The government must explain why its December decision to shut down Army Radio should not be canceled, the High Court of Justice said Monday. The court’s focus lies not on the government’s authority to take the decision, but rather on the manner in which it was reached, it said.
The court’s conditional order followed a hearing last week on petitions that challenged the government’s move to close the 75-year-old military broadcaster. During that hearing, the justices examined two core questions: whether the government possesses the authority to order the station’s closure, and whether the decision-making process meets legal and administrative standards.
In its ruling, the court indicated that the state’s response should concentrate primarily on the latter, i.e., the integrity of the process, suggesting that the dispute depends less on the existence of authority and more on how that authority was exercised. The government was given until March 15 to submit its response.
The petitions were heard before Justices Daphne Barak-Erez, Alex Stein, and Yechiel Kasher. The petitioners were the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, the Union of Journalists, the Press Council, Army Radio employees, and the Histadrut labor federation.
At the center of the case is a government decision in late December that ordered the station’s closure, following recommendations by a professional committee appointed earlier this year. The move was advanced after months of pressure by Defense Minister Israel Katz, who says Army Radio’s news operation represents an institutional anomaly: a state-funded, military unit engaged in political and current-affairs broadcasting.
Two operative steps
The government decision included two operative steps: an immediate halt to the assignment of new military positions to the station; and the initiation of procedures to transfer existing personnel to other IDF units, alongside preparations for severance arrangements for civilian contractors.
The decision was set to take effect on March 1, but its implementation was frozen by an interim court order, pending judicial review.
The petitioners said the government’s reliance on the committee’s recommendations did not cure what they described as fundamental procedural defects. The committee was convened hastily, failed to present a sufficient factual foundation, and did not adequately weigh public-interest considerations, particularly the station’s role in Israel’s media landscape and the timing of the decision amid heightened political sensitivity, they said.
Those concerns were echoed during last week’s hearing, when the Attorney-General’s Office, which would ordinarily defend the government, warned that the decision was taken without proper authority and could set a dangerous precedent in the current political and legislative climate.
State representatives said Army Radio had been established by a government decision and could therefore be dismantled by one. Efforts to close the station were made long before the current government, they said.
The conditional order places the burden squarely on the government to justify, under affidavit, why the decision should stand.
The court said it expected a substantive explanation that addresses how the decision was formulated, what considerations were weighed, and whether the process meets the standards required of administrative action.