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All right, here we go. Saturday, May 1, 2021, 11.45 a.m. coming at you from San Diego, California. It is BK here. That's right back to our regular schedule program. You guys know there was no podcasts last weekend because I filled in for the nationally syndicated Jesse Kelly show. You can check that out on his podcast page. It was pretty cool. Great experience.

Like always, but glad to be back with the uninterrupted two and a half hours. No breaks, no editing. I'm the only guy with the intellectual capacity to do such a thing and everybody knows it. So why don't we go ahead and get into it and please follow me on social media if you don't already at Bravo Kilo actual on Twitter and you can check out my Instagram at BK actual. A few notes you guys. I did want to say thank you to all the book club members. We did a book club.

Reading myself Leo Jenkins and David Rose read a little bit from our book Lucky Joe. And that was hosted by at PB Abate. That's on Instagram at PBABBATE figured I'd give them a plug. And I was really cool sharing some of the thoughts that went into that process. As always, you can get that book Lucky Joe. Link is in my bio on IG. And also just a quick shout out. If you're looking for some art. Go find my man Zachary. You can look at my followers.

On Instagram and who I follow. He's a former recon Marine and he's making some cool art pieces. And of course, I always tell you guys support your veteran artists and content creators and go support Zachary and get some cool art and you can find him on my Instagram as well. Okay, guys, let's go ahead and get into it as we get started here. And I thought I'd start with this frickin deadly stampede at this religious festival in Israel.

And this stampede followed years of warnings. This is basically Israel's deadliest peacetime tragedy ever. And at least four of the 45 dead are Americans and two are Canadian, by the way. And so now everybody's like trying to figure out what happened. And you know, this is a lot of a lot of stuff comes into play here. There's a lot of like secular tensions because this was primarily ultra

orthodox Israelis and there have been concerns and warnings for at least 10 years about this religious site on Mount Marin in northern Israel. And they were warned that yo, this site is not equipped to handle tens of thousands of pilgrims who flock there every year to commemorate the death of a revered second century rabbi.

And again, man, that's how you know you've made it. You know, you've made it when people come to your grave site every year and like frickin stampede by the tens of thousands for real. That's what I want at my own funeral. By the way, I've said that many times, but at least in 2008 and 2011 reports by a government watchdog had warned for the potential for calamity there. And they've actually tried to close this site a few times.

And 2018, a prominent ultra orthodox Israeli journalist called it a death trap and yet the government still authorized this year's event. Of course, this all comes in the wake of the coronavirus and you know how that plays in the fact with, you know, Israel has been the number one leader in vaccinating its citizens. As you guys know, if you follow the podcast and there's still a lot of questions about why this was allowed to happen.

So this happened is about as up to 100,000 people came to the slopes of Mount Maron. And this was late Thursday night. This was the largest public gathering since the start of the pandemic. And most of them arrived in buses.

And this was the night. And I'm probably going to butcher this pronunciation of log by Homer, L.A.G. B apostrophe O.M.E.R.

And that's a holiday that marks the death of a second century like rabbi called rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who is believed to have been buried on the mountain.

So you guys have probably seen some of the video coming out on social media. The night did reach its crescendo shortly after midnight as packed crowds gathered in a cramped open arena beside the tomb to sing dance.

And watch the lighting of ceremonial bonfires. Now I'm looking at a map. And what happened was there's a steep like passageway that descends down a short set of steps to a narrow covered like called gang gangway, right. And that's where the crushing happened.

The New York Times writes as the crowd neared the steps to the passageway. Some of those at the front tripped and slipped on the metal floor of this gang plank, whatever you want to call it.

And they said the passageway was slippery from spilled water and juice. And that created the sudden bottle neck trapping hundreds of worshipers at the bottom of this gangway. And you know, it's just a crescendo after a domino effect bodies were soon piled on top of each other and is more and more people left the arena above to try to make their way out.

It just got worse and worse and it trampled the people beneath them.

And the Israeli authorities had placed no restrictions on the number of attendees again despite warnings by some of health officials about the risk of COVID-19.

But remember the majority of the adult population in Israel is fully vaccinated. However many in the crowds were under the age of 16 and they have not opened up that crowd yet for vaccination.

Man, this is sad. The victims included two pairs of brothers, the youngest of whom was nine years old. And this is a very just a brutal thing for the people of Israel. Now in 2013, the regional police commander at the time concluded in an official government report that this site could safely hold only 10,000 pilgrims.

And remember, we're talking 100,000 or more and the celebrations were curtailed last year because of the pandemic.

But this year, it was just friggin wide open. And I'm just going on here. Of course, then politics comes into play right because the ultra orthodox parties have a lot of political power in Israel's coalition system.

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