Israel's Supreme Court unanimously blocked the government's plan to shut down Galei Tzahal on Thursday, ruling that the decision was driven by a single improper motive: the government's anger at what the station was broadcasting.
The three-judge panel, Justices Daphna Barak-Erez, Alex Stein, and Yechiel Kasher, found that officials wanted to close Army Radio simply because they didn't like what it was saying. Kasher, who wrote the main opinion, was blunt about the implications.
"It cannot be tolerated that a governmental authority would decide that because a broadcaster's words do not find favor in its eyes, the broadcaster's microphone should be shut off," he wrote. "A government that acts in this manner acts in a plainly undemocratic way, since the cornerstone upon which every democratic government rests is the recognition that the government may not use its power to silence those whose views it does not like."
The decision came after multiple petitions from the Movement for Quality Government, the Israel Democracy Institute, the Israeli Journalists' Association, the Press Council, and Galei Tzahal's workers' committee. Even when the court issued a conditional order asking the government to explain its reasoning, officials couldn't point to any grounds other than their displeasure with the station's editorial line.
Notably, the court didn't rule out the possibility of shutting down Galei Tzahal down the road, only that if the government tries again, it has to base the decision on something real, not political grudge. The justices also made clear they were taking no position on the station's actual content.
