Judge Noam Solberg, who chairs Israel's Central Elections Committee, ordered Naftali Bennett, leader of the Yachad party, to remove portions of a campaign video that featured soldiers engaged in operational activity and IDF artillery equipment.
The ruling came Wednesday following a complaint filed by the Likud party, which argued that Bennett had improperly used public assets, specifically military resources, in his election advertising, in violation of Israeli election law.
The video in question addresses the issue of ultra-Orthodox exemptions from military service while showing footage of soldiers in combat and an IDF cannon as Bennett speaks about troops who have been fighting for months.
Solberg determined that these clips constitute IDF property and create an inappropriate connection between the military's operational activities and the political messages Bennett was promoting. The judge emphasized that the military imagery was not incidental but served to illustrate one of the campaign's central arguments.
