The Anguish of a Tragedy

Lag B'Omer Festival-goers singing in celebration on Mount Meron Friday, April 29   Reuters

"A pyramid of one on top of another was formed. People were piling up one on top of the other."

"I was in the second row. The people in the first row -- I saw people die in front of my eyes."

Injured man, Mount Meron catastrophe victim

"We started to do CPR. One after the other they had no pulse. There was nothing we could do and they kept bringing more [bodies]."

"It was madness."

"It is shocking to think about the last moments of those who died when people were stepping on them. It is really shocking."

Levy Steinmatz, Israeli paramedic

"We started pulling wounded people into the kitchen and treating them."

"We had no rescue equipment so we couldn't give them first aid."

"I grabbed a policeman and showed him the bodies, then he realized something serious was happening."

Meir Gliksberg, 27, festival kitchen volunteer

Medics and rescue workers tend to the Lag B'Omer tragedy    Reuters

 

An annual celebratory event, a festival commemorating the life and mystic philosophy of an early Jewish sage, a joyous occasion of dancing, music, being in the company of friends and co-religionists and the lighting of bonfires, creating a scene of lively happiness. The socially straitened circumstances of COVID lockdowns prevented last year's Lag B'Omer festival honouring the second century Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai's scholarly vision. Free at last, declared in the zone of herd immunity, Israel's ultraorthodox community descended on the Upper Galilee to celebrate.

Those in authority who were tasked with overseeing the safety and security of the event anticipated the arrival of ten thousand celebrants, at most. They had miscalculated. An enthusiastic and determined crowd of ten times that number arrived. And the festivities and the celebratory fellowship that ensued did justice to the widely heralded event. Visitors from abroad were present to take part in the memorial to an personage of exalted heritage, everyone excited and enthused to be free to mingle and share the goodwill.

Israeli rescue forces and police near the scene after a stampede killed 45 during the celebrations of the Jewish holiday of Lag B'Omer on Mt. Meron, in northern Israel on April 29, 2021. (David Cohen/Flash90)

 

Because this was an affair arranged by and for Orthodox Judaism, the genders were separated as was seen to be seemly, men here, women there. The exits from the event were separated as well. The men and boys one way, the women and girls the other. One cannot have a celebratory event without food, and food there was aplenty, thousands of plates of food prepared in kitchens set up for that purpose. Speakers were loud as music played, a Klesmer band, more than appropriate to express the joy felt there.

A first responder praying at the scene of the Mount Meron stampede, April 30, 2021 (JINI/Gil Eliyahu)

 

Then the gathering for the lighting of bonfires, the piece de resistance of the evening. And finally, the time came to leave. Police are believed to have barricaded a portion of the exit tunnel with the intention of controlling the crowd flow, effectively narrowing the passageway to exit the event. As people descended metal stairways that may have been slippery someone is said to have fainted, and as that happened the people behind, in their great numbers continued to flow without pause, and a classical domino effect took place and people panicked and pushed and shoved in their anxiety to exit to safety.

 

Bodies cascaded into the narrow tunnel and people were crushed in the suffocating heat. The old and the young, the frail and the physically immature would be most vulnerable in the crush of bodies. There will be an intense investigation, needless to say, to try to understand just what had happened and why it did. There were warnings in years past that there was a choke point that had been troublesome at times and that eventually an event such as this might occur.

Benjamin Netanyahu visits the scene in Mount Meron. He called the deaths a "heavy disaster"  Reuters

 

There were 45 people who died in the massive crush of bodies and 150 other people were injured. Israel is in deep mourning. All the dead have now been identified, and most were buried the following morning, on Saturday. This is yet another tragedy for the nation, one that is regarded as the worst of its kind in its 73-year history, one that will henceforth be recalled through a national day of mourning.

Over the decades where Israel  and its people have suffered a multitude of violently convulsive conflicts, suicide bombings and all manner of terror attacks, paramedics have been on the scene, aiding the injured. They feel that this horrific event where they tended to the injured and attempted to save lives, taxed them to their limits. The scene was one of the most dreadful they had yet encountered over the years of being witness to many.

Volunteer kitchen helper Meir Gliksberg described his experience as being among the first to fully realize that a dreadful accident was taking place after hearing screams in the tunnel below where the festival kitchen stood. Zaka, an emergency services group tasked with collecting with reverence the most infinitely minuscule portions of human flesh resulting from explosions to be gathered and given due burial, described the reaction of its paramedics who saw mobile phones belonging to the dead lighting up with anxious calls from "Mum" and "My Dear Wife".

Israeli security officials and rescuers stand around the bodies of victims who died overnight on Mount Meron.