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Police misjudgment may have contributed to Mount Meron tragedy

Deri told an Israeli radio station on Sunday that he blames the police for failing to remove barriers, which prevented people from getting out.

By World Israel News Staff

A mistake by police moments before the tragedy unfolded shortly after midnight Friday may have contributed to the calamity that befell revelers trapped in a narrow tunnel leading from the Toldot Aharon section of Mount Meron.

Forty-five people were crushed to death as people slipped and fell on the slippery metal flooring in the sloped tunnel. Yitzhak Deri was one of those who narrowly escaped, Arutz 7 reports. He lost his friend and former seminary roommate, Haim Ozer Seller, 24, who had recently become a father to a baby girl.

Deri told an Israeli radio station on Sunday that he blames the police for failing to remove barriers, which prevented people from getting out.

“I was there, standing in the tremendous crush of people, with people being propelled along like in a river. At one point I was next to that [corrugated iron] wall, that wall of death, battling against the stream of people being pushed down the slope, and somehow I managed to make my way up and out,” Deri said.

“I cried out to the police officer there and I told him: ‘You have to remove that wall – people are going to die here if you don’t. Dozens of people are going to be killed here, and I’ll bear witness against you in court.’ That was just 10 minutes before the disaster,” he noted.

It was also reported that police stopped the egress from the tunnel, rather than opening it, as they should have.

“I almost passed out from the crush. I can’t begin to understand who gave that crazy order to close off the exit. People were trying to get out and they [the police] wouldn’t let them. Next to me there was a father with his 3-year-old son, begging me, ‘Please, get my son out of here or he’s going to die.’ And that was before the disaster,” Deri said.

“Gradually the crush was getting worse and worse until there were literally thousands of people trying to get out of the plaza. Until my dying day I will see that police officer before my eyes.

“Anyone who thinks the police didn’t cause this disaster is so completely mistaken. The barrier the police refused to take down was what caused this terrible tragedy. Why didn’t they let people leave? People knew they were going to die!

“One of those who escaped told me, ‘My son and I recited Shema Yisrael [prayer recited when death is believed to be imminent].’ Everyone was begging the police officers to remove the barrier – ‘Pull it down – we’re dying here.’

“I have no words. The pain is unbearable,” Deri said.