A year since the Meron disaster: The State of Israel did not give the wounded even a penny

On the anniversary of the tragedy in Meron, we returned to the wounded in the disaster.

While the families of the victims were compensated, the wounded from the incident did not see a penny and find themselves being dragged into exhausting proceedings.

The injustice that cries to heaven has even led MK Moshe Gafni to co-operate with legislation proposed by the chairman of the Welfare Committee, Efrat Reitan

Liat Ron

15/05/2022

Sunday, 15 May 2022, 09:17 Updated: 10:17

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In the video: 45 killed and about 155 wounded in the Mount Meron disaster (Photo: NM, Kol Haolam, Earth, WhatsApp chat, Yaron Blushtein TPS, MDA operational documentation, Yossi Flor, Eli Yedioth from the field in the telegram, police spokeswoman, Gabriel Ben Shimon and Shlomi Gabay; Editing: Assaf Drori)

45 people perished in the Maron disaster, 145 were injured.

A year has passed since that revelry that became a traumatic national event and only last week NIS 22.5 million was transferred to compensate the families of the victims, with each of them receiving half a million shekels.

Compared to the families of those who perished, the wounded in the Meron disaster were abandoned by the State of Israel.

Up to this point, none of them had received anything: no help in financing the treatments, no mental assistance, and no recognition of a disability or allowance, even a modest one, that would allow them to survive until a final decision was made in their case.

If it were a private entity, which would remove responsibility from those who were injured because of its negligence, we would have long ago shouted "pigs."

If it was a crook, Adva Dadon would have long since followed him through the streets, making him shimmy and demanding answers to the applause of the spectators.

But in this case, it is the State of Israel, which admittedly declared a national day of mourning immediately after the disaster (and took responsibility for it, when it decided to compensate the families who lost their loved ones there), but ignores those who managed to survive it and need its immediate help.

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The national flags in the state institutions were lowered to half-mast (in the photo: Asfiya), but the continued treatment of the victims was anything but state (Photo: official website, spokeswoman for the Asafiya local council)

"I got 20 years older"

Mendel (full name withheld), 53, is the first wounded man to be flown to Maimonides. , As he learned in the military service - and when the pulse was strong he found a medic, who evacuated him to the clinic tent

. To Ziv Hospital, where they were not prepared to treat my condition and from there I was rushed to Maimonides. After two days they managed to wake me up. I was less than ten days in the hospital and was released home. Since then I am completely alone. And I'm dealing with concentration problems, alertness and short term memory loss.I need to write down names of people and places so as not to forget.I'm getting 20 years old.

"I took all the sick leave days I accumulated at work at my own expense and no one even called to ask how I was. For them, as soon as I went back to breathing alone, everything was fine. 22 years ago I was injured in a shooting attack and went through hell in Social Security Ask now? Say I have memory problems? How can this be proven? When I turned to a lawyer he said I should wait at least a year from the date of the event to sue, so that there would be an accurate estimate of the damages and see what the government decides. He will not be able to represent me. "

State Commission of Inquiry.

The Treasury prefers to wait for conclusions, even though the committee does not deal with the issue of compensation at all.

In the meantime, some of the victims languished without even receiving modest support, until an agreed solution was found (Photo: Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel)

"A great injustice has been done here"

Dvir Cohen, another wounded man, recounted in moments of an interview with Radio North, 104.5 the moments of horror: "I just fell like a domino. As time went on then more weight and more weight, the pressure was huge, people lost their breath, fainted. Thank you to the Creator of the world that she was not discharged. I was evacuated to the hospital with two fractures in my back, fractures in my legs, problems with my nerves and breathing

.

I did not receive a grain from the state.

I had a Social Security committee and they folded me to see if it hurt.

It depends on a lot of forms, a bureaucracy that takes a lot of time.

A great injustice has been done here.

People need to receive treatments that the fund does not fund.

I have to do hydrotherapy treatment and because I finished my eligibility for HMO, I stopped the treatments because I have no way to pay privately.

I do not work, my wife stopped working and the state did not even call to apologize. "

At the end of June 2021, he submitted

, A bill to compensate Meron's victims, which stipulates the establishment of an inter-ministerial committee with representatives of the National Insurance Institute to formulate an outline for immediate compensation of the families of those killed and injured in the disaster in Meron.

The coalition made a great effort to thwart it and the finance and justice ministers promised to reach a compromise on the matter.

In response to our request, the spokesman for the Minister of Justice said that he did not deal with the wounded, but only with the victims and their case was answered.

Home Front Command soldiers rescue "Versailles" in 2001. The National Insurance Institute has prepared a proposal based on the case to compensate the wounded in the disaster in Meron (Photo: IDF Spokesman)

The state prefers the dead to the wounded

Advocate Assaf Posner, who represented some of the families of those who perished and were injured in the Versailles disaster

21 years ago, says it is easy for the state to compensate those who perished because there are 45 people who perished, "but the numbers of first and second round third casualties can also reach 100,000.

There are people with evidence, documentation from a hospital, treatments, these are the people the state would have done in their minds if they had finished the procedure with them.

There is also a national wound here that needs to be healed.

The state acted very well in Corona

, with a large population affected, so it is able to deal with such situations. "

For 25 years.The Treasury refuses to approve the relatively modest outline, arguing that one should wait for the conclusions of the State Commission of Inquiry and only then determine the amount of compensation.

Here it is worth noting that the compensation of the victims is not in the committee's mandate and therefore it does not deal with it.

What's more, it could be a long time before the conclusions are published, and in the meantime many families may collapse.

Meir Spiegler, CEO of the National Insurance Institute.

Social Security wants to compensate, the Treasury is delaying

This creates an absurd situation, in which the Social Security wants to pay the injured some compensation and can not.

Because the outline was not approved, they had to treat Meron's wounded as if they had fallen from a ladder, or more precisely, as if they had been injured in a work accident, which is incorrect, disproportionate and inconsistent with their condition, and the recognition process takes a long time.

On February 7 this year, during a discussion in the Labor and Welfare Committee, the finance representative said that "one should consider and see what is done with the compensation for Meron injured" and take into account that there should be no discrimination between disaster victims and other Social Security insureds.

Meir Spiegler, the director general of the National Insurance Institute, burst out at him:

"It is inconceivable that the drug has arrived and the patient is dead. What is the logic? They need the help now. Seven - eight months have passed. .

MK Moshe Gafni: "This is a disgrace. There was a decision in the Finance Committee that the victims deserve money and the wounded do not receive anything" (Photo: Noam Moskowitz, Knesset Spokeswoman)

"The accountant general looks through the hole in the penny"

"Experience shows," Posner states, "that when you pay fast it's cheaper for you. So it was in Versailles. When the Versailles casualty bill was introduced, I asked the deputy mayor at the time for the state to offer compensation under the Road Accident Victims Act.

They did not agree, because it indicated taking absolute responsibility.

In Versailles, in contrast to Meron, where the wounded came from different parts of the country, an entire community was affected, all the circles collapsed.

"I said then, that if they were compensated under the Road Accident Victims Act, the payment that the state would give would be considerably reduced and so it would also distribute the cases between different courts so that there would be no congestion. "In retrospect, the state had to compensate them then and not reach compensation several times higher and to a situation where after 21 years not all the victims received all the money. This is what happens when the accountant general looks through the hole in the divorce."

Posner concludes with an amazing statement: "If Versailles' building was not a course in Jerusalem, but in Tel Aviv, let's say, God forbid, at the Menora Hall in a Maccabi Tel Aviv game, it would have ended much faster. The audience and the country. "

Chairman of the Labor and Welfare Committee, MK Efrat Reitan.

Will the bill pass? (Photo: Reuven Castro)

Gaffney and Wright collaborate

MK Moshe Gafni,

former chairman of the Finance Committee, is furious. "This is a disgrace.

There was a decision in the finance committee that the money goes to the perished and the wounded get nothing.

This government is bad.

There is a legal solution to the matter, they will spend money now and finish it.

A reformed state would not have done such an injustice.

It should be stipulated in the law to compensate these people, because it is not acceptable to give to the perished and not to the wounded.

Gafni talks about the "Assistance to Victims of Civil National National Disasters" bill, led by MK Efrat

Reitan

. The purpose of the law is to establish a framework that will allow the government to declare a national catastrophic event, the appointment of a minister as an accompanying factor on behalf of the state to the victims and their families, who will assist them in exercising their rights.

"The time has come for the state's responsibility for those affected by civil disasters to be enshrined in law," Wrighten says.

"On Wednesday, Lag HaOmer

, which will mark exactly one year since the Meron disaster, a proposal will be signed by all representatives of the Knesset factions, the coalition and the opposition, to prepare for the first reading in the Labor and Welfare Committee."

And welfare, will resonate in the ears of Israeli government ministers: "We need to find a way to give compensation to the wounded now, not tomorrow, yesterday. It can always be offset if it is required. They face terrible hardship. "We don't talk about routine and we don't talk about the implications of breadth. We just reach out."

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