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DEBKAfile
Painful soul-searching is besetting the religious community under the shock of 45 tragic deaths at Mt Meron last Thursday with likely political repercussions. The last funeral took place on Monday morning, May 3, after a day of national mourning and outpourings of grief.
Calls for a state inquiry on the disaster finds Israel at a strange crossroads: A decision is mainly up to the caretaker prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whose time for forming a post-election government expires on Tuesday night. He is still short of a majority coalition. However, an influential rabbi has interpreted the Meron disaster as a divine signal for National Religious leaders Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to go back on their resistance to joining a right-wing Netanyahu-led government depending on Arab votes and throw their six-member faction behind him. So far, the pair are standing firm although their faction faces a split. However, if their party is won over, Naftali Bennett’s seven-
DEBKAfile
Flags flew at half-mast over public buildings in Israel and its overseas embassies on Sunday, May 2, in mourning for the 45 who died at the Lag Be’Omer celebration on Mt Meron on Thursday night. No cause for the deadly stampede at the mountain shrine dedicated to Rabbin Shimon Ber Yochai was noted. By Saturday night all the dead victims had been identified and the last funerals took place. Of the 150 people injured, 16 of the most serious remain in hospital. The Orthodox communities of Jerusalem, Bet Shemesh, and Benit Brak took the full force of the tragedy. A third of the victims were in their teens, the youngest aged nine. Two families lost two children. Six Americans as well as a Canadian and an Argentinian, who came for the annual celebration, the first major event since coronavirus outbreak, were crushed to death as more than 100,000 pilgrims jammed the narrow exit and were trampled on the single stairway.
DEBKAfile
The first names were released on Friday morning, April 30, of the 45 people crushed to death that night in the headlong stampede of nearly 10,000 worshippers gathered on Mt Meron for the Lag Be’Omer homage at the Tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai. More than 150 were injured, some mortally. A state inquiry into the disaster, loudly called for, would be an exercise in futility. The facts are known. The revered rabbi’s tomb has stood at the top of the Galilee mountain since the year 912. Over the years, it has drawn tens of thousands of pilgrims each year to celebrate the ceremonial lighting of the Lag Be’Omer bonfire. They have flocked there in the face of strong recommendations, time after time, to reconstruct the primitive, undeveloped structures and make the site suitable and safe for the expanding annual pilgrimages.
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