In the week that has passed, government officials and the media have spoken about the writing that was on the wall. Protocols from Knesset committee meetings going back more than a decade spoke of the hazard and dangers that lurked on the mountain. Kan News revealed a protocol from a meeting held just two weeks before this past Lag Ba’omer during which top police and health officials all warned of allowing unrestricted access to the 2nd-century tomb of the great mystic, Shimon Bar Yochai.
Despite all of this, how many have been arrested? How many have been questioned? How many have been suspended from their jobs, their positions or their roles?
Zero. That is the answer. Zero people have had anything happen to them despite 45 people losing their lives in the greatest civilian tragedy in Israel’s 73-year history. Zero.
This isn’t to say policemen should just be fired or politicians should just be expected to step down, but shouldn’t there be some level of accountability? How can the people involved in allowing this tragedy to happen simply be allowed to go about their lives as if nothing happened? As if the lives of 45 families were not changed forever?
Unfortunately, accountability appears too often to be a foreign and alien concept in Israel. That is not the case in other countries. Just look at what happened in the last couple of months.
In March, for example, Jordan’s health minister stepped down after six patients in a hospital COVID-19 ward died due to a shortage of oxygen supplies. In April, the Taiwanese Transport Minister Lin Chia-lung offered to step down after a train accident near the city of Hualien left 48 people dead and nearly 200 injured.
In Jordan and Taiwan people apparently know how to take responsibility. In Israel, they just know how to claim they do.
That was the case, for example, with Public Security Minister Amir Ohana who was at Mount Meron the night of the disaster, claimed responsibility but said that his claim of responsibility did not mean that he was taking the blame.
“I am responsible, but responsibility does not mean blame,” he said. “Everything possible is being done to make sure that Israel never again experiences a disaster like this.”
The same can be said about Northern Police District chief Cmdr. Shimon Lavi also claimed responsibility just hours after the tragedy but then did nothing about it. Lavi and Ohana are still in their roles. The burials of 45 people have passed and nothing has changed.
The haredi politicians – Arye Deri, Moshe Gafni and Ya'acov Litzman – who pushed for the mountain to be open despite safety concerns, have mostly gone underground. It took them days to speak up about what had happened, and when they finally did, they deflected the criticism and joined the calls for a probe as if they had nothing to do with what took place.
It is because of this failure to truly take responsibility and be held accountable that Israel needs a real commission of inquiry to investigate what led to the occurrences at Meron.
The police cannot investigate themselves and the Justice Ministry’s Police Investigations Department is too narrow in its focus, which is just the police. What happened at Meron some 10 days ago illustrates a systemic problem that Israel faces from the level of the government and members of Knesset, down to the police as well as the specific management of the Mount Meron Jewish holy site.
Seeing someone of authority step down, be suspended or lose their job, might make it seem like something has been done, but the act alone is not enough.
The lives of 45 people were lost and something needs to change as a result. To honor the memory of the victims and to protect Israelis from such future disasters, a genuine and comprehensive investigation needs to take place.
Alongside a real probe though, Israelis also need to develop a true culture of accountability. What has happened subsequent to the Meron disaster has mostly been a disgrace.