{"id":530137,"date":"2026-07-07T20:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T20:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/530137\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T20:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T20:46:11","slug":"high-court-demands-government-comply-with-court-rulings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/530137\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court demands government comply with court rulings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The High Court of Justice\u2019s 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<\/a> risk exposure to civil lawsuits.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Instead, it said that, \u201cunder the circumstances,\u201d there was reason to return to \u201cbasic first principles.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court then cited a 2008 High Court ruling on the duty to comply with judicial decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompliance with and respect for court judgments are among the basic conditions on which the rule of law in a democratic state rests,\u201d the justices quoted. Without them, the earlier ruling stated, the rule of law is undermined<\/a>, social order deteriorates, and \u201cthe distance between the rule of law and anarchy is a hair\u2019s breadth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SupremeSupreme Court Chief Justice Isaac Amit and Supreme Court justices arrive for a hearing on petitions against the government\u2019s dismissal of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, December 1, 2025. (credit: CHAIM GOLDBERG\/FLASH90)<\/p>\n

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 \u201call the more grave.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cseeds of disaster and anarchy\u201d and fosters a culture of power and arbitrariness.<\/p>\n

Elected officials, public employees, required to act according to law<\/p>\n

The decision also referred to a 2025 decision by Deputy President Noam Sohlberg<\/a> before applying those principles to the present dispute.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese 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,\u201d the decision stated.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s view, it did not meet the statutory threshold required to operate.<\/p>\n

That declaration followed the High Court\u2019s June 17 interim order freezing the government\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Attorney-General objects to cabinet’s resolution\u00a0<\/p>\n

The government has maintained that the outgoing council lacks the statutory membership threshold. Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara<\/a> told the court that the cabinet\u2019s resolution amounted to a further serious attempt to thwart judicial decisions and intimidate those seeking to comply with them.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s explicit language.<\/p>\n

He said the government would pursue legal avenues to overturn it.<\/p>\n

In its update notice to the court on Monday, the Israel Journalists Association called the cabinet resolution an \u201cunprecedented and grave call\u201d not to recognize a judicial order.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s upcoming deliberations.<\/p>\n

The proposed deal would transfer control of Channel 13 from Len Blavatnik\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The association pointed to Justice Minister Yariv Levin\u2019s 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 \u201cthe government does not see itself as bound by this.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The filing also alleged that Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi\u2019s moves against sitting council members were intended to weaken the council and alter its composition while the petitions remain pending.<\/p>\n

Karhi responded by invoking a Talmudic episode about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who ordered the shofar be sounded in Yavneh on a Rosh Hashanah that fell on Shabbat before a dispute over the practice had been settled.<\/p>\n

When others later sought to debate it, he replied that \u201cthe horn has already been heard in Yavneh.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karhi repurposed the line for the present dispute, writing that \u201cthe horn of liberation of the government and the people dwelling in Zion from the yoke of the High Court has already sounded\u201d \u2013 suggesting that the cabinet had already taken a step he believed should not be reversed.<\/p>\n

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the court and Attorney-General\u2019s Office a \u201cjudicial mafia\u201d that had moved to \u201cextortion by threats.\u201d He compared the warning to a protection racket, asking whether the next step would be \u201cenvelopes with bullets to government offices.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that \u201cno one is above the law, not Isaac Amit and not Gali Baharav-Miara,\u201d and said the government would defeat \u201cthis protection racket\u201d at the ballot box.<\/p>\n

Levin, meanwhile, said the decision reflected \u201cthe failure to which the Supreme Court has descended,\u201d contrasting the ruling with a statement he attributed to retired Supreme Court justice Aharon Barak: \u201cWe judges have neither sword nor purse; all we have is the public\u2019s trust in us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levin then likened the justices to \u201cthe worst dictators,\u201d saying that, after losing public trust, they were threatening to \u201ccrush by force\u201d those who sought justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will not succeed,\u201d he wrote. Levin added that the justices should examine how they had \u201creached such a low point,\u201d arguing that respect for the law and for democratic decisions was a duty of every citizen, \u201ceven if he is a Supreme Court judge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keshet Neev contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The High Court of Justice\u2019s response on Tuesday to the government regarding the Second Authority for Television and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3194,16376,42,835,192170,14406,43,220567,4320,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-530137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-court","tag-gali-baharav-miara","tag-headlines","tag-high-court-of-justice","tag-isaac-amit","tag-knesset","tag-news","tag-noam-sohlberg","tag-supreme-court","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530137","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=530137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}