An Israeli climate activist threw a lump of coal at Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman during a public hearing on the continued use of coal at a power plant on Wednesday night.
Silman, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, was not injured, police and witnesses told Ynet.
The incident occurred at a hearing in Hadera, north of Netanya, where residents and activists have repeatedly protested against the Orot Rabin coal-fired power plant, saying its emissions are injurious to health.
Silman wrote in a Facebook post that members of the Green Course environmental NGO, “which slanders the State of Israel and IDF soldiers under the guise of environmentalism, decided to burst in and not let me get a word out.
“Then, some woman decided to throw some object at me,” the minister continued.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke with Silman on Thursday morning. Herzog expressed shock over the incident. Silman reportedly told the head of state that she felt fine.
In April, anti-government activists scattered pita bread outside Silman’s home on the second day of Passover, when most Jewish Israelis refrain from eating bread and other leavened foods.
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.
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 during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre received in Gazan captivity.
Silman condemned the protesters as “vile people devoid of basic human values, with zero care for others, zero respect for Judaism and zero decency.”
