Two omissions exploded in our faces this week, two human failures that, from the perspective of an outside observer, seem completely illogical, if not beyond that.
Three boys were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists. During the kidnapping, one of the boys managed to call the 100 hotline and whisper, "They kidnapped me." The operator, as is well known, did not take this seriously and forwarded the conversation to the archive.
With the publication of the news, a barrage of accusations began. Is the police to blame? Are the students who were in the stampede to blame?
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The answer to this is positive: the Commissioner-General has failed miserably in his role! When a Commissioner-General of the Israel Police stands up and says, "Accept with a committee that the placement of Shaham girls at Hotline 100 who graduated from high school a year earlier, something is rotten in the system.".
I previously worked for about two years at a leading insurance company. Before I was even allowed to pick up the phone and talk to potential clients, I went through a journey of courses, listening in, simulations, etc. Even during the work itself, there were idle calls for testing, listening in by supervisors, and sub-supervisors who routed the call to the right place.
Why can't this happen in the police?
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The second human failing is the conviction of Rabbi Uri Lupolinsky, chairman of "Yad Sarah," by a human judicial figure named David Rosen.
In light of the conviction, I would like to share with you a little story about the man. In my youth, I studied at the Nahalat Yair Yeshiva, named after Lupoliansky's grandson - Yair, who passed away.
The head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Lupoliansky (son of Rabbi Uri), once told us about his father, that many years ago, when Yad Sara was not yet named, Uri saw the plight of the elderly suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and sought to help them in their distress.
He traveled abroad and after a series of meetings, an original idea flashed in his mind: developing a watch with a panic button that the elderly could press when they were losing their memory. Today, this may sound simple, but decades ago it was a real revolution, and the idea was copied around the world, and hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of elderly people suffering from Alzheimer's over the years have used the patent of the Jew from Jerusalem.
The story ended, and one of the students asked the Rosh Yeshiva: Did he patent it? His answer was completely negative. According to him, his father was not interested in it and was only looking for a way to help the suffering. Har Yitzhak Lupoliansky was able to say that if his father had turned the idea into a commercial start-up, he would have been considered one of the richest people in the country.
Judge Rosen sent this man to six years in prison today, and all that remains to be asked is: Which was the bigger mistake, the police dispatcher's inadvertent inattention, or the distorted verdict?
