{"id":460481,"date":"2026-05-26T08:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T08:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/460481\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T08:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T08:26:08","slug":"high-court-presses-state-over-committees-prior-statements-on-galatz-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/460481\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court presses state over committee\u2019s prior statements on Galatz closure"},"content":{"rendered":"

The High Court of Justice opened Tuesday\u2019s hearing on petitions against the government\u2019s decision to close Army Radio<\/a> by pressing the state over public statements made by members of the advisory committee Defense Minister Israel Katz appointed to examine the station\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

The hearing, held before Justices Dafna Barak-Erez, Alex Stein, and Yechiel Kasher, centered from its opening moments on whether some members of Katz\u2019s committee had expressed firm views against Galatz before beginning their work, and whether those statements tainted the process that led to the closure recommendation.<\/p>\n

The committee was appointed by Katz<\/a> in 2025 to review the future of Army Radio, a military-run station that also operates as a national news and current-affairs broadcaster. It ultimately recommended either closing Galatz\u2019s news and current-affairs division or shutting the station entirely. Katz adopted the more sweeping option.<\/p>\n

The government approved the closure on December 22, ordering the 75-year-old station to end its broadcasts within roughly two months. The move was originally set to take effect on March 1, but was frozen under an interim court order while the petitions are heard.<\/p>\n

At the heart of Tuesday\u2019s hearing was not only the broader question of whether a military station should operate as a national broadcaster, but whether the government did the required administrative work before deciding to shut it down.<\/p>\n

The justices\u2019 questions went directly to one of the petitioners\u2019 central claims: that the committee\u2019s conclusions were shaped by predetermined views rather than an open professional examination. The Army Radio workers\u2019 committee and the Histadrut labor federation have argued that some committee members made or shared public statements portraying Galatz as hostile to the state before they were appointed to review it.<\/p>\n

The state has argued that Army Radio is an anomaly – a military unit, funded by the state, that also broadcasts news, interviews, and political current affairs to the broader Israeli public. Katz has said there is no justification for a military station to engage in political and public-affairs broadcasting.<\/p>\n

Attorney-General warns Army Radio no longer internal military issue<\/p>\n

Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara<\/a> has taken the opposite legal position, warning that Galatz can no longer be treated as a narrow internal military issue. In her January filing, which she asked the court to treat as her main position for Tuesday\u2019s hearing, she argued that after more than 75 years on air, Army Radio has become part of Israel\u2019s public broadcasting landscape.<\/p>\n

According to estimates cited in that filing, Galatz reaches close to one million listeners a day and is one of only two nationwide Hebrew public radio stations with a full news desk and current-affairs programming.<\/p>\n

Baharav-Miara argued that closing such a station by government decision, rather than through primary legislation in the Knesset, raises serious legal difficulties, particularly when the decision affects Israel\u2019s media landscape and freedom of the press.<\/p>\n

Petitioners point to previous recommendations<\/p>\n

The petitioners also point to the sequence that preceded Katz\u2019s decision. A previous committee, appointed in 2023 by then-defense minister Yoav Gallant and headed by then-Defense Ministry director-general Eyal Zamir<\/a>, recommended keeping Galatz inside the IDF while introducing reforms. Katz later appointed a new committee, which reached the opposite conclusion within a short time.<\/p>\n

The workers\u2019 petition adds a labor dimension to the case, arguing that the decision would effectively dismiss dozens of civilian IDF employees without meaningful consultation, a real closure plan, or substantive negotiations.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s conditional order requires the government to explain how the closure decision was formulated, what considerations were weighed, and whether the process met the standards required of administrative action. Tuesday\u2019s opening questions suggested the justices were focused, at least initially, on whether the committee Katz relied on could be treated as a neutral professional body at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The High Court of Justice opened Tuesday\u2019s hearing on petitions against the government\u2019s decision to close Army Radio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111153,16376,835,85,46,2723,43,4179],"class_list":["post-460481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-army-radio","tag-gali-baharav-miara","tag-high-court-of-justice","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-katz","tag-news","tag-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}