Israelis mourned the loss of life on Friday after a joyous pilgrimage drew tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews turned tragic. And, while the country was united in its grief and shock, questions about poor planning and possible negligence arose almost immediately.
Even for a country accustomed to the trauma of wars and terrorist attacks, the deadly crash that killed 45 people during a mass religious celebration on Mount Meron in the northern Galilee region was one of the worst disasters in Israeli history. For years, there had been warnings that the site’s patchy infrastructure could not handle large crowds safely.
“We will conduct a thorough, serious and deep investigation to ensure such a disaster does not happen again,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on a visit to the site on Friday. He called for a national day of mourning on Sunday.
Up to 100,000 people crammed onto the mountain late Thursday, the majority arriving on organized buses to celebrate the holiday. According to witnesses, the festivities turned to horror about an hour after midnight, when scores of adults and children were crushed and suffocated in an overcrowded, narrow passageway that turned into a death trap.
The crush happened after revelers poured out of a section of the mountainside compound, down some steps, and into a passageway with a sloping metal floor. According to witnesses, some people in the front fainted or slipped, causing a bottleneck and triggering what the Hebrew news site Ynet described as a “human avalanche.”
Chaim Vertheimer, one of the injured, stated that the slope was slick due to spilled water and grape juice. “For some reason, there was sudden pressure at this point and people stopped. But more people kept coming down,” Mr. Vertheimer told Ynet, speaking from his hospital bed in the holy city of Safed. “People were not breathing. I remember hundreds of people screaming ‘I can’t breathe’.”
Dvir Cohen, another injured person, stated that a large number of people were attempting to flee at the same time. “There was a staircase where the first people tripped and everyone just trampled them. I was in the second row of people,” he said. “People trampled on me, hundreds of them.”
Thousands of men had been bobbing and swaying on the bleachers in time to music just moments before. Despite warnings about the risk of Covid-19 transmission, Israeli authorities placed no restrictions on the number of attendees. Though the sight of so many people gathered together may be startling to most of the rest of the world, life in Israel has returned to near-normalcy in recent weeks following a successful national vaccination drive. The vast majority of adults have been fully immunized.
The annual gathering takes place near the mystical city of Safed on Mount Meron, which is near the Sea of Galilee. The Jewish holiday, Lag b’Omer, is associated with the first-century A.D. Bar Kokhba revolt against the Romans. It is a highlight of the Hebrew calendar for many ultra-Orthodox Jews.
But the celebrations were very curtailed last year because of the pandemic with few people allowed to attend.
The annual gathering takes place near the mystical city of Safed on Mount Meron, which is near the Sea of Galilee. The Jewish holiday, Lag b’Omer, is associated with the first-century A.D. Bar Kokhba revolt against the Romans. It is a highlight of the Hebrew calendar for many ultra-Orthodox Jews.
There were warnings that the infrastructure would not be able to handle large crowds safely. However, critics argue that some officials may have been deterred from restricting access to the site in part because ultra-Orthodox parties have held political power in successive Netanyahu-led governing coalitions.
During the pandemic, relations between the ultra-Orthodox community and the Israeli mainstream were particularly strained, as members of the religious public flouted lockdown regulations and the government and police were frequently lax in enforcing them.
In a show of national unity, Israelis from all over the country lined up on Friday to donate blood for the injured in response to a call from the emergency services.
