An Israeli man found criminally negligent following the collapse of a bridge at the 1997 Maccabiah Games resigned from Israel’s Olympic Committee. The Australian Jewish community, which suffered most in the tragedy at the opening ceremony to the 1997 Games, had been outraged that Maccabi Israel elected Yoram Eyal to represent it on the Olympic Committee. Eyal, chairman of the organizing committee for the 1997 games, was found criminally negligent for the role he played in commissioning the footbridge over the polluted Yarkon River. “I saw the mayhem the appointment had caused and I did not want it to become a major issue affecting this year’s Maccabiah,” Eyal told Ha’aretz.
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