Thread by @AmySpiro

The tragedy that unfolded overnight in Meron is horrific, senseless and, most devastatingly, completely avoidable.

As Israel mourns it should not refuse to also take a long hard look at the failings that led to this horror.

I went to Meron on Lag B'Omer once, when I was a young, dumb student, and it was billed as the once-in-a-lifetime thrill everyone should experience (and school-sanctioned).

While I know that others find it a spiritual experience, I hated just about every minute of it.

Crowded doesn't begin to describe it. I was pushed and shoved at every turn, confused at where I was supposed to be headed, easily separated from my friends and overwhelmed.

I left in the early hours of the morning feeling battered and vowing to never repeat the experience.

This was 2007, a year before an Israeli Comptroller Report first warned of the dire safety concerns, the potential for chaos and the complete lack of authority oversight at the pilgrimage site each year. They did so again in 2011. And nothing changed.

Today's disaster is a failing of the police, of elected officials, of local authorities, of rabbinic authorities, of individuals and of institutions.

It is a failure of individual and of collective responsibility.

It is a further, repeated sign of the Israeli Police's complete unwillingness to attempt to exert authority in haredi communities, and the knee-jerk resistance from many haredi groups to ever cooperating with state officials.

And because of all that, 45 people are dead.

45 fathers and sons and husbands and brothers and grandsons won't make it home to their families for Shabbat.

Or ever again.