CLASH ERUPTS AT ISRAEL’S MOUNT MERON

MERON, Israel: A crowd of Jewish worshippers broke through police barriers on Thursday at an annual pilgrimage in Israel’s Mount Meron, a year after 45 people were crushed to death in a stampede.

Israeli police said “dozens of extremists” broke into a section of the religious site while “wildly flinging the fences and endangering human life.”

The police retreated from the site when a group of worshippers broke barriers and stormed in, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer said, adding that officers later returned.

More than 10,000 faithful had converged on the site under tightened security measures for the start of the pilgrimage on Wednesday.

The Mount Meron pilgrimage occurs on the Lag BaOmer holiday, when mainly ultra-Orthodox Jews throng the site of the tomb of revered secondcentury Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.

On April 30 last year, a stampede broke out in the male section of the gender-divided site as the size of the crowd turned a narrow passageway into a deadly choke-point.

At least 16 children were among those trampled to death, in what thenprime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “one of the worst” disasters in Israel’s history.

An AFP photographer saw several worshippers arrested and handcuffed by police on Thursday. In addition, some security cameras and electrical equipment at the site were sabotaged, the photographer said.

Police then stopped the movement of additional faithful toward the site, where the pilgrimage runs until Thursday night.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Wednesday that his government made a “considerable investment” in new safety measures to ensure there is no repeat of last year.

Among the changes is a cap of 16,000 pilgrims allowed on the site at any given moment.

On Tuesday, police said they had seized knives and hammers from an “extremist ultra-Orthodox faction” that allegedly intended to sabotage communications infrastructure at the site.

Some ultra-Orthodox sects are antiZionist and oppose the existence of the Jewish state. They are sometimes antagonistic to Israel’s state institutions, including its police forces.

AFP PHOTO UNHOLY DISTURBANCE Ultra-Orthodox Jews scuffle with the police as they try to enter the grave site of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in the northern Israeli village of Meron on Thursday, May 19, 2022, during the holiday of Lag BaOmer that commemorates the Jewish scholar’s death. Thousands of religious Jews light large bonfires all night long and visit the shrine of Bar Yochai, one of the most prominent sages in Jewish history, during the holiday.