Israeli High Court freezes key provisions of contentious media reform law

Although petitioners argued that the entire law should be blocked, the court left to the future those elements that did not take immediate effect, with most of the law’s provisions set to be implemented in two years’ time.

One of the significant, immediate changes blocked was the removal of restrictions governing the broadcasts of news stations.

The law eliminated the need for a separation between companies and their news divisions, which is maintained to create a barrier between commercial and journalistic interests.

The law also abolished a requirement for broadcast companies to apply for two licenses – one for general programming and one for news programming.

Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the key figure in ushering the law through the legislative process, argued that such changes were necessary to remove regulatory barriers that stymied competition and prevented the development of a healthy marketplace of ideas.

“The reform brings freedom to the public, removes the shackles of propaganda from the minds of Israeli citizens, and enables them to choose what to watch,” Karhi told the Knesset after the law passed. It gives the public the freedom "to decide whom to watch, whom to listen to and what to pay for".

“There was a failed attempt to keep power in the hands of monopolies, to prevent competition and a free market, and to keep the people of Israel from knowing the true picture regarding viewership figures,” he added, referring to a provision that addresses the antiquated way rating numbers are collected.

Opponents, however, argue that the law will have the opposite effect, creating a situation whereby the political echelon bestows benefits on broadcasting companies that favour its viewpoint and punishes those that do not.

The instrument for this politicisation, they say, will be the Broadcasting Regulation Council, a new regulatory body set up by the law within the Communications Ministry. Six of the nine council members will be political appointees.

The Israel Democracy Institute, a left-wing think tank, argued in an explainer from August 2023 that “though Minister Karhi and proponents of the reforms claim the proposals seek to advance competition, the components of the reforms, alongside the context in which they are being proposed, make clear that their objective is a politicisation and government control of regulatory bodies”.

Attorney Yaniv Goldberg, head of the economic division of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, one of the petitioners against the law, said: “The Minister of Communications himself declared that his goal is to ‘crush the left’s monopoly on the media’ – in other words, to subordinate the press to the government.”

Other petitioners included opposition lawmakers and several NGOs, among them The Union of Journalists in Israel, BaShaar–Academic Community for Israeli Society, Hatzlacha: The Movement for the Promotion of a Fair Society, and Zulat: Equality and Human Rights.

In the wake of the decision, Karhi expressed anger at the court’s interference.

“There is no meaning to an order that repeals a law or 'suspends' a law. There is no legal source of authority for such an action. It is forbidden to obey lawbreakers," he said, urging the government to ignore the court and "remove the chains of the legal dictatorship”.

Karhi told JNS: “There are no problems in the process. Everything was done according to the law and according to the Knesset regulations. The claims are claims of vested interests and various legal advisers who tried to thwart the law and failed.

“Judge Grosskopf, in a cynical display of arrogance and lack of self-awareness, a single judge, thinks he can, with a wave of his pen, overturn the decision of the Cabinet and the Knesset, after several years of discussions and long months of legislation and hard work.

"The court is obliged to judge according to the laws of the state. No one gave the court the authority to overturn laws.

“The law passed in second and third readings, and it became valid and entered the statute book of the State of Israel.”

While Netanyahu did not comment on the court’s actions, other members of the coalition have also spoke out.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Otzma Yehudit Party called the judges "dictators in black robes,” who are “once again trampling the will of elected officials”. He said it was up to the next right-wing government to eliminate the “deep state” after the October 27 elections.

And Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism Party said: "The fact that a novice judge, in a single hearing and in the presence of one party, automatically issues an order that freezes Knesset legislation for the second time in a week, as if that was the default, is absolute insanity that shows that the Supreme Court has lost all restraint in its war against the Knesset and the national government."

But the petitioners praised the court’s decision, with Efrat Rayten of The Democrats Party calling it "a significant achievement in the struggle against one of the most corrupt and dangerous laws passed by the government – a law that was born to serve the political interests of a government headed by a criminal defendant, at the expense of the public.”