Mount Meron tragedy: Government to approve state committee of inquiry

The cabinet will vote on a resolution brought by Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, which is expected to easily pass. 

On April 30, 45 men and boys, mostly ultra-Orthodox died in a mass crush on Mount Meron, the site of the tomb of Talmudic sage Shimon Bar Yohai, where tens of thousands of pilgrims had gathered for the annual Lag Ba’Omer celebrations  in what is Israel’s worst civilian disaster. 

The previous government refused to establish a state commission of enquiry, which would be free of political interference, in contravention of the wishes of the majority of the families of the victims who have argued that only a truly independent panel will be able to find who was responsible for the death of their loved ones and prevent such a disaster in the future. 

“As I promised, tomorrow I will bring to the cabinet for its approval, together with Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, [a resolution to establish] a state committee of inquiry into the disaster that took place at Meron,” said Gantz Saturday night. 

“A disaster which should have been avoided obligates us to learn systemic lessons at the national level,” he continued. 

“The 45 victims no committee can return, and the physical and mental scars of hundreds present at the scene we can not hide, but we can prevent the next tragedy, we can prevent the pain of many families. Only a state committee of inquiry, which is not dependent on any political official, will be able to get to the truth, and I personally and the members of the entire government, are committed to this.”

State Commissions of Inquiry are headed by a judge who appoints the other members of the panel, and are independent of all governmental influence from the moment they are appointed.

The crush at Meron occurred on April 30, following the end of a major ceremony on Lag Ba’Omer night, when thousands of men exited a central plaza via a narrow metal walkway with a significant downward slope ending with a 90 degree bend and a flight of steps. 

The crush took place on that walkway as thousands of men and boys found themselves compressed into this tiny space with more pilgrims filing into the walkway from the rear unaware of what was happening further down and trapping those already inside. 

The complex of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s grave at Meron is old, small, decrepit, makeshift, and in no way fit for the 200,000 to 300,000 pilgrims who flock to the site every year on Lag Ba’Omer. 

Previous efforts to address concerns raised by state authorities and the police have failed due to the highly complex and tangled legal situation regarding ownership of the land and infrastructure at the site, and intense legal opposition of their owners to any changes. 

On Thursday, United Torah Judaism MK Yaakov Asher wrote to Gantz calling on him not to form a state committee of inquiry, saying that it would not deal with rectifying the poor infrastructure at the site and that it was “forbidden” to allow give a civil judge authority and control over a holy site. 

“The ultra-Orthodox claim is that establishing a state committee of inquiry is contaminated with populist motivations and takes advantage of the families of those killed in a cynical  exercise to grant exaggerated authorities to a court over a holy site, something unprecedented which would negatively affect other matters, by which to a few guilty people and to slaughter them in the mieda in oder to fulfil the obligation, so to speak, which there is no real intention to resolve the crisis at Meron for the benefit and security of the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who visit the site of the godly sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai,” wrote Asher. 

The UTJ MK again advanced his party’s suggestion that a public committee of inquiry including representatives of government ministries appointed by ministers be created, instead of the state committee. 

According to Yisrael Diskin, a spokesman for the Forum of Families of the Meron Disaster Victims, and in contradiction of Asher’s claims, the majority of the families are in favor of a formal committee of inquiry specifically on condition that it be totally independent of political influences and 

Diskin, whose brother Simcha Bunim, was one of those who died in the crush, said that “from what the families have seen” the only type of investigation that would be free of political interference and would be able to prevent another such disaster would be a state commission of inquiry. 

Separately, the cabinet is also expected to approve the appointments of 35 ambassadors and consuls-general, which were held up by the previous government for six months, after they were authorized by its Committee For Foreign Service Appointments. 

That committee is expected to convene on Sunday, ahead of the cabinet meeting, to approve the appointments of Foreign Ministry diplomats to Thailand, Sweden, the Vatican, Senegal, Panama, EU institutions in Brussels, Japan and more.

The Movement for Quality Government and the Foreign Ministry Workers’ Union petitioned the High Court against then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu two weeks ago to require him to let the appointments go to a cabinet vote.

Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.