Meiron

Meron (Hebrew: מֵירוֹן, Meron) is a moshav in northern Israel. Located on the slopes of Mount Meron in the Upper Galilee near Safed, it falls under the jurisdiction of Merom HaGalil Regional Council. Meron is most famous for the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and is the site of annual mass public commemoration of Lag Ba'Omer. The association of Meron with the ancient Canaanite city of Merom or Maroma is generally accepted by archaeologists. According to Avraham Negev, by the Second Temple period, Merom was known as Meron. Meron is mentioned in the Bible as the site of Joshua's victory over the Canaanite kings. In the 12th century, Benjamin de Tudela visited Meron and described a cave with tombs, believed to hold the remains of Hillel, Shammai, and "twenty of their disciples and other Rabbis". In 1931, Meron consisted of an Arab and Jewish quarter (see Meiron). The current town was founded by the Hapoel HaMizrachi movement in 1949 on the ruins of the depopulated Palestinian village of Meiron, with an initial population of Orthodox soldiers discharged after the war.In 2021 it had a population of 1,091.On 30 April 2021, the deadliest civil disaster in the history of Israel occurred at Meron. 45 people were crushed to death while trying to exit through a narrow passage, at the mass gathering to celebrate the holiday of Lag BaOmer.

On 30 April 2021, at about 00:45 IDT (UTC+3), a deadly crowd crush occurred on Mount Meron, Israel, during the annual pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai on the Jewish holiday of Lag BaOmer, at which it was estimated that 100,000 people were in attendance. Forty-five men and boys at the event were killed, and about 150 were injured, dozens of them critically, making it the deadliest civil disaster in the history of the State of Israel. The crush occurred after celebrants poured out of one section of the mountainside compound, down a passageway with a sloping metal floor wet with spilled drinks, leading to a staircase continuing down. Witnesses say that people tripped and slipped near the top of the stairs. Those behind, unaware of the blockage ahead, continued. The people further down were trampled over, crushed, and asphyxiated by compression, calling out that they could not breathe. The potential for such a calamity, given the tens of thousands of celebrants, had been reported by the state comptroller and the police chief. The local council had tried several times to close the site. Reuters cited Israeli media outlets in reporting that, as a precaution against the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, bonfire areas had been partitioned off, which may have created unrecognised choke-points. It was later pointed out that the bonfires were not all lit at the same time, as in the past; this allowed people who had seen one lighting go to see another, increasing crowds. On 10 May 2021, police arrested the safety engineer who approved the Lag BaOmer celebration and his assistant. Investigators said that senior police officers should be questioned, as suspects rather than witnesses. On 27 June, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, Esther Hayut, announced that a three-paneled state commission of inquiry would be chaired by her predecessor, former Supreme Court Chief Miriam Naor, with the other two members consisting of former Bnei Brak mayor Rabbi Mordechai Karlitz and Aluf (ret.) Shlomo Yanai. In Israel, such a commission of inquiry has the powers to subpoena witnesses and issue recommendations to the government.

The tomb of Shimon bar Yochai (Hebrew: קבר רבי שמעון בר יוחאי), or Kever Rashbi (קבר רשב״י), on Mount Meron is the traditional burial place of the 2nd-century Mishnaic rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. A place of pilgrimage since the late 15th century, it is today the second-most-visited Jewish site in the world after the Western Wall with as many as two million annual visitors.The tomb building was built in the mid-19th century by Shmuel Abu, the French consular agent in Safed.

On August 4, 2022, a bomber with the Palestinian militant group Hamas conducted a suicide bombing aboard an Egged bus at the Meron junction in northern Israel near Safed. In addition to the bomber, six Israeli civilians, and three Israeli soldiers were killed. Thirty-eight people were injured.Hamas subsequently publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming it was in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike against a Hamas commander and to express displeasure with a UN-sponsored investigation into the Israeli incursion into the Jenin refugee camp that April.Saeb Erakat condemned the attack, and Palestinian minister Nabil Shaath claimed that Palestinians were continuing to try to halt attacks on Israel, despite the Israeli actions. The bus attack occurred a week after the Hebrew University bombing, in which a Palestinian attacker affiliated with Hamas killed 9 people.On 27 August, Israeli authorities arrested 7 Arab-Israelis, all members of the same family, who allegedly assisted the bomber. According to police, the suspects helped store explosives in a nursery school, dressed the bomber as a tourist, and scouted the target.In 2019, Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett signed an order enabling Israel to seize "pay-for-slay" payments from the Palestinian Authority to Arab Israelis convicted on terrorism charges. This order included two prisoners who Israeli claimed assisted the Meron Junction bomber.

The Merom HaGalil Regional Council (Hebrew: מועצה אזורית מרום הגליל, Mo'atza Azorit Merom HaGalil) is a regional council in the northern Galilee of northern Israel. The regional council was established in 1950. The head of the council is Shlomo Levi.

Bar Yohai (Hebrew: בַּר יוֹחַאי) is a religious Jewish community settlement in northern Israel. Located near Mount Meron, it falls under the jurisdiction of Merom HaGalil Regional Council. as of 2021 its population was 1,086.

Or HaGanuz (Hebrew: אוֹר הַגָּנוּז, lit. Hidden Light), sometimes Or Ganuz, is a community settlement in northern Israel. Located in the eastern Upper Galilee, about six kilometers northwest of the town of Safed, it falls under the jurisdiction of Merom HaGalil Regional Council. In 2021 it had a population of 600.

Mount Meron Nature Reserve is a declared nature reserve in the Galilee that constitutes the largest nature reserve in northern Israel, with an area of 90,596 dunams. The reserve was declared on December 9, 1965, and has undergone several expansions and reductions in area since then. The Mount Meron Nature Reserve is among the largest and oldest nature reserves in the Land of Israel.

Al-Sammu'i (Arabic: السموعي) was a Palestinian Arab village in the Safad Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on May 12, 1948, under Operation Hiram. It was located 4 km west of Safad. Today, Kfar Shamai is built on the site of the old village, and Amirim is built on the southern part of the village land. In 1945, the village had a population of 310. Al-Sammu'i had a mosque and a shrine for a local sage known as al-Shaykh Muhammad al-'Ajami.

Mount Meron (Hebrew: הַר מֵירוֹן, Har Meron; Arabic: جبل الجرمق, Jabal al-Jarmaq) is a mountain in the Upper Galilee region of Israel. It has special significance in Jewish religious tradition and parts of it have been declared a nature reserve. At 1,204 metres (3,950 ft) above sea level, Mount Meron is the highest peak in Israel within the Green Line, though many peaks in the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon, which was annexed by Israel in 1981, are higher.

The Safsaf massacre took place on 29 October 1948, following the capture of the Palestinian Arab village of Safsaf in the Galilee by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The village was defended by the Arab Liberation Army's Second Yarmuk Battalion. Safsaf was the first village to fall in Operation Hiram, the aim of which, according to the IDF, was to "destroy the enemy in the central Galilee 'pocket,' to take control of the whole of the Galilee and to establish a defense line on the country's northern border." The village was attacked by two platoons of armored cars and a tank company from the 7th Brigade, and a fierce battle lasted from the evening until seven o'clock the next morning.Evidence of a massacre in which 52–64 villagers were killed by the IDF comes from several contemporaneous Israeli government sources and Arab oral history. The evidence suggests that 52 men had their hands tied, were shot and killed, and were buried in a pit. Several women reported allegations of rape by the IDF, including the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. At least two internal inquiries were initiated during 1948–49 by the IDF, but their reports remain classified.

Kfar Hoshen (Hebrew: כפר חושן), also known as Safsufa (ספסופה), is a moshav in northern Israel. Located around four kilometres north of Meron, it falls under the jurisdiction of Merom HaGalil Regional Council. In 2021 it had a population of 805.