Levin says government should ignore High Court ruling allowing wartime protests

Citing ‘public safety,’ justice minister says cabinet ‘has no choice’ but to defy ‘illegal intervention’ by court, which he says could ‘seriously harm public discipline’ during war

Justice Minister Yariv Levin on Sunday called on the government to ignore the High Court of Justice’s “illegal” and “reckless” decision to allow protests on a larger scale than what the current regulations permit, urging the cabinet to instruct law enforcement to enforce Home Front Command restrictions on public gatherings in defiance of the court ruling.

The High Court issued an interim order on Saturday allowing up to 600 people to attend an evening anti-war protest in Tel Aviv and up to 150 attendees in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Kfar Saba, respectively, despite Home Front Command regulations imposed due to the risk of missiles from Iran. In the decision, judges accused police of selectively enforcing the restrictions, which cap outdoor public gatherings at 50 people.

Saturday’s ruling applied only to that evening’s protests, rather than to all protests going forward.

The judges pointed to the fact that beaches and malls are regularly packed with people despite the restrictions, but said police have only focused on breaking up protests, and not other gatherings.

“This situation is difficult to reconcile,” judges wrote in their decision.

Writing to National Security Council interim chairman Gil Reich, Levin stated that the court’s ruling was “made in complete contradiction to the professional position of the Home Front Command,” arguing that “this is primarily a professional issue of risk management” and “not a legal issue.”

Levin went on to assert that the court has a record of dangerous rulings, blaming it for the 2021 Meron disaster, in which 45 people were killed in a crush at the hilltop gravesite of a second-century sage in northern Israel — arguing that the court had stymied government plans to improve safety. In fact, a State Commission of Inquiry found several senior government officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several of his ministers, responsible.

“I believe that the cabinet has no choice but to act to prevent the very clear danger to human life and public safety,” Levin said, adding that any breach in restrictions would snowball and “seriously harm public discipline in all matters relating to compliance with Home Front Command guidelines.

“I believe that a proposal for a resolution should be presented to the cabinet, whereby the police and all relevant entities will be instructed to uphold the Home Front Command’s directives as given, including regarding gatherings and demonstrations,” he said.

“This is in response to the reckless decision of the High Court judges, which constitutes a serious deviation from the court’s authority and an illegal intervention in security considerations,” he concluded.

The justice minister, who sought to weaken the court system via a sweeping judicial overhaul, refused to recognize the authority of Supreme Court President Isaac Amit or to convene the Judicial Selection Committee, a refusal that led to dozens of judicial vacancies across the court system.

He has regularly issued statements urging open defiance of court rulings.

After the court’s decision, hundreds of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square to protest the war, quickly surpassing the 600-person limit allowed by the court, according to police.

Police then violently dispersed the protest, arresting 17 and allegedly preventing detained individuals from reaching a protected space after a missile siren sounded in the area, according to the activists. Police denied the accusation, saying the detained protesters were taken to “a safer location,” instead of the main shelter at Habima, “due to severe congestion at entrances to shelters.”

Levin was not alone in lambasting the court’s ruling, with several coalition lawmakers and top religious leaders castigating the court for acceding to left-wing demands and “allowing protesters to show contempt for the law,” in the words of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party.

Sephardic Chief David Yitzhak Yosef went even further, calling the High Court “the enemy of Judaism” for issuing the ruling on Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest.