The High Court of Justice’s response on Tuesday to the government regarding the Second Authority for Television and Radio was a short warning: Elected officials must act according to law, while public employees who choose not to comply with court rulings risk exposure to civil lawsuits.
The decision was issued by Supreme Court President Isaac Amit and Justices Alex Stein and Ruth Ronnen. The panel did not issue new interim relief or decide the underlying petitions. Instead, it said that, “under the circumstances,” there was reason to return to “basic first principles.”
The court then cited a 2008 High Court ruling on the duty to comply with judicial decisions.
“Compliance with and respect for court judgments are among the basic conditions on which the rule of law in a democratic state rests,” the justices quoted. Without them, the earlier ruling stated, the rule of law is undermined, social order deteriorates, and “the distance between the rule of law and anarchy is a hair’s breadth.”
The panel also repeated the distinction drawn in that ruling between a private citizen who disregards a court order and a state authority that does so.
Noncompliance by a citizen, it noted, is a serious harm to the rule of law. Noncompliance by an authority of the state is “all the more grave.”
A state authority that takes the law into its own hands, complying with a judicial order when it chooses and ignoring it when it does not, the decision continued, sows “seeds of disaster and anarchy” and fosters a culture of power and arbitrariness.
Elected officials, public employees, required to act according to law
The decision also referred to a 2025 decision by Deputy President Noam Sohlberg before applying those principles to the present dispute.
“These basic principles apply both to the actions of elected officials and to the actions of public employees, all of whom are required to act in accordance with the law,” the decision stated.
It then drew a sharper distinction with respect to public employees, warning that action contrary to judicial decisions could, in appropriate cases, mean that their personal immunity from damages claims would not apply.
The decision came after the cabinet unanimously declared on Sunday that it would not recognize decisions, approvals, appointments, or actions by the outgoing Second Authority Council while, in the government’s view, it did not meet the statutory threshold required to operate.
That declaration followed the High Court’s June 17 interim order freezing the government’s March decisions to appoint a replacement council. The court ruled that the outgoing council would continue to serve in its existing composition until a final ruling on the petitions.
Attorney-General objects to cabinet’s resolution
The government has maintained that the outgoing council lacks the statutory membership threshold. Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara told the court that the cabinet’s resolution amounted to a further serious attempt to thwart judicial decisions and intimidate those seeking to comply with them.
Government Secretary Yossi Fuchs rejected the characterization that the cabinet had called for noncompliance, describing the resolution as sharp criticism of a ruling the government believes contradicts the law’s explicit language. He said the government would pursue legal avenues to overturn it.
In its update notice to the court on Monday, the Journalists Association called the cabinet resolution an “unprecedented and grave call” not to recognize a judicial order. It argued that the move was intended to intimidate members of the sitting council and investors in the proposed Channel 13 transaction, preventing the deal from reaching approval in the council’s upcoming deliberations.
The proposed deal would transfer control of Reshet 13 from Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries to the Merit Spread Foundation, which is backed by a group of hi-tech entrepreneurs led by Wiz co-founder Assaf Rappaport. The transaction, agreed in March, still requires approval from the Second Authority Council.
The association pointed to Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s remarks at the Israel Hayom conference on Sunday, in which he said prospective investors should know they were acting on the basis of what the government viewed as an unlawful decision, and that “the government does not see itself as bound by this.” The association argued that the remarks showed the resolution was aimed at thwarting the transaction and affecting the operation of a major news channel during an election period.
The filing also alleged that Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s moves against sitting council members were intended to weaken the council and alter its composition while the petitions remain pending.
Karhi responded by invoking a Talmudic episode about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who ordered the shofar sounded in Yavneh on a Rosh Hashanah that fell on Shabbat before a dispute over the practice had been settled. When others later sought to debate it, he replied that “the horn has already been heard in Yavneh.”
Karhi repurposed the line for the present dispute, writing that “the horn of liberation of the government and the people dwelling in Zion from the yoke of the High Court has already sounded” – suggesting that the cabinet had already taken a step he did not believe should be reversed.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the court and Attorney-General’s Office a “judicial mafia” that had moved to “extortion by threats.” He compared the warning to a protection racket, asking whether the next step would be “envelopes with bullets to government offices.”
He added that “no one is above the law, not Isaac Amit and not Gali Baharav-Miara,” and said the government would defeat “this protection racket” at the ballot box.
Levin, meanwhile, said the decision reflected “the failure to which the Supreme Court has descended,” contrasting the ruling with a statement he attributed to retired Supreme Court justice Aharon Barak: “We judges have neither sword nor purse; all we have is the public’s trust in us.”
Levin then likened the justices to “the worst dictators,” saying that, after losing public trust, they were threatening to “crush by force” those who sought justice. “It will not succeed,” he wrote. Levin added that the justices should examine how they had “reached such a low point,” arguing that respect for the law and for democratic decisions was a duty of every citizen, “even if he is a Supreme Court judge.”
Keshet Neev contributed to this report.
