On Friday afternoon, Rabbi Yitzhak Mendel Englander entered the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir to do the impossible – identity and bid farewell to two of his children, Yehoshua, nine, and Moshe, 14, who had been killed on the slope of death at Mount Meron overnight.
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The children's faces, friends of the family say, were clean, intact, "like angels," just like they were in life. Just like they should have continued to flourish and live if it hadn't been for the awful tragedy.
It's heart-rendering. The blood boils, and wants to vent its frustration at the needless death, to calm the anger somewhat, perhaps by finding the guilty parties.
The criticism is correct, as are the calls for officials to resign, even though they came too soon, while the dead were still being counted. Police and government officials responsible for the disaster should resign. This is the accepted standard worldwide, and it should be when civilian disasters of this magnitude strike.
But in Israel, things are a little different. The immense media noise, which seeks to lop off ministers' heads, isn't merely the result of terrible pain or honest worry for the worshippers who will visit Mount Meron in future years. It has a political stench.
The calls for officials to resign, you won't be surprised to hear, are coming from the same politicians – and mainly journalists – on a specific ide of the political map, who are constantly working in every sector and on every issue against the people currently in power.
But these are the same people who engineer our consciousness according to their own agenda, who lie, who err, and who often mislead. These are the people who told you that Israel wouldn't have any vaccines, that foreign countries wouldn't move their embassies to Jerusalem, and that the Right was on the brink of a repeat of the US Capitol riots in January.
Well, even if they're right this time, after so many cries of "Wolf!" their calls are now a little less convincing or moving.
And still, a catastrophe like this one, as well as what has unfolded at Meron in the past few years, require a government committee of inquiry. A committee that will investigate everyone: government ministries, ministers, police officers, community leaders, and even the judges who in 2016 prevented the government from taking control of parts of Mount Meron in an attempt to arrange activities there.
The time for a probe will soon come. But the next few days must be devoted to mourning and the destruction of homes, the homes of 45 families. The destruction of the lives of dozens of orphans, the pain over youths and children as young as nine who were trampled by a crowd and won't come back. May their memories be a blessing.
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