slipped and fell on the metal-smooth steps, which were slippery due to discarded water bottles. This passage makes a 90-degree curve, so that the crowds who were advancing did not notice the panic scenes behind the curve and wanted to continue on, out of the tunnel.
Witnesses described how the people in this stampede flew on the front and were trampled. Desperate cries “we can’t breathe” had become more and more quiet. “It felt like an eternity, there were dead people all around us,” reported a survivor later in the sick bed. The pressure on the steps was terrible. Everyone had been terrified of death. Many could only be pulled out of the crowd by rescue workers at the last minute.
Most of the 150 injured got away with bruises. However, more than 20 Israelis had to be flown to hospitals by rescue helicopter because of serious, sometimes life-threatening injuries. Photos from the morning after showed the main scene of the tragedy littered with shoes, broken glasses and crushed drinking containers.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who with his minister for public security, Amir Ohana, inspected the site on Friday, promised a “thorough, serious and in-depth investigation so that such a disaster does not happen again”. However, critical voices recalled that even in lockdown times, out of consideration for religious coalition partners, Netanyahu ignored the notorious non-compliance with contact restrictions in strictly devout residential areas.
Minister Ohana is also said to have spoken out against any restrictions on participants at the celebration on the Meron. If it had been up to the health authorities, only 10,000 guests would have been allowed to enter after checking their “Green Pass”, the proof of double corona vaccination. However, in addition to right-wing Knesset members, Interior Minister Arie Deri had insisted on granting the pious Haredim free access, as was customary before the pandemic. After all, Israel was almost completely vaccinated.
In view of the unexpectedly large crowd, the 5,000 police officers apparently did not see themselves in a position to enforce any conditions. The police district commander Shimon Lavi acknowledged his “full responsibility” immediately after the accident, but without declaring his resignation. Israeli comments said Lavi was welcome as a scapegoat to some of the top government officials to divert attention from their political failure.
In any case, the investigations have so far concentrated on wrong decisions made by the police and the authorities. Calls for a state commission of inquiry, which could also summon members of the government, only met with support from the opposition. Hours before the fatal Friday night, top right-wing ministers were full of self-praise for the event they made possible. But suddenly, “Maariv” journalist Ben Caspit pointed out, “they have all disappeared from our screens”.
