Local election manipulation: Another proposal currently on the table, which would give the state greater powers to remove members of local and regional councils from their positions for expressing “support for terrorism.” The bill was approved in its preliminary reading in parliament in late November.

• Background: On November 24, the Israeli government made a decision—approved by Prime Minister Netanyahu—that requires any government-funded body to refrain from communicating with or placing advertisements in Haaretz. The stated reason was that it was a response to remarks made by Amos Shocken, Haaretz’s publisher, at a conference in the UK co-sponsored by Haaretz, Yachad-UK, and the New Israel Fund-UK. But the government, which rushed to vote on the proposal without the requisite legal checks by the Attorney General, appeared to have been waiting for an excuse to cut its advertorial and subscription ties to Haaretz.
  
• Israeli journalists’ response: The Union of Journalists in Israel and the journalists’ union at Haaretz and its business newspaper TheMarker filed a petition to Israel's Supreme Court to reverse this decision, which they say “carries a message and even a threat toward other media outlets, their owners, or those leading them, and appears to be a slippery slope toward silencing the press, thus also harming freedom of the press and the public.”
• NIF’s response: In response, The New Israel Fund purchased 1,500 student subscriptions to the paper for Israeli university students in Israel who did not yet have subscriptions.

• The bill: A bill to enable the government to oversee television viewership data passed a preliminary reading in a tight vote (53-49) in the Knesset plenum. The bill would allow Israel’s communications minister to control the currently independent organization that supplies publishers with this information [In America an independent company provides this information]. The bill is being prepared for its first reading.
  
• The change: Civil society organizations are concerned that the government will manipulate the data to show increased ratings for right-wing and government-aligned media outlets. This would mean that (1) those outlets will be able to obtain more advertising because they will have “higher” ratings and (2) the manipulated data would “prove” that the public supports their policies; the feedback loop will force channels to support government policies in order to get good ratings.
• The authoritarian path: Traditionally, less democratic countries like China are the ones to give the government control over ratings whereas in liberal democracies, a private company is the one reporting on a show or a channel’s popularity.

• On the books: For years, Benjamin Netanyahu has worked to ban Al Jazeera from Israel, and in early May of 2024, his government passed a temporary emergency ordinance that enabled the Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi (Likud) to stop Israeli content providers from broadcasting foreign media that met with his disapproval.
• The details: The temporary emergency ordinance enabled Israeli law enforcement to restrict Israelis’ access to a banned outlet’s website, shut down its transmitters in Israel, and seize equipment, including mobile phones. Not long thereafter, officials seized equipment and shut down live feed from Gaza broadcast by the Associated Press; three months later, the IDF raided the Al Jazeera bureau in Ramallah and ordered its closure.
  
• The change: If passed, the bill currently on the table would give the Israeli government the permanent ability to shut down foreign press (like Al Jazeera and the AP) broadcasting in Israel. Communications Minister Karhi would have the authority to declare foreign outlets a “security risk” at any time—and shut them down.
  
• Legal arguments against the law: ACRI, in its many petitions against the initial temporary order (which has been extended a number of times) argued that the law violates (1)  freedom of expression, (2) citizens’ right to information, (3) freedom of the press, and (4) blocks citizens and residents from receiving a variety of information that does not fit the Israeli narrative or is not broadcast on Israeli media channels.
• Judicial “Override clause” 2.0: The law also contains a provision that would allow the Prime Minister and Communications Minister to bypass the Supreme Court—in other words, should they make a decision that a media outlet is “a security risk” and shut it down, the Supreme Court would be powerless to override their decision.
• Political motivations: ACRI and other analysts have suggested that the attacks on Al Jazeera in particular are politically motivated. Qatar both is a partial funder of Al Jazeera and, as the longtime host country to many senior Hamas officials, has been a key player in ceasefire negotiations in Gaza. Al Jazeera’s extensive coverage of the war is not always favorable to the Israeli narrative. ACRI argues that this law is designed to block coverage of this kind of “unfavorable” news that is typically broadcast on Israeli channels.

• On the books: A law, passed on November 6, further erodes protections for Arab children who are citizens of Israel or residents of Jerusalem. An Arab child [Israeli citizen or resident] between the ages of twelve and fourteen who is undergoing sentencing for murder or attempted murder under Israel’s terrorism laws can be sentenced to prison.
• The change: Previously, minors of those ages were not allowed to be sentenced to prison. Adalah has argued that the passage of this law was motivated by “revenge.” They noted that Palestinian children in the West Bank can already be sentenced to prison from age 12.

• On the books: A law, passed on November 19, will revoke the welfare benefits [child allowances, education grants, alimony payments, etc.] from Israeli Arab citizens or residents of Jerusalem whose minor children have been convicted of “security offenses”. The definition of “security offenses” is extremely broad, and encompasses offenses related to freedom of expression.
  
• Context: This law is an attempt to circumvent a 2021 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated a similar law following a petition filed by Adalah. The earlier law, from 2015, denied social welfare benefits to parents of Palestinian minors convicted of security-related offenses or offenses committed on the basis of “nationalist motives.”
• The change: The new law mirrors the 2015 law but removes the “nationalist motives” requirement, instead requiring courts to determine whether the offense constitutes an "act of terrorism." In its decision striking down the 2015 law, the Court held that the law was unconstitutional as it violated the principle of equality.

• On the books: A law, passed on November 4, gives the Director General of the Ministry of Education exceptionally broad powers to withdraw funding from Palestinian schools in Israel and Jerusalem, dismiss teachers who have been accused of "supporting” or “identifying” with terrorism, and shut down schools that "allowed" or "facilitated" incitement to terrorism.
  
• The upshot: While support for terrorism is a crime, it needs to be proven by a legal system, one that investigates allegations of “support” for terrorism before it takes actions. This law provides for no such investigation. Instead, a by the Director General of the Ministry of Education alone would be enough to revoke a school’s budget or fire a teacher. This could thus create a situation where people who did nothing wrong were persecuted, with extremely limited legal recourse. This law primarily targets schools in occupied Jerusalem, putting the right to education for thousands of Palestinian children at risk.
  
• Retroactive legalization: The practice of arresting teachers for the presumption of support for terrorism was taking place even before this law was on the books. FakeReporter uncovered an instance, for example, of a teacher from the Arab town of Tamra in Israel who was falsely arrested for a dance video she posted; because it was posted on October 7, 2023, it was deemed to be  ‘celebrating’ terror, Shatil, Sikkuy and ACRI and other civil society actors were active in opposing and eventually watering down this law.

• The bill: A bill that would give the police the ability to disperse protests or other gatherings flying the Palestinian flag in the space of a publicly funded institution (like a university). Demonstrators found to possess them could face up to a year in prison and a fine of 10,000 shekels (~$3,000). The bill is being prepared for its first reading.
• Historically: Israel has historically viewed the Palestinian flag displayed within Israel as a display of free speech, unless it is deemed a threat to the “public order”. This bill would functionally be more restrictive than Israel’s military laws around the flag in the West Bank. The police have confiscated flags at demonstrations in East Jerusalem in the past (notably at Shireen Abu-Akleh's funeral), and a protester was arrested for flying a Palestinian flag during the Sheikh Jarrah protests in 2021.

• The law: The Knesset approved the first vote on a bill that would block graduates of Palestinian institutions from teaching in the Israeli school system. The bill states that the Education Ministry director general can block someone with a degree from a Palestinian academic institution from receiving a teaching certificate or a job in Israel. Prospective teachers at Palestinian universities would be able to obtain a teaching certificate and a job if they undertake “supplementary studies for the purpose of training as an education worker in Israel”.
• The ban: According to the Knesset Research and Information Center, of the 6,720 teachers in East Jerusalem who teach some 106,000 students, the vast majority (around 6,000) had been educated in Palestinian Authority-affiliated institutions. These laws could get educators who simply studied for their teaching degree in the Palestinian system fired from or prevent them from getting jobs at all in Israeli or East Jerusalem schools.

• The law: A law deceptively named “The law to defend the public against criminal organizations” passed its final Knesset vote in mid-January. This law is not actually about defending the public against organized crime; it is a law that gives the police dangerous powers to deny Israeli citizens due process and substantially restrict their freedom of movement.
• The details: This law gives the police expanded search powers. It allows them to check their residences and vehicles, access their computers, or even search their persons.
• It further enables the court to impose restrictive measures based on that “confidential” police intelligence—evidence that the defendant will not have seen.
  • The restrictions that the court can impose on an individual citizen based on secret evidence include: Barring someone entering a certain town or region, requiring them to live or at least stay in a certain place, putting them on house arrest, stopping them from having contact with certain people, restricting their driving and internet use, and barring them from leaving the country.

• The change: This is a significant deviation from the prevailing rules of evidence and trampling of due process, which requires that the defendant not be held on the basis of secret evidence. Anyone caught violating a restrictive order may face a jail sentence of one to four years. The law could provide an avenue for the police to use the broadly defined term “criminal organization” to apply to any anti-government activity.
  
• The trick: The law requires the attorney general’s approval to be used, but given there is a campaign to fire her underway, she may not function as any kind of real check on this law. 

• Judicial Selection Committee Changes: Justice Minister and judicial overhaul troubadour Yariv Levin and newly minted Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar are reviving legislation to restructure the committee that selects the country's judges. Their aim remains the same as it was back in March of 2023: to give more power to the politicians and reduce the power of the court. Levin’s original proposals sparked massive public protest, and only came to a halt after the October 2023 Hamas invasion and the war that followed. This time around, protests of that magnitude are less likely as Israelis are exhausted; they have been protesting to bring the hostages home and end the war for the last 15 months.
  
• Change 1: The composition of the Judicial Selection Committee at present includes two ministers, two members of Knesset, three Supreme Court justices, and two representatives of the Israel Bar Association. In other words, four politicians versus five legal professionals. Levin and Sa’ar would replace the Israeli Bar Association members of the committee with politicians–one from the opposition and one from the coalition–who are also attorneys. The result would be six politicians versus three professionals (judges). This is what Levin wants: to fully politicize the process of selecting justices for the Supreme Court.
  
• Change 2: This law also limits the Supreme Court’s power to review Israel’s pseudo-constitutional Basic Laws, which can be passed with a simple majority by the legislature. Limiting the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review gives the government the ability to determine the ‘rules of the game’ around how the government works, without fear that the Supreme Court can strike them down.
  
• Problem 1: According to the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), this bill–contrary to what the ministers are saying (that this is a ‘compromise’)—“represents a revolutionary shift.” It means that an ambitious judge at any level in Israel “would know that their path to selection and promotion depends solely on political alignment…judicial selection—from magistrates to district courts and the Supreme Court—would be determined by political affiliation or partisan loyalty rather than professional merit or adherence to the law.”
• Problem 2: The proposed curtailment of the court’s ability to invalidate Basic Laws will have a major impact on the character of Israel as a state. This bill includes what the IDI calls a “incomplete and vague proposal” to legislate Basic Law: The Legislature, which would–in theory–better and more formally define the relationship between the branches of government. But baked into this law is the fact that the judiciary will play no part in that configuration of powers, nor in any revocation of its own power, that the power to determine Basic Laws will lie in the hands of elected officials alone.
  • Key: Israel’s top court has never declared a Basic Law unconstitutional. To do so would be an unprecedented act. But the ability to do so, even in theory, is critical: it is the right to have a hand in determining whether the most fundamental building blocks of the country are in line with democratic values.

Further reading: Ministers Levin and Saar’s Proposed Changes to the Judicial Selection Committee,” Dr. Guy Lurie, Israel Democracy Institute

• The attacks: A major campaign to fire Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has been underway for months. Government ministers and MKs have argued that her refusal to defend various controversial and unprecedented government measures (ranging from the selection of the civil service commissioner to daycare subsidies for draft dodgers) amounts to a betrayal of them and of “the people”. The central accusation against her is that she  “selectively enforces” the law.
• Recent timeline: In December, the Knesset voted on a declarative resolution that would have forced the Knesset to hold a special hearing in the plenum to discuss firing the Attorney General. The measure was narrowly defeated by a single vote (41-40). Still, some thirteen ministers from across Netanyahu’s government—from the Likud to Jewish Power to United Torah Judaism—signed a letter demanding Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s dismissal. She was then invited to a full cabinet meeting in late December for a “hearing” where she could respond to claims—but she did not show up. Coalition leaders doubled down on their calls to dismiss her. 
• Ben Gvir vs. the Attorney General: Recently resigned National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit is particularly keen to see the Attorney General dismissed. His party has done everything from put up a billboard attacking her in Tel Aviv, to failing to vote to pass the national budget because she was not fired. A central reason for this personal vendetta is that theAttorney General made it plain to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when Ben Gvir was a minister that he he should consider firing him for repeatedly flouting the law, promoting his cronies while in office, and intervening in the day-to-day functioning of the police, which is illegal (see ACRI’s petition to Israel’s High Court on this matter).
  
• Netanyahu can’t fire her. Netanyahu is formally prohibited from firing the Attorney General, because she is responsible for his ongoing trial for fraud, bribery, and breach of trust. He is broadly required to avoid conflicts of interests and cannot make decisions on judicial matters that could influence his criminal trial. Firing the attorney general would be a clear-cut conflict of interest. What’s more, she recently called to open an investigation into Netanyahu’s wife, Sara for harassing a witness in his trial—a fact that will make it more likely, if she is fired, for the High Court to accept a petition to keep her in office, as his conflict of interest is now compounded.
• The process for firing the attorney general is cumbersome. Knesset coalition leaders reached an agreement in late December authorizing Justice Minister Yariv Levin to begin formal proceedings toward the dismissal of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. But the formal process—convening a committee, the committee determining that she has acted towards the government with a “lack of reasonability”, etc.) has not yet begun.
• The upshot: Analysts argue about the extent to which the campaign against the attorney general is for show—to raise the temperature, and make some noise, but that she will not really be fired. One thing they point to, beyond the difficulty of the process, is Gideon Sa’ar’s entry into the coalition. Gideon Sa’ar appointed Gali Baharav-Miara.

• The law: Likud MK Tally Gotliv proposed a bill that would prevent law enforcement officials from opening criminal investigations into members of the Knesset (except in the case of corruption or) if 90 MKs—a large supermajority—approve the investigation.
• The change: As it stands, MKs possess immunity from investigation when the acts or statements they make are made as ‘part of their public service’. However, law enforcement officials may open criminal investigations against members of Knesset and may also indict MKs if the attorney-general gives her approval, although the Knesset has the power to grant them immunity from going to trial. This bill would change that. It would strip the attorney general of the power to approve investigations into MKs, and give that power to an (unlikely to materialize) supermajority vote of the Knesset.

• A jab at the courts: According to the bill’s preamble, “The court has no means to intervene, assess, or determine the scope of a Knesset member’s duties or what is done in the fulfillment of those duties. It is not the court’s role, nor does it have the tools, to decide on the extent of a Knesset member’s functions.
• The problem: This bill would make Knesset members their own police, judge, and likely jury. The level of immunity from criminal investigation that it would provide is unprecedented; it fully puts them above the law.
• Conflict of interest: Gotliv appears to believe that she (and possibly Netanyahu) will be shielded from the criminal investigations currently underway against both of them. Shikma Bressler, a central figure in the pro-democracy movement, filed charges against her after she revealed that Bressler’s husband was a member of the Shin Bet (itself a national security risk) and accused him of playing a part in the October 7 Hamas massacre (a conspiracy theory). Bressler is suing for defamation.