High Court questions Knesset authority to ban MK travel funding

The order on Monday followed a hearing on MK Yousef Jabareen’s petition to strike a Knesset decision barring him from receiving funding from Jewish Voices for Peace for a flight to the US.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Updated: JUNE 5, 2018 15:48
Israel's High Court of Justice (photo credit: ISRAELTOURISM / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
Israel's High Court of Justice
(photo credit: ISRAELTOURISM / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
The High Court of Justice ordered the Knesset present it with a comparative study within 45 days about whether other countries prohibit groups from funding the travel of their parliament members based on ideological reasoning.
The order on Monday followed a hearing on MK Yousef Jabareen’s petition to strike a Knesset decision barring him from receiving funding from Jewish Voices for Peace for a flight to the US to go on a speaking tour.
In addition, the High Court ordered the Knesset to provide it with a list of this past year’s flights by Knesset members – it appeared, based on questions from the justices, that this was to check whether MKs were flown abroad by extreme right-wing organizations.
That Knesset decision came as a result of Jewish Voices for Peace’s support for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign, with the Knesset Ethics Committee saying that MKs should not be allowed to receive funding from BDS groups to go abroad and attack Israel’s legitimacy.
Adalah lawyers Hassan Jabareen and Mysanna Morany argued on behalf of MK Jabareen that the Ethics Committee, and the amendment to the Knesset Code of Ethics that the committee’s decision was based on, were illegal and were an unprecedented restriction on political speech.
They argued that the Ethics Committee only has the authority to block trips based on conventional improper ethics, such as conflicts of interest, and that it cannot block trips based on politicized ideology.
Further, they claimed that the decision to block the funding – and therefore the trip – was disproportional, especially since it restricted MK Jabareen from speaking even before he had made any comments the Knesset could point to as being objectionable.
Deputy High Court President Neal Melcer and Justices Isaac Amit and David Mintz did not seem obviously disturbed by the Knesset’s position at the outset and took the state’s concerns about the boycott campaign seriously.
At the same time, the justices were concerned about whether the Ethics Committee’s move had precedent in other countries and about whether the committee would be used disproportionately against left-wing views compared to extreme right-wing views.
It was unclear if those concerns would be enough to lead the court to strike down the Knesset decision and amendment in light of the authority to intervene regarding funding and in light of the fact that MK Jabareen could potentially have his trip funded by the Joint List Party.