Israel stampede: Dozens crushed to death at major religious festival

Dozens of people have been crushed to death during a stampede at a religious festival in northeast Israel on Friday, rescue services said describing it as “one of [Israel’s] worst disasters in recent history”.

At least 44 people were killed during the event while more than 150 sustained injuries, according to medical officials. Army Radio reported that children were among the dead.

Footage taken just moments before the deadly incident at the base of Israel’s Mount Meron showed heaving crowds of black-clad ultra-Orthodox worshippers crushed in a narrow, tunnel-like passage as they exited the site.

As people scream in the background as at least one person can be seen falling over, which is believed to be the start of what triggered the crush.

Witnesses said people began falling on top of each other near the end of the walkway, as they descended slippery metal stairs. In one video, officers can be seen ripping down corrugated barricades that stopped participants from exiting the scene quickly in front of what appears to be a heap of people, so crushed together, they cannot move.

“Masses of people were pushed into the same corner and a vortex was created,” a man identified only by his first name Dvir told Israel’s Army Radio. He described a terrifying sight as the first row of people fell down, saying he was in the next row of people who tripped. “I felt like I was about to die,” he said.

Among the wounded there are 44 in critical condition, some of whom have been airlifted to hospitals, Israel’s national emergence service Magen David Adom (MDA) said.

Eli Bin, MDA’s director-general called it “one of the most difficult civil disasters the State of Israel has ever known.”

“It is difficult to contain the magnitude of the disaster,” he said. 

Uriel Goldberg, international relations coordinator and paramedic for MDA said that he has not known of a worse stampede in Israeli history. 

“It’s definitely one of the worst disasters in recent times,” he told The Independent. In the chaos, paramedics told Channel 12 there were more than 30 children who had been separated from their parents and were being tended to by emergency workers.

Calling it a “heavy disaster”, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to Twitter to say: "We are all praying for the wellbeing of the casualties."

MDA officials said that they received the first distress calls just before 1am near the “Toldot Aharon” celebration, beside the Rashbi tomb in Mount Meron, as tens of thousands of people gathered there to celebrate Lag Ba’Omer, a holiday that in part commemorates 2nd-century sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.

His tomb, buried at the base of Mount Meron, is considered a holy site in Israel and ultra-Orthodox Jews throng there for the annual commemoration that includes all-night prayer and mystical songs and dance. Large crowds also traditionally light bonfires as part of the celebrations.

It was the first major religious gathering held in the country since Israel lifted nearly all coronavirus related restrictions. According to media estimates, 100,000 people had gathered for the celebration. Health authorities had warned against holding such a large gathering because of the pandemic.

Eli Beer, director of the Hatzalah rescue service, said he was horrified at the size of the crowd, adding that the site was equipped to handle only a quarter of the number who were present.

The death toll was on par with the number of people killed in a 2010 forest fire, which is believed to be the deadliest civilian tragedy in the country’s history.

Zaki Heller, a spokesman for MDA, told Army Radio that “no one had ever dreamed” something like this could happen. “In one moment, we went from a happy event to an immense tragedy,” he said. MDA paramedic Omri Hochman, who was one of the first to arrive to treat the injured, said: “ The sights were very difficult, dozens of wounded lay in a narrow corridor and next to it. 

Dozens more walked around suffering from various injuries. There were cries of pain, sighs and there were those who lost consciousness and needed resuscitation. ”MDA paramedic Maor Atadgi added: “We rescued the injured from piles of people and performed resuscitation operations on people who were fatally wounded… In all my years at MDA, I do not remember such a heavy disaster.”

Other witnesses described the speed with which the crowded scenes descended into chaos as festival-goers started slipping, one after the other. “It happened in a split second; people just fell, trampling each other. It was a disaster,” a witness told Haaretz.

“We were standing and waiting for our friends, we were going to go inside for the dancing and stuff and all of a sudden we saw paramedics from MDA running by, like mid-CPR on kids,” Shlomo Katz, a witness, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

It was only after he saw ambulances come out “one after the other” that he realised something had gone wrong. “We just went to the side as the ambulances were driving in and out and we waited until we were able to slowly get out,” he said.

The Israeli military has also dispatched medics and search and rescue teams along with helicopters to assist with a “mass casualty incident” in the area, reported the Associated Press. 

Vibrational Aromatherapy

There is nothing less scientific than to deny something because it cannot be explained, saying: Quoted by DR JEAN VALNET in The Practice of Aromatherapy

Aromatherapy is vibrational, as it utilizes tools which each have an individual vibration - the aromatic essential oils - that affect living, vibrational people.

When I trained in physical therapy and phyto-therapy in mainland Europe, more years ago than I care to remember, we were taught vibrational theories, and Rudolf Steiner, spiritual scientist, had great influence there.

Others talked about vibrational aromatherapy in their particular fields, such as Marguerite Maury in the field of rejuvenation. Looking back now at the teaching material supplied to students in the early days of aromatherapy, it's clear that vibrations were very much part of the language and concepts taught.

The roots of modern aromatherapy can be found in the intellectual life of Europe in the 1960s, which was very open-minded to the holistic view, not only of the person, but of nature and the universe in general.

Wholeness was discussed in the broadest terms . In these early days, it was therapy generally reserved for the wealthy who could afford the luxury of visiting the private European Clinics. Arnold Taylor brought Maury to England to teach, and under the influence of her style and practice, which included massage and body-work, aromatherapy developed.

As aromatherapy became more generally available, there was a need to validate it by focusing on the physically obvious medicinal qualities of essential oils-and there are hundreds of research papers quantifying the various properties of them.

Science can now see how aromatherapy works; that there are established physiological mechanisms at work. Moreover, from other more recent work in the area of brain chemistry, science can even explain how aromatherapy can make a person feel good emotionally.

All this is a long way from how things were at the outset, when the term 'aromatherapy' was equated with 'nice-smells-make-you-feel-good-airy-fairy-psychological-nonsense-and-not-only-that--it's-good-for-the-skin'!

Essential oil use is now understood to be something rather more scientifically interesting than 'perfume'. Aromatherapy has gone through this period of acceptance, consolidating the facts established by scientific research with actual practical results, leaving unsaid a whole aspect of our work that could broadly be put under the term vibrational aromatherapy.

Energetics is what holds it all together. Those of us who learnt aromatherapy when it was seen as a body, mind and spirit - whole person - therapy have always discussed it in terms of vibration and frequency, and some of us have taught it in that way.

People who came into the profession when it was going through its very pragmatic , scientific stage, may have by-passed these important aspects. The latest group joining the profession come to it knowing they have to learn the scientific -medical facts, but also the vocabulary of energetic aromatherapy - auras, chakras, subtle bodies, energy exchange ; these terms are now in common usage. There is, however, nothing new about vibrational, frequency or energetic aromatherapy.

It's been talked about for decades, and known about ever since people mixed fragrant plants and oils together and used them on their bodies, which was tens of centuries ago. Vibrational aromatherapy' is not something that can be practised alone because it includes 'physical aromatherapy' and 'emotional aromatherapy' - they are integral to each other, part of a single whole. To be a 'holistic aromatherapist' you have to know all about the physical, emotional and spiritual - in terms of both body and oil.

It is not therefore an easy option, although I daresay there are those who will set up practice as 'energetic' or 'vibrational' aromatherapists on the basis of the idea that 'all illness starts in the etheric'. It doesn't matter where the illness starts. the point is that it is there - manifesting in the physical, mental, emotional or spiritual, or all four.

To treat a person energetically, all aspects of a person must be understood. Energetic therapies cannot be short cuts by-passing the physical, because vibration is part of essential oils and the physical body. You can't ignore it. The subtle and physical bodies of a person work together like the printer's primary colours - one does not make sense without the other, and you need all the colours, or 'bodies', to see the whole. Vibrational or energetic aromatherapy is aromatherapy.

Reference: The Fragrant Heavens: Valerie Ann Worwood

Collective Data Regarding Auric Colours-Ancient and recent texts

Generally , it is thought these colours indicate: 

Reference: The Fragrant Heavens: Valerie Anne Worwood

Using Essential Oils in the Auric Field 

Method 1

Put 1 drop of neat essential oil in the centre of the palm of the hand, rub the hands together, and smooth around the outside of the body.

Start on the side of the body, from the feet, working to the top of the head. Then repeat the movement on the front of the body, feet to head; then on the back, feet to head.

Method 2

Use the essential oils in the spray/mister method, spraying around the body and over the top of the head.

With this method, it is preferable to first combine your essential oils, making a synergistic blend, and leave them for seven days in a peaceful place, away from electromagnetic activity such as electrical equipment.

On the eight day, using a new perfume mister, put in one ounce of the purest water you can get, which should come in a glass, not plastic bottle. Add the essential Oils and shake well. 

In the auric field, colours are often seen. They are said to reflect the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of a person. A great deal has been written about this, and a summary follows.

Reference: The Fragrant Heavens: Valerie Ann Worwood