Netanyahu Must Remove Election Campaign Video from Personal Accounts

The Chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Judge Noam Sohlberg, ruled on Tuesday that a video filmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Tel Nof Air Force base, in which he warned of an "attack ahead of the elections," contains elements of election propaganda. Consequently, the judge ordered its removal from Netanyahu's personal accounts, but not from the official accounts of the Prime Minister's Office and the Prime Minister.

The committee explained that a week prior, a video was published showing the Prime Minister standing at an Air Force base, with a military aircraft in the background, discussing security matters. He also stated that "there are immense pressures to retreat from military achievements," to which he responded, "I am not letting that happen, I will not let that happen." Throughout the video, he used the first-person plural.

A non-profit organization, Lawyers for Promoting Proper Administration, claimed that due to the video's content, it constituted the use of public assets in connection with election propaganda, in violation of Section 2a of the Elections Law (Propaganda Methods) of 1959. The committee chairman determined that the video's content was mixed, containing both election propaganda and a public message to other countries.

Sohlberg noted the importance of the publication location. On official accounts, the publication serves as a message from the state; on personal accounts, it is a message from the candidate. He found that after publication on official accounts, there was no clear official need for its dissemination on personal accounts. Since it was undisputed that public assets (an IDF base and an Air Force aircraft) were used in the video, its publication on private accounts violated Section 2a. The committee chairman ordered the video's removal from private accounts but permitted its retention on official ones.

As the petition was only partially granted, the Prime Minister and the Likud party were ordered to pay the petitioner NIS 2,500 in expenses. This decision follows a previous ruling by Sohlberg, who found that Netanyahu had made political use of public resources, including during a visit to an IDF post in southern Lebanon, in several publications on his official social media accounts. Sohlberg had ruled that while the legitimate aim was to boost soldiers' morale, parts of a video published on official accounts were edited out, and he ordered the Prime Minister to pay NIS 29,000 in personal expenses.