An impossible meeting

Op-ed: Blaze memorial brought together leaders, victims’ relatives desperate to find culprits

Reuters | Published: 01.06.11, 11:14

Those who did not experience it would have trouble understanding it. If the sense of loss is terrible, the thought that your loved one died for no reason is unbearable. It takes away the last shred of comfort from those left behind, struggling to understand what exactly happened there and trying to figure out who said what and how it all happened.

During long winter nights, this feeling saps away the remnants of the oh-so-necessary belief in this death, which took place in the midst of the terrible fire that swallowed them up and burned them in order to save life.

In many ways, it’s a sort of existential war for the victims’ relatives; an endless struggle in an effort to find one little ray of light in the great darkness.

And this is precisely what happened Wednesday at the Carmel blaze memorial ceremony: An impossible meeting that nobody could emerge from looking good and unscathed; not the decision-makers, not the prime minister, and most certainly not his interior minister. Painfully enough, the same is true for the victims’ relatives.

Under such circumstances, there is nothing that could have been said on an evening like this which would satisfy the victims’ families, and rightfully so. After all, there is nothing that could make them forget that the bus with the people riding in it, and the commanders who drove right behind it, traveled right into death.

It is this death that these family members are now seeking answers for; they want someone to explain to them how it could be that on this road, or at the top of the mountain, there was nobody out there who would stop the victims from going on.

Those who did not experience this would have trouble understanding the desperate search for culprits and the curse of solitude it imposes on those who insist on finding such culprits.