The High Court of Justice blocked the planned autopsies of the two infants who died in Monday’s Jerusalem daycare disaster, the ZAKA rescue and recovery organization said in a Tuesday post on X/Twitter.
“Attorney Dror Sosheim, the chair of ZAKA’s Legal Department, represented the toddlers’ families. After hearing the arguments, it was determined that no postmortem autopsy would be performed, with an emphasis placed on the need to preserve the dignity of the deceased,” the post read.
The decision was made after the families of the two deceased infants filed an appeal with the court on Monday night against performing the autopsies.
This occurred after a Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court judge ruled earlier that Jewish law allows for autopsies in cases pertaining to a suspected crime, according to Channel 12.
Authorities have called for the autopsies, given that the cause of death has not yet been definitively determined.
The haredi (ultra-Orthodox) protest group Peleg Yerushalmi (the Jerusalem Faction) commented on the decision to block the planned autopsies, stating that protesters “won the battle over the dignity of the dead.”
“In the past 24 hours, several cases occurred that proved this, like one vehicle ramming into another last night in Bnei Brak, and in Jerusalem today, when drivers were documented taking the law into their own hands and running over demonstrators as if they were cockroaches blocking their way,” the group said.
“One is permitted to run over a haredi protester in Israel – nothing will happen to you. There is no deterrence; it is like a third-world country here,” Peleg Yerushalmi continued. “You have permitted haredi blood [to spill].”
Two babies dead, dozens more children injured
Two babies died, and at least 55 more sustained injuries in an incident at a daycare center in Jerusalem’s Romema neighborhood on Monday, Magen David Adom reported.
Three-month-old Lia Tzipora Golovnetsitz and six-month-old Aharon Katz died in the incident.
According to the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir, the cause of death was likely dehydration as a result of an overheated space.
Many of the injured children were taken to Hadassah-University Medical Center for treatment. The hospital’s director, Prof. Yaniv Sherer, told Maariv that the injuries and deaths probably resulted from “some kind of poisoning, with or without a combination of crowding, fever, or dehydration.”
James Genn contributed to this report.