At 2:45, just before they began to daven mincha, they
announced from the podium that 200,000 had already arrived
for the atzeres tefilla. After they finished
mincha and just before the program of Tehillim
and selichos started, someone announced that the crowd
numbered 300,000. At the end, Rabbi Porush said that we would
be accepting ol malchus Shomayim in the presence of 60
myriads -- 600,000.
Minister of Internal Security Kahalani said that there were
"more than 250,000." The Jerusalem Post also reported
250,000. CNN reported only 200,000.
Everyone agreed that it was one of the largest gatherings
ever held in modern Israel. Even the lowest figure would put
it firmly in that category.
Judging from the bounds of the crowd -- stretching from the
intersection of Jaffa Road and Yirmiyohu streets back along
Jaffa Road to Machaneh Yehuda, in addition to side areas such
as the women's area near Eitz Chaim neighborhood -- and
assessing the realistic possibilities, 250-300,000 seems
realistic. The chareidi community of Yerushalayim is around
200,000, and it is likely that more than half attended.
Estimates of the number of buses ranged from 800 to 1500.
Together with private vehicles, that could easily bring the
number of arriving from outside of Yerushalayim to well over
100,000.
Also demonstrating, and stealing more than their share of
media attention, was a group on Sacher Park in support of the
High Court of Justice and in support of the political
fortunes of many of the speakers.
Almost all of the (left-leaning) news sources placed the
figure for that demonstration at 50,000. However, observers
at the scene, and a careful inspection of pictures of that
rally (with a magnifying glass) in the Yated newsroom,
resulted in an assessment that 10,000 is an overly generous
estimate.
One observer once suggested that there is an understood
factor of exaggeration in most crowd estimates, of at least
five and as much as ten. That was apparently applied to the
leftist demonstration. By that principle, we had way over a
million.
Kein yirbu!
