Court okays hacking of phones seized from PM aide’s kids amid Sara Netanyahu probe
Police now believe Hanni Bleiweiss’s phone is being held by family’s attorney after initially thinking it was among devices seized from her children

The Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court approved a request from police investigators in the Lahav 433 unit to hack phones they confiscated belonging to the children of Hanni Bleiweiss, a late aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, amid a probe into allegations against the premier’s wife, Hebrew-language news sites reported on Sunday.
Following a Channel 12 investigative report aired last month, the police are examining allegations that Sara Netanyahu sought to intimidate a witness in her husband’s criminal trial and have protesters harass justice officials hostile to her family.
The TV report’s findings rely heavily on phone correspondence between Bleiweiss and the prime minister’s wife. Bleiweiss died of cancer in March 2023.
After obtaining a warrant, the police seized the phones in her children’s possession on the assumption that one of them may belong to the late aide. According to Haaretz, the court approved the police’s request to hack the phones to see whether any of them belonged to Bleiweiss, but law enforcement now surmises that none of the devices contain the evidence substantiating the expose’s allegations.
Police suspect that the family’s attorney Yaron Forer is in possession of the phone, Ynet reported. Forer declined to confirm or deny the police’s seizure of the other phones.
“Since the investigation is in progress and due to concerns about obstruction, I cannot confirm or deny anything,” he told Channel 12.

Several Hebrew media outlets reported last week that Bleiweiss’s three children were questioned over suspected obstruction of justice after they refused to hand over her cellphone to police, claiming that they did not know its whereabouts.
As per the Channel 12 segment, Sara allegedly instructed Bleiweiss to send activists from her husband’s Likud party to hurl obscenities at their neighbors, the parents of a fallen military pilot, who were active in demonstrations against the premier.
She also is accused of ordering Bleiweiss to have Likud activists publish verbal attacks against Hadas Klein, a key witness in one of the criminal cases against the prime minister, and to demonstrate outside her house.
Bleiweiss’s family is reportedly planning to file a lawsuit of some NIS 8 million ($2,182,000) against the prime minister’s family, alleging that Netanyahu’s late aide was abused and humiliated in her role and suffered damage to her health as a result.
According to Channel 12, Bleiweiss’s family will allege that the Netanyahu family regularly had the late aide spend her own money for work, purchasing items including food for employees of the Likud party as well as personal products for the prime minister and his family, for which she was reliant on the Netanyahus for reimbursement.
The cancer-stricken aide was made to spend some NIS 400,000 ($109,000) of her own money during her employment, according to the lawsuit, which alleges that “in practice, the plaintiff was used as [the prime minister]’s ‘wallet.’”