Lag B'Omer night, April 30, 2021. Lying in bed with the phone in hand, next to the live broadcast on Kol Chai radio from the Rashbi celebration in Meron.
Central ignition.
Interviews with dignitaries.
The crowd dances in ecstasy.
Think about it maybe I should once be there on Lag B'Omer. So what if I do not tolerate mass events. So what if crowded. So what if it's not my religious style. There are events that should be at least once in a lifetime.
"Because the name is good - because the Almighty is good", the singer sings in time, and everyone jumps.
Up and down.
What a beauty.
Initial WhatsApp messages pop up on the screen and interfere with transmission, and I angrily remove them.
Enough, let the song.
Who is interested now fearing some tribune that might have fallen.
With the help of the name, will be fine.
For this there is a rescue union.
The dance continues in full force, but the messages go on and on, and they become clearer and more terrible.
The live broadcast continues, but the music is silent and gives way to the horrible screams and ripping pain, which turns this night into a pitch-black night of darkness.
45 deaths were counted in the largest civilian disaster in the history of Israel.
Children, boys, siblings, adults and young people.
Happy and believing souls, who a moment before had danced in honor of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, and now their bodies are loaded on the large truck of ZAKA, which has no place to hold.
Night of May 11, 2021. Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Road.
On the way to the launch event for a new book of songs by Shmuel Munitz.
alarms.
I stop under the Mesubim Bridge.
boom!
Interception over the skies of Tel Aviv.
boom!
Another one, and another one.
People get out of the cars, sit on the slope of the bridge base and soothe crying children.
I reflect to myself that children in the Gaza Strip no longer cry at these events, because this is the routine of their lives.
They are just silent and wetting out of horror and trauma.
4,360 missiles and rockets were fired at Israeli cities and towns during May.
On those nights something else happened: While the interception encounters were taking place in the sky, the streets of the cities mixed with terror and blood were burning, as a result of the aggression of groups of Arab rioters.
The shock that gripped the police caused civic groups to take the initiative.
Two Jews were killed in the riots, one was stoned to death in Lod, and the other was fatally wounded in a hotel arson in Acre and later died of his wounds.
Only miraculously heavier disasters were avoided.
Two huge insane events, one heartbreaking and depressing, and the other scary and threatening.
Both are frustrating and sleepy, and both are man-made.
This year, and the one before it, is characterized by dealing with major natural disasters from life: a crippling global epidemic and a supreme power.
And here are two events that killed us, and both could have been avoided, if only human beings had acted out of responsibility and out of thought and out of values.
If there's one thing that this damn 2021 is shouting in silence, it's: a country, do not cover their blood.
The annexation of the corona will continue here in 2022, and the Hamas threat will remain in the area.
Let us swear that the other two events will not be repeated: no more Meron disaster, no more riots 5771.
kobiarieli@gmail.com
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