Anti-government activists scattered pita bread outside the home of Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman on Monday, the second day of the weeklong Passover holiday, when the great majority of Jewish Israelis refrain from eating bread and other leavened foods.
The protesters spelled out the word “One pita a day” with the bread, a reference to the rations that former hostages taken by Hamas terrorists reported receiving in Gaza captivity.
Silman condemned the protesters as “vile people devoid of basic human values, zero care for others, zero respect for Judaism and zero decency.
“A street where most residents are religious and traditional. These scum come to scatter pita bread all over the street,” she wrote on X. “It’s not for the hostages. It’s not for democracy. It’s not even for politics.
“The vast majority of the nation is sickened by them,” Silman said.
Protesters shouted, “Silman, you are guilty! You brought down a government over the Chametz Law. But today, when hostages are being tortured, starved and dying in Gaza—maybe eating a quarter of a pita a day—you cling to your seat in a corrupt government that desecrates the sanctity of life and abandons them in Gaza.”
Silman resigned from the Lapid-Bennet coalition in 2022 upon learning that the government had demanded that hospital directors permit the entry of chametz, or leavened food, into hospitals during Passover.
According to a 2023 survey, 71% of Jewish Israelis refrain from eating chametz during the holiday, which this year started on April 12 and runs through April 19 in the country.
Interior Minister Moshe Arbel of the Shas Party slammed the protest outside Silman’s home as a “despicable display by provocateurs,” calling on “all national leaders” to denounce it.
“It does not represent the families of the hostages. It is a provocation that wastes food, desecrates the sanctity of Passover, and does not inspire any solidarity. The entire nation despises you,” he said.
Almog Cohen, a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office on behalf of the Otzma Yehudit Party, called the protest an “antisemitic display.
“The unfathomable gap between the people who are reconnecting with their Judaism and roots, and that disconnected, privileged, elitist group that uses bread and desecrates it during the Passover holiday, proves more than ever that there is nothing behind this protest except fear of losing control of the wheel,” Cohen said, per Israel National News.