Prime Minister Netanyahu Should Take Responsibility in Meron Disaster

King Saul was returning triumphantly from the battle against Amalek. Even then, he may have been trying to silence that still, small voice of conscience that was quietly calling out to him:

Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed are you to Hashem, I have fulfilled Hashem’s word.” Samuel said, “And what is this sound of flocks in my ears, and the sound of cattle that I hear?” (Shmuel Alef 15:13-14)

Saul stubbornly refused to take responsibility until, faced with the undeniable facts and the loss of his kingdom, he acknowledged his wrongdoing.

In contrast, following King David’s sin with Bathsheba, when David was confronted by Nathan the prophet, who pronounced, “You are the man!” — David immediately admitted, “I have sinned to Hashem.”

In response, Nathan announced, “Even Hashem has removed your sin; you will not die.” (Shmuel Bet 12:13)

David did not lose his kingdom because he accepted responsibility. Saul lost his kingdom because he refused to accept responsibility.

This demonstrates an obvious truism in the Jewish understanding of leadership: leaders sometimes make mistakes, but the leaders who deserve and maintain their positions accept responsibility once they realize that they are culpable.

Which brings us to the disgraceful response of the Likud Party to the findings of a state commission of inquiry established to investigate the Meron disaster of April 2021.

During Lag B’Omer celebrations that year, a crowd stampede at the burial site of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the Galilee village of Meron led to the deaths of 45 men and boys; 150 people were injured, as well.

Accidents happen, acts of God happen. But accidents that are preventable are not quite accidents; acts of God that were predicted cannot be blamed upon God.

As early as 2008, the State Comptroller determined that the site was not large enough, given the huge number of annual visitors. The Jerusalem Post reported, “Israeli officials had been warned of the challenges at Mount Meron in two State Comptroller’s reports published in 2008 and 2011. Additionally, a 2016 Police report said infrastructure at the site could not safely accommodate the large number of attendees and that the mountain lacked escape routes and access roads to provide rescue in the event of an emergency.” The New York Times wrote that while the government had agreed upon a plan to drastically limit the number of participants because of the coronavirus, the plan “was never implemented because none of the government departments took responsibility for doing so.”

The failure to fulfill responsibilities is not a neutral act. When action is designed to prevent harm, inaction is morally abhorrent.

The state commission of inquiry released its findings, and, according to the Times of Israel, it determined that Prime Minister Netanyahu was “one of a number of officials responsible for the 2021 Meron disaster.” Frankly, for those of us raised to admire Harry Truman’s admonition, “The buck stops here,” it would be hard to absolve Netanyahu even if he had known nothing about the dangers of Meron, given that it happened under his watch.

But according to the Times of Israel, the commission laid blame squarely at his feet, arguing that, “There is a reasonable basis to conclude that Netanyahu knew that the site of Rashbi’s grave… was liable to be a danger to the masses that visit the site, especially on Lag B’Omer. Even if, in the name of caution, we assume Netanyahu didn’t have concrete knowledge of the matter, he should have known about it after the issue was brought to his office many times.”

What was Likud’s response to this damning indictment? To cast aspersions upon the committee itself, calling it a political tool in the hands of former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, and refusing to take any responsibility whatsoever.

This has become Prime Minister Netanyahu’s modus operandi: take credit for anything positive that happens under his watch, refuse to take responsibility for anything that goes wrong, while simultaneously blaming everyone else — much like Saul after the battle against Amalek.

I’m reminded of Gary Wills’ memorable account of the failure of the Catholic Church to take any real blame for creating the conditions that led to the Holocaust. An official commission appointed by Pope John Paul II spent more than 10 years preparing We Remember, which was supposed to be an honest reckoning with the church’s complicity in the murder of six million Jews. According to Wills, “Though expressions of sympathy for Jewish suffering are voiced in the new statement, it devotes more energy to exonerating the church – and excoriating the Nazis for not following church teachings — than to sympathizing with the Holocaust’s victims. The effect is of a sad person toiling up a hill all racked with emotion and ready to beat his breast, only to have him plump down on his knees, sigh heavily – and point at some other fellow who caused all the trouble.” (Papal Sin, p. 13)

I don’t expect Prime Minister Netanyahu to be swayed by the moral failure of We Remember. But I certainly expect that the Israeli voting public remembers, when all is said and done, that the leader of our country chose to look at events that took place during his premiership, surveyed the wreckage of his rule, looked squarely in the eyes of nine million Israelis, and pointed at someone else and said, “He did it.”

Rabbi Scott Kahn is the CEO of Jewish Coffee House (www.jewishcoffeehouse.com) and the host of the Orthodox Conundrum Podcast and co-host of Intimate Judaism. You can see more of his writing at https://scottkahn.substack.com/.