The death of two infants and the injury of dozens in a Jerusalem daycare center on Monday demand grief, restraint, and care. Babies died, families were shattered, and nothing written now should lose sight of that human truth.
But sensitivity cannot come at the expense of honesty.
What unfolded in Jerusalem was not merely a tragic accident. It was the foreseeable result of a prolonged erosion of governance, oversight, and responsibility – an erosion that Israel has tolerated for far too long.
In the immediate aftermath, voices across the political and communal spectrum rushed to explain, defend, or assign blame. Some of those reactions revealed just how deep the crisis runs.
Shas chairman Arye Deri struck a careful but telling balance. Expressing sorrow, he said the “heart breaks at the sight of babies being evacuated to intensive care” and stressed an unambiguous principle: Operating daycare centers without supervision is forbidden.
“You shall greatly guard your lives,” Deri said, invoking a basic moral and religious duty.
Yet Deri also widened the lens, asking who can truly say, “Our hands did not spill this blood” – another biblical reference – when large populations are pushed into distress and left scrambling for alternatives.
His remarks captured a central tension: the recognition that unlicensed frameworks are dangerous, alongside a claim that state policy – and haredi (ultra-Orthodox) leadership – has helped create the conditions in which they fester.
Jerusalem daycare tragedy was foreseeable
That argument was taken much further by political commentators and advocacy groups within the haredi sector, some of whom directed blame squarely at the attorney-general and the courts.
One wrote that “the blood is on their hands,” arguing that the cancellation of daycare subsidies forced parents into private, unsupervised arrangements. An association representing daycare operators went so far as to say that authorities “cannot say, ‘Our hands did not spill this blood.’”
These claims must not be ignored – but they also cannot go unchallenged.
Crucially, the sharpest rebuttal came from within the haredi community itself. One journalist said the daycare center in question had been operating illegally for decades, long before any recent policy changes, and that haredi leaders were well aware of the phenomenon. Responsibility, he wrote, lies with those who knew and failed to act.
These voices matter because they cut through the reflexive blame-shifting that so often follows disaster. They point to a deeper truth: Lawlessness does not begin in court rulings or budgetary decisions. It takes root when leaders – political, communal, and institutional – decide that enforcement is optional, that oversight is an affront, and that responsibility always lies elsewhere.
Warnings about this reality were issued years ago. State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman has repeatedly flagged deep failures in the supervision of daycare centers and family-run childcare frameworks.
In a 2022 report examining the care and education of toddlers, he warned of systemic deficiencies in oversight, safety standards, and enforcement – particularly in private and unlicensed frameworks.
A follow-up report, due to be published in the coming months, examines whether those failures were addressed. That this tragedy occurred while such findings remain unresolved speaks volumes.
The state, for its part, cannot escape blame. Successive governments have allowed entire sectors to operate in regulatory gray zones out of political fear or convenience. Illegal frameworks have functioned openly for years.
Enforcement was sporadic, supervision underfunded, and accountability deferred. That is not cultural sensitivity; it is systemic neglect.
Israel has seen this pattern before – at Mount Meron and in other preventable disasters where warnings were ignored until lives were lost. Each time, sorrow was followed by promises, but the underlying failures remained.
This moment calls for restraint, compassion, and humility. But it also calls for clarity. Mourning without reckoning is hollow. Protecting children is not a political position; it is the most basic obligation of a functioning state.
If governance continues to erode – selectively, quietly, and indefinitely – then this tragedy will not stand alone. It will join a growing list of disasters that were not acts of fate, but the price of choices made, responsibility deferred, and laws left unenforced until it was too late.