Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, chair of the Central Elections Committee, ruled that Minister Itamar Ben Gvir's police recruitment video constitutes illegal election propaganda made using public assets. Sohlberg noted that Ben Gvir did not respond to the petition and that this is not his first violation of election law, as Israeli media report.
Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, in his capacity as chair of the Central Elections Committee, delivered a ruling on Friday afternoon that upgrades the consequences facing National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir over a now-deleted campaign video. Sohlberg found the video — which featured uniformed police and prison service officers at a public facility — to be illegal election propaganda, and noted that Ben Gvir did not submit a response to the petition. The justice added that this is not the first time the minister has breached election-law provisions on the use of state assets.
The ruling follows a series of escalating actions by the elections committee. As The Zioneer reported Thursday and Friday morning, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara had demanded that all of Ben Gvir's social media posts be submitted for her pre-approval, and the committee itself had issued an initial 23,000-shekel fine which it has now increased to 35,000 shekels in legal costs. The video removal order was also reaffirmed.
Ben Gvir has not yet publicly responded to Friday's ruling. The case highlights the ongoing legal friction between the minister and election authorities over the boundary between official communications and campaign propaganda ahead of the next election cycle.
4 developments
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Source and signal
- Open-source intake