Public Safety Is a Boring Job, but the Meron Tragedy Proves That It Is a Necessary One

Pick
June 15 2021
About Eli

Eli Spitzer is a Mosaic columnist and the headmaster of a hasidic boys’ school in London. He blogs and hosts a podcast at elispitzer.com.

On the Jewish holiday of Lag ba-Omer, many devout Israelis, and Ḥasidim especially, make a pilgrimage to the Mount Meron in the Galilee, the traditional location of the tomb of Shimon bar Yoḥai, a 2nd-century sage associated with the holiday. While in 2020 the celebrations were sharply circumscribed due to the coronavirus, this year Lag ba-Omer—which itself celebrates the end of a plague—fell on April 30, just as many virus-related restrictions were being lifted. The joyous occasion was marred, however, by a disaster in an overcrowded compound, leading to the deaths of 45 men and boys from trampling and asphyxiation. The incident has raised concerns over safety at Meron, and in ḥaredi communities more generally. Just yesterday, Israel’s new government advanced an investigation into how the accident occurred.

Eli Spitzer reflects on what lessons his fellow Ḥaredim can learn from the tragedy:

I . . . hope that a full and honest inquiry will reveal the truth and, if necessary, result in the appropriate sanctions. . . . What I want to contribute here, however, is a very basic observation, which others have made, but bears repetition if only to ensure that it does not get drowned out amidst the din of the blame game: we [Ḥaredim], as a community, aren’t very good at health and safety.

I could point to countless examples of how this manifests itself in our daily life, from fire alarms without batteries to school vans without seatbelts and buildings without fire exits. . . . It is, I think, superfluous, to speculate too much about why Ḥaredim take a lackadaisical attitude to health and safety regulations, for while some things are mysterious, apathy and thoughtlessness aren’t among them. [In Britain], the phrase “elf and safety” has long been used to denote a certain type of annoying party-pooper spoiling everyone’s fun and costing money by pointing out the lack of a fire evacuation route. Inside the ḥaredi world, there has been a long-term shortage of people willing to take on the party-pooper role and scarcely more are [apt] to listen.

The precise number of accidents and injuries you are willing to tolerate to have a more relaxed and enjoyable life is a question that few wish to answer explicitly. I think all of us can agree, however, that accidents of this kind are unequivocally over the line of unacceptability. It’s past time to recalibrate.

So, in response to this tragedy there is no alternative to, or at the very least no replacement for, listening more to the officials with their risk assessments and insistence on compliance. . . . Health and safety is boring; it’s annoying, it’s expensive; but you can’t live without it, sometimes literally.

Read more at Eli Spitzer

More about: Haredim, Lag ba'Omer

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF