Carrying signs reading “Our sons’ blood was not in vain” and “A commission of inquiry now!” relatives of Prisons Service cadets who died in the Carmel wildfire held a protest on Thursday, calling for the government to launch a full-fledged state commission of inquiry.The demonstration outside Ayalon Prison in Ramle took place while the Prisons Service cadets’ course in which many of the victims had been training was holding a graduation ceremony inside. The media and the families of the fallen cadets weren’t invited.Forty-two of the forty-four fatalities of the blaze occurred on December 2, the first day of the fire, when the cadets who were going in a bus to evacuate inmates from Damun Prison were caught up in the blaze and burned alive.On December 20, the Knesset’s State Control Committee voted 8-3 against the establishment of an official state inquiry. The three votes in favor came from the three Kadima MKs on the panel – Yoel Hasson, Robert Tibayev and Orit Zuaretz. A week earlier, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asked for a state comptroller’s probe into the incidents surrounding the blaze.
