As part of ZAKA’s ongoing work to ensure the dignity of the departed, ZAKA chairman Yehuda Meshi-Zahav on Sunday appealed to the Chairman of the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee, MK Dudi Amsalem (Likud), and committee member MK Yaakov Asher (United Torah Judaism) to hold an urgent debate on establishing clear procedures for evacuating dead bodies in road accidents.
The request follows a fatal accident in the early hours of last Friday, July 7, in which a 13-year-old boy was killed and Police insisted on transferring his body immediately to the forensic institute in Abu Kabir – which they proceeded to do, disregarding a phone conversation between the ZAKA chairman and the head of the Traffic Police at the scene of the accident.
In an interview on Radio Kol Hai, Meshi-Zahav asked: “Why was it necessary to take the body to the institute? After all, he was not the driver. He was sitting in the back seat. This just adds to the family’s pain. In this particular case, the family should have been allowed to bury their son before Shabbat. This type of behavior repeats itself almost daily. And all this after a new procedure has been introduced by the Traffic Police. ”
The boy’s family sent a letter to MK Amsalem, pleading with him to ensure that such a case not be repeated, in order to ease the suffering of bereaved families at the most difficult moments of their lives.