According to the report, Sirena is an apartment building that houses more than 100 elderly people.
By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY
The elderly residents of the Sirena nursing home in Herzliya took to the streets in an angry demonstration after a court rejected their request to remove a Defense Ministry "communications device" from the roof of their building, reports www.local.co.il. The ministry erected the device without the approval of the District Planning and Construction Committee, and the city and residents said it was unacceptable that the ministry could simply come in and put up whatever equipment it wanted, anywhere it wanted, without going through proper planning procedures.
According to the report, Sirena is an apartment building that houses more than 100 elderly people. When the residents discovered that antennas and other devices had been placed on the roof, they turned to the municipality, which joined them in asking the courts to order the removal of the devices. During the case, the judge demanded to know what exactly the devices were, and the Defense Ministry lawyers insisted they could only tell the judge without the municipality's lawyers being present in order to protect the "secret nature" of the devices. The judge eventually ruled that the devices could stay, and the residents demonstrated outside the Defense Ministry offices in Tel Aviv in protest.
"It is unacceptable to have a situation like this, in which the Defense Ministry comes into a municipal residential neighborhood and puts a communications device on a building where elderly people live without informing the city, bypassing the city and the public and keeping the matter as an internal secret," a municipal spokesman said. "This kind of action is more suitable for other regimes, not for a democratic country like Israel."
No response was reported from the Defense Ministry.