Engelman will look into it
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
No government likes investigative commissions. Even when a commission's conclusions are restricted to "recommendations," they're hard to ignore. When something particularly bad takes place in which government officials are involved or could become involved, the Pavlovian response is, "There's no need, we know exactly where the problem was, and we'll fix it." When the media and the Knesset and the public begin demanding an investigation, government officials propose committee-run probes, and only when public outcry doesn't die down, it is time for a government investigative commission that can summon witnesses to testify, and therefore can get down into the heart of the matter.
The terrible disaster at Mount Meron will give rise to a government investigative commission that will issue recommendations to the government about how the site should be administered. Only this week, the lawlessness that reigns there was exposed for all to see. Matanyahu Engelmen, who promised to focus on good news, not probe people, and keep away from unfolding events, is not a public official whose investigation should be trusted.
It looks like most of the ministers whose officers are connected in some way to the annual pilgrimage to the Rashbi's grave, will not be serving in the next government. It's only human for them to shrug off responsibility – after all, the responsibility falls on multiple ministries, and no one in any of them would want to taint his or her CV at the end of their term. And it's a no-man's-land, passed from one minister to the next, and there are so few ministers who take office and seriously evaluate their areas of responsibility, questioning matters that have become obvious. But none of this should serve as a pass for the people who were supposed to prepare but instead took a "trust me" approach.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
The biggest responsibility, as always, lies with the person in charge, and he cannot wash his hands of it. If it's true that leading up to the event, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a special request by Haredi MKs to lift COVID restrictions for the participants at the Lag B'Omer event, this leads to a strong suspicion that he was making politically-based decisions as part of his failed attempt to form a government, at the expense of public health. Perhaps because of that, it was convenient for him that the case was handed to the state comptrollers and not an investigative commission, since only a government commission can probe the problems and recommend future action to be taken by the establishment, as well as naming the guilty parties.
Contrasts, not paralysis
After Netanyahu returned the mandate to form a government to President Reuven Rivlin, there are signs that the next government will be notable for its contrasts. Many analysts, and not only from the Right, are predicting that if indeed we get a government in which Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid rotate as prime minister, they both might wind up crossing off the days until the other's term is up, blocking any possibility of addressing the big issues. If they need to grapple with major issues, they explain, the government will fall apart quickly.
We may assume that the government will entail an unexpected coalition and that it won't be able to count on passing votes automatically. It will be tested on how it handled the big issues, and those will appear. It will be important to use every moment of its relatively long term in power to do really big things, like an effort to pass a constitution. If that is too hard, it might be easier to officially give Israel's Declaration of Independence constitutional status. The insufferable ease with which the Basic Laws are changed must stop, and the "Israeli unity government" will have the make-up to stop it.
He resigned quietly
It was so like Supreme Court Justice Meni Mazuz to resign (four years early) as quietly as he did. The intelligent, calm, and talented man, who loved people and was born in Jerba before his parents made aliyah in the mid-1950s and whose talent led him to some of the top roles in our justice system, will be sorely missed on the court.
