Unidentified anti-government activists locked the entrance gate to the parking garage of Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s apartment building in Modi’in as a protest on Thursday.
The incident came two days after Levin changed the locks on a Justice Ministry office in Tel Aviv used by outgoing Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, leaving staff unable to enter.
Levin’s neighbors broke the lock on the garage minutes after it was installed, Channel 12 News reported. Security around Levin has been upped and the minister is considering filing a police report, the outlet said.
A sign left on the lock by the protesters read in Hebrew, “The key is with Yariv’s driver,” according to a photo included in the broadcaster’s report.
Levin locked Baharav-Miara out of the Justice Ministry office after Israel’s Cabinet unanimously passed a motion to dismiss her, a decision that the High Court of Justice subsequently ordered frozen pending proceedings.
“The locks in the minister’s office were indeed changed,” the Justice Ministry confirmed in a Hebrew statement on Tuesday. “The office is the office of the minister, not of attorney Baharav-Miara.”
Baharav-Miara’s attempt to use Levin’s offices without authorization “is another example of astonishing conduct from someone who was already removed from her position,” the statement continued.
Levin’s driver reportedly called Baharav-Miara‘s staff following the Aug. 4 Cabinet vote to fire her, instructing them not to use the offices she shared with Levin in Tel Aviv. When the attorney general refused the request, the locks on the office were changed on Levin’s orders.
Kan News reported on Wednesday that Baharav-Miara has since moved offices to a different part of the same building. The attorney general now works from the ministry’s Department of International Law, which is located in a private wing of the HaYovel Tower, also known as the Kiryat HaMemshala Tower (“Government Complex Tower”), and not in the government wing.
Levin’s move prompted condemnations from many of the government’s political opponents, including Bar Association head Amit Becher, who urged that the minister be arrested as an “existential threat” to the Jewish state.
In recent months, the same groups that had been protesting against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s now largely shelved judicial reform agenda again began demanding his ouster, now over his management of the seven-front war with Iran’s terrorist proxies.
Activists have again targeted politicians at their private residences, including a rally on Thursday outside the home of Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Boaz Bismuth (Likud).
The demonstration, organized by the Brothers in Arms activist group, sought to protest Bismuth’s attempts to reach a compromise on the conscription into the Israel Defense Forces of ultra-Orthodox men.
Brothers in Arms vowed to “continue the struggle against the draft-dodging legislation in all arenas, including direct protest activities against anyone who promotes a dangerous draft-dodging law.”
