‘One after another, they had no pulse’
TWO MONTREALERS AMONG THOSE KILLED IN ISRAEL AS DEATH TOLL HITS 45 IN RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL STAMPEDE
In a tunnel at Mount Meron lies a twisted sheet of metal and a body bag, the last remaining signs of the disaster that befell Jewish worshippers here in the early hours of Friday. The body bag is empty, but the metal sheet has been ripped off the tunnel wall and is covered by dents — a silent testament to the struggle of those who were crushed to death.
At least 45 people, including two Canadians, were killed in the stampede that erupted as Israel’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community celebrated Lag B’omer, a festival that honours Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a sage of the second-century and one of Judaism’s greatest mystical scholars.
Thousands of plates of food were prepared and speakers blared out music in the Galilee village as worshippers gathered for the ceremonial lighting of bonfires.
This was the first mass religious gathering in Israel since it lifted most COVID restrictions earlier this year. One local news report estimated that more than 100,000 people were there.
The festival was segregated by gender, and medics said the injuries and deaths were concentrated in the men’s section.
It was unclear Friday what exactly caused the stampede, though some witnesses said a group of worshippers had slipped on a staircase, sending a cascade of bodies into the narrow tunnel below, where they were crushed together in suffocating heat.
Others claimed police barricaded part of the tunnel to control the flow of crowds, turning the passageway into a deadly bottleneck.
Whatever the cause, Israel has been devastated. By Friday night the death toll was at least 45 with 40 people unaccounted for and more than 150 people injured. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was one of the worst disasters to befall Israel and declared Sunday a national day of mourning.
By late Friday afternoon, the Health Ministry said 32 of the dead had been identified. As sunset neared, the process was halted for 24 hours in observance of the Jewish Sabbath, and would resume on Saturday evening.
Two Montrealers are confirmed to be among the dead. Shraga Gestetner was a well-known singer who performed as Shragee Gestetner. Dovi Steinmetz was a 21-year-old student.
Mayer Feig, a member of the Quebec Council of Hasidic Jews and a community activist, described Gestetner as a “very, very giving person” who had left a successful music career to focus on helping vulnerable people in his community.
Gestetner, a father of six, was born in Montreal and moved to New York state after getting married, Feig said in an interview Friday. An Israeli cabinet minister called for people to attend Gestetner’s funeral in Israel Friday as his family is in North America.
Feig described Steinmetz as “a gentle, gentle, gentle person that was just taken too early.”
Lionel Perez, Montreal’s municipal opposition leader, wrote on Twitter that he was devastated by the death of Steinmetz, who was a friend of the family. “Dovi was outgoing, loved by all,” he said.
An injured man lying on a hospital bed described how the crush began when a line of people in the front of the surging crowd simply collapsed.
“A pyramid of one on top of another was formed.
People were piling up one on top of the other. I was in the second row. The people in the first row — I saw people die in front of my eyes,” he told reporters.
Paramedics, who over the decades have attended suicide bombings and other terror attacks, said it was one of the most awful scenes they had encountered. “We started to do CPR. One after the other, they had no pulse,” said Levy Steinmatz. “There was nothing we could do, and they kept bringing more (bodies). It was madness.
“It is shocking to think about the last moments of those who died when people were stepping on them. It is really shocking,” Steinmatz said.
Meir Gliksberg, 27, a volunteer in the festival kitchens, was among the first to realize how serious things were getting when he heard screams in the tunnel below. “We started pulling wounded people into the kitchen and treating them,” he said. “We had no rescue equipment so we couldn’t give them first aid ... I grabbed a policeman and showed him the bodies, then he realized something serious was happening.”
As news of the tragedy spread, Zaka, an emergency services group, said its paramedics saw the mobile phones of the dead lighting up with calls from “Mum” and “My Dear Wife.”
The Mount Meron tragedy is likely to go down as Israel’s worst peacetime disaster, not least because the sudden transformation from a peaceful ceremony to a night of horrors will make it much harder to forget.
The Daily Telegraph, with
additional reporting by The Canadian Press, Reuters