IINM all or at least a vast majority of Eida communities are having a hugely toned down Meron nesia this year, not to mention in many other communities too. This is a sacrifice that everyone is making for safety, and shouldn't have to happen if the millions that were allocated for this event were used properly by people who were equipped for the job and had liaisoned with the communities.
Encouraging recklessness is stupid, i wish they would have found a better way to do this. (In all honesty, sometimes it's the only way that works, but in this case who can take achrayis for the cost?)
At this week's atzeres, one rav spoke about going up at any cost, in order to keep the government from taking further control of this holy site. The main representative of the Beis Din announced that only those with a compelling reason to do so should go up at all this year. I know for a fact that he told his family not to go up at all this year, even for chalakas, and despite the fact that many of them are makpid to go every lag b'omer.
I would refer them to @Dan's favorite maamar. In the spirit of Rashbi and R' Akiva, I think putting oneself aside is appropriate.
Also, IINM it's 15k per 4 hour period.
Everyone "agreed to make changes" and are "not against safety improvements", but did anyone put even 1/10th of the energy and efforts which are currently being used to subvert the restrictions into actually making safety changes? Talk is cheap!!!!
Were the powers of inertia just too strong?
There were fights about the inquiry commission. It seemed like the inquiry commission was going nice and fair, but unfortunately the judge that headed it died prematurely. Did that stop everything at it's tracks?
I am not throwing the responsibility here onto Eida Hachareidis, but they, for example know how to run large operations, as do several other groups that are independent from the state. I am not so sure that if they would come up with an alternative safety plan which they would run, it wouldn't be some kind of an acceptable compromise even to the zionist authorities.
The eida actually did have a meeting with the police about this last week (from what I understand, the police were not willing to discuss it with them earlier) and offered to take complete control of and responsibility for the entire hillula on condition that the police would stay out of it.
In many ways it seems like the whole event is being set up to fail. I have no idea why they would do so, other than the fact that most of the people in the government, and the police, simply view "Lag B'Omer in Meron" as a misugaas.
