Meron panel: Netanyahu did not act as expected of a prime minister

A warning letter sent to opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu over his role in the deadly 2021 Mount Meron disaster says he did not “act as expected of a prime minister to fix” problems at the site.

“As someone who served as prime minister for more than 12 straight years during the relevant period, former prime minister Netanyahu knew, or should have known, that the gravesite of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Meron was poorly dealt with over the years, and posed a danger to the many participants at the pilgrimage which takes place annually on Lag Ba’Omer,” the inquiry writes in its letter.

Forty-five people were killed in a crush on a raised walkway at the northern Israel shrine, which draws hundreds of thousands of religious Jews every year for an annual celebration marking the anniversary of the death of a saintly second-century rabbi.

The panel notes that the site’s safety issues were addressed by the state comptroller and brought to the government’s attention many times over the years.

“Former prime minister Netanyahu did not ensure effective monitoring of the government’s handling of the matter,” it says.

On former public security minister Amir Ohana, the committee says he “did not place the necessary weight on the severity of the danger [and] did not ask enough questions on the matter.”

Police chief Kobi Shabtai is blamed by the panel for not sufficiently planning for expected crowds at the site.

“The responses to the dangers of overcrowding in the [police’s] plan were reactionary and not preventative, and the plan relied unreasonably on the ability of [police] commanders on the ground to visually identify dangerous crowding spots.”

Letters are also sent to a number of other top officials, including former religious services minister Yaakov Avitan; Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, who is the top religious figure at the Western Wall and other holy sites; and several people involved with insuring safety procedures at Meron.