San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Demands for accountability intensify after stampede kills 45 people at holy site in Israel
MOUNT MERON, Israel — Demands for accountability after a disaster that left 45 people dead at a holy site in northern Israel mounted Saturday as questions swirled about the culpability of the government, religious leaders and the police.
The stampede on Mount Meron early Friday during an annual pilgrimage, one of Israel’s worst civil disasters, was foreshadowed for years in warnings by local politicians, journalists and ombudsmen that the site had become a death trap.
On Saturday, the Israeli news media reported that senior police officials had blamed the Ministry of Religious Services because it had signed off earlier in the week on safety procedures for the event.
But a police spokesperson said that no additional precautions had been taken to secure the site since the stampede. Three police officers on duty at the mountain said they had received no instructions to limit crowds since the deaths Friday. Pilgrims who remained on the mountain continued to walk through the site of the stampede, which had not been cordoned off.
Politicians and political commentators accused the police and other authorities of playing a part in the tragedy. One of those under scrutiny is the minister for public security, Amir Ohana, who oversees the police and rescue services and attended the pilgrimage.
Successive Israeli governments were blamed for turning a blind eye to safety issues on the mountain for more than a decade to avoid alienating the ultra-Orthodox Jews who attend the annual celebration, known in Hebrew as a hillula. Seven of the last nine Israeli governing coalitions have relied on the support of ultra-Orthodox parties.
Referring to the minister for public security, Anshel Pfeffer, a political commentator and author, wrote in the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “Ohana would not have considered — not even for a minute — to restrict arrivals to the hillula at Meron and anger the ultra-Orthodox politicians who control
the fate of his master, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
“But neither did his predecessors consider it,” he added.
Netanyahu is currently struggling to cobble together a new coalition government that will require the support of two ultra-Orthodox parties to have a chance of forming a parliamentary majority.
A senior police officer, Morris Chen, said Friday night that police protocols had not been influenced by political interference.
Ohana, the public security minister, posted on Twitter that police had done their best.
“There must be and will be a thorough, in-depth and real inquiry that will discover how and why this happened,” he later said in a video, adding, “From the bottom of my heart I wish to share in the sorrow of the families that lost the most precious thing of all, and to wish a swift and full recovery to the injured.”
The attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, tasked an independent watchdog that investigates claims of police wrongdoing with assessing accusations of police negligence in the buildup to the disaster. But Saturday, Kan, the state-run broadcaster, said that the watchdog was reluctant to oversee the investigation because of the roles played by other officials and bodies beyond the police.
Hundreds of thousands of ultraOrthodox Jews visit Mount Meron each spring for the festival of Lag b’Omer. It honors the death of a second-century Jewish mystic, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, whose tomb is on the mountain.
The event has long prompted calls to limit the number of pilgrims allowed to attend. The site is a warren of narrow passageways and cramped plazas that visitors have often warned were unsuitable for crowds.
Different parts of the site fall under the jurisdiction of four competing private religious institutions, which resist state intervention.
There was “one main fault,” Liora Shimon, deputy director general at the comptroller, told Kan. “It is the fact that this site is not under the responsibility of one single management.”