Middle East Desk
Report
TEL AVIV: Israel’s new cabinet ordered Sunday an official inquiry into a stampede that killed 45 people in April during a Jewish pilgrimage at a site long deemed dangerously crowded by authorities.
Though it was the country’s worst civilian disaster, a full-scale investigation into the Mount Meron deaths and injuries had lagged under the previous government amid feuding between ultra-Orthodox Jews and opposition politicians.
Establishing the state commission of inquiry a week after he was sworn in, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in televised remarks that while it “cannot bring back those who are gone, the government can do everything to prevent future needless loss.”
A cabinet statement said the inquiry’s findings would help safeguard other mass-attendance events in Israel, which has sites sacred to Islam and Christianity as well as to Judaism.
Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews thronged to the Galilee hillside tomb of second-century sage Rabbi Shim Bar Yochai on April 30 for the annual Lag B’Omer festival that includes all-night prayer, mystical songs and dance.
The numbers were lower than in previous years but still beyond those permitted by COVID-19 curbs. Some Israelis questioned if the former government under Benjamin Netanyahu and police were reluctant to further limit the crowd size because of pressure from influential ultra-Orthodox leaders.
