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Interior Minister Aryeh Deri urges the government to assert full control over Mount Meron, following last week’s devastating crush at the haphazardly run holy site.
Speaking at a Knesset memorial for the 45 victims, Deri says: “I was silent for several days until the funerals ended. This terrible tragedy is a decree from heaven, but this does not absolve us from a thorough examination and investigation to ensure that no additional tragedies like this occur.”
“It’s time to deal with the root [of the problem], to take responsibility, to offer sizable funding and build infrastructure at the site, as is fitting for a holy site,” says Deri.
Jerusalem
Officials came under growing scrutiny Sunday for ignoring warnings about safety lapses at one of Israel’s most visited holy sites, as the country mourned 45 ultra-Orthodox Jews killed in a stampede at a festival there.
The disaster at Mount Meron also heated up the debate over the role of the ultra-Orthodox minority in Israel and the refusal of some of its leaders to acknowledge the authority of the state. The festival had drawn some 100,000 people, most of them ultra-Orthodox Jews, after powerful ultra-Orthodox politicians reportedly pressured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others to lift attendance restrictions.
On Sunday, a group of retired police commissioners called on the prime minister to launch an independent commission with wide-ranging powers to investigate. The body would have the authority to probe senior politicians and decision-makers, going beyond a Justice Ministry inquiry now underway that is looking into possible misconduct by police officers a
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The shock of Friday’s catastrophe at Mount Meron is still raw. The graves of the victims, including the children killed in the crush, are still fresh. Yet the debate over what it all means for the country and for Haredi society has only begun.
A few overpowering facts, not least that nearly all the victims were Haredi, are driving an unusual new introspection, and leading the major media outlets of the community to turn against one of its characteristic traits: its longstanding and much-criticized “autonomy” from the Israeli state.
Haredi Israelis are simultaneously part of and apart from broader Israeli society. Making up as much as 12 percent of the Israeli population, the community is not uniform; different sects and subcultures interact in very different ways with the state and with other subgroups. While the “autonomy,” as Israelis often refer to the phenomenon, does not encompass all Haredim, it encompasses enough of the community to be so growing
One day after a deadly stampede killed dozens of religious pilgrims, Israelis came out by the thousands to bury the dead, keep vigil in their honour and protest the lack of government oversight that may have cost them their lives. At funerals, candlelight vigils and raucous demonstrations immediately after the end of the Jewish sabbath, citizens of all political stripes mourned and demanded to know how political and religious leaders let Friday s overcrowded ultra-Orthodox festival take place with little oversight after years of safety warnings.
Sebastian Scheiner/AP
A stampede at the religious festival attended by tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel is one of the country s deadliest civilian disasters.