A verbal fracas erupted Wednesday night at a state ceremony to honor the 44
victims of the Carmel wildfire, with bereaved families shouting down Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and demanding that Interior Minister Eli Yishai
leave the auditorium.
The tumult at the auditorium at Kibbutz Beit Oren
began after Netanyahu took to the podium and prepared to give his speech.
Off-camera, Danny Rozen, the bereaved life partner of former Haifa Police chief
Ahuva Tomer, got to his feet and threatened to walk out unless Yishai left the
room.
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Rozen, whose life partner died in the northern city’s Rambam
Medical Center days after she suffered burns over her entire body while
attempting to rescue victims trapped in a burning Prisons Service bus, pointed
at Yishai and said, “This man has no shame; either he leaves or I
leave.”
After the ceremony ended, Rozen told reporters: “I only directed
this toward Yishai; I wasn’t demanding a commission of inquiry. It can’t be that
someone like this [Yishai], who served as a minister during this incident, will
come and sit in the front row with the families.”
Rozen said that
Yishai’s presence was “a slap in the face to the intelligence of the bereaved
families,” adding that “what happens in this state doesn’t matter to Yishai, all
that matters is what the top rabbis tell him, what’s in the
Halacha.”
While he was speaking to reporters, a man interrupted Rozen,
saying, “They aren’t to blame, not Netanyahu and not Yishai; the only ones who
are responsible [for the bus fire] are the police who didn’t put up a
roadblock.”
In response to the incident, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona
Metzger said, “We saw that outside there was a confrontation with the families,
and exited to calm things down.”
He added, “The insult to Yishai hurt me
very much – in such an event, we come to embrace the families and identify with
their pain.”
Yishai later issued a statement saying, “The loss of the
bereaved families is too much to bear. Out of their pain, they are saying what
is in their hearts. My heart is with them, and I hope they receive comfort from
heaven.”
The burning bus, in which 42 Prisons Service officers died, was
on its way to Damon prison when a tree fell ahead of it, trapping the vehicle in
the fire. All of the fire’s victims died as a result of that particular
incident, including Tomer and firefighter Danny Hayat, who were trying to rescue
the victims of the bus fire.
Wednesday’s ceremony was held to mark 30
days since the Carmel wildfire broke out, and brought together ministers from
across the political spectrum, as well as both chief rabbis, representatives of
the IDF, fire and rescue services, police and Prisons Service, and the families
of the victims who perished in the flames.
The event at Kibbutz Beit Oren
was only meters from a section of the kibbutz where dozens of houses were
scorched completely by the flames.
Once the situation calmed down
somewhat, Netanyahu again took the podium. He didn’t acknowledge the fracas, and
instead told the families, “There is no comfort for you. I know this, I
understand your pain, the huge void left in your lives, the long days and longer
nights, the house that becomes hollow after all of the friends and relatives
leave and you are left alone during the long night with the pain and the memory,
the longing, the suffering that goes on from night to morning, morning to night,
and you are left with no remedy.”
Netanyahu said the victims “left from here on the Carmel, soaring to the heavens
on a chariot of fire,” adding, “Your loved ones faced a wall of fire with
heroism and the drive to save lives.”
The prime minister also thanked
representatives of the more than a dozen countries who sent assistance to Israel
to fight the blaze.
Netanyahu vowed that the government would work to fix
the shortcomings exposed by the disaster and ensure that Israel would be able to
respond to future natural disasters and wildfires.
At one point, after
the prime minister said that Jews and Druse, young and old, veteran citizens and
new olim had worked together to fight the fire, a man in the audience loudly
interrupted, saying that Muslims had also helped, to which Netanyahu replied,
“You’re right, I apologize to you. Muslims also helped extinguish the
fire.”
The crowd remained unruly after Netanyahu’s speech ended, with
relatives screaming at the state leaders. One yelled at Netanyahu, “You killed
my husband!” and added, “You have no shame.”
A bereaved mother said,
“Everyone is a liar!” After the ceremony, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a
statement saying it was important for Netanyahu to address the bereaved
families, and that his awareness of their pain and loss was why he had wanted to
hold the official government ceremony.
“I know the pain and am aware of
the huge loss and the emptiness that is left for the bereaved families,” said
Netanyahu, who lost his brother Yonatan in the Entebbe raid in
1976.
Before the prime minister’s speech, President Shimon Peres
addressed the still-somber and relaxed crowd, saying, “This fire created dozens
of bereaved families, families that are aching in mourning, and no memorial
ceremony can bring back their loved ones.”
Peres added that “the truth,
even if it’s painful and stings, is that we were not ready for this giant fire,
and did not surmise that it could happen.”
Nonetheless, Peres said, “the
fire revealed the faces of anonymous heroes we did not know existed, whose
bravery we could not imagine. The fire burned the tree tops and left exposed the
heights of humanity.”
Earlier in the day, Peres visited the families of
three of the Prisons Service officers who died on the bus.
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