Broadcasting Bill Sent to MKs on Eve of Shabbat Without Legal Review
A push is under way on the Broadcasting Bill led by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi. Yesterday, Friday, shortly before the start of Shabbat, members of the Communications Committee received an updated version of the bill, spanning about 100 pages, without it having passed the committee’s legal review. Three discussions on the bill are expected next week, and in the coalition there is an effort to complete the legislation before the Knesset is dissolved for elections.
The legal adviser to the Communications Committee strongly criticized the way committee chair MK Galit Distel-Atbaryan (Likud) is advancing the bill, saying the full text was sent to committee members only hours before Shabbat began, without prior coordination and without professional preparatory work. In an unusual message sent to the committee’s WhatsApp group, following complaints from MKs, the legal adviser clarified that it had not received the bill text in advance at all and only saw it for the first time after Distel-Atbaryan herself distributed it in the group. "The version sent to committee members was not sent to the committee’s legal adviser, and we learned of it for the first time when it was sent in the WhatsApp group by the committee chair," the message said. It also noted that, as a result, "we also do not know who stands behind it or which professional bodies were involved in drafting it."
According to the legal adviser, this was not a matter of limited wording changes to chapters discussed in the committee, but in fact a broad new version of the entire law, from which "certain sections were cut" without professional explanation, without reasoning, and without presenting the logic behind the sections that remained. "Without explaining why many significant parts were omitted and others retained, and without laying out the organizing logic behind the remaining parts of the bill," it wrote.
The legal adviser added that sending hundreds of pages of legislation on the eve of Shabbat, together with setting a committee meeting for Sunday morning, directly harms the proper conduct of the legislative process. "This does not allow committee members, or us, to prepare for next week’s committee discussions, and it clearly and unequivocally affects the ability of Knesset members to participate effectively in the debate," it said.
At the same time, political pressure around the bill is also growing from within the coalition itself. United Torah Judaism chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf warned over the weekend that the bill "will lead to the legitimization of widespread Shabbat desecration," because it expands the possibility of live sports broadcasts during Shabbat and the operation of full filming, production and broadcasting systems on Shabbat.
In addition, the committee’s legal adviser sent an opinion last week to committee members saying that the proposed law discriminates against international platforms, grants sweeping powers and suffers from a lack of economic foundation, along with "substantial gaps and core issues that have not been addressed." The legal adviser also said that sending hundreds of pages of the bill on the eve of Shabbat, alongside scheduling a committee meeting for Sunday morning, directly harms the integrity of the legislative process.
The bill is intended to introduce a reform in the communications market and also regulate the field of internet sites, but in practice, according to its opponents, it harms free media. The bill was referred to a special Communications Committee, against the position of the Knesset’s legal adviser, Attorney Shgait Afik, who argued that the Economics Committee, which is responsible for communications matters, should debate it. Several weeks ago, the committee’s legal advisers walked out of the meeting hall in the middle of a session, after they said their positions were not addressed.
The coalition is pressing to complete the legislation in its second and third readings before the Knesset is dissolved for elections. In another document, the legal adviser said there are "notable gaps" between the comments and issues raised in the committee discussions and the version of the bill presented by the Communications Ministry, and that many of the substantive issues have not been addressed at all. It also said the bill text "is not written in the usual legal language," does not optimally reflect the required amendments, and that "significant additional drafting work" is needed.
