All steps already taken to shutter Army Radio should be halted immediately pending a ruling by the High Court of Justice, Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara said on Sunday evening.
“The decision is laden with errors,” Baharav-Miara said, noting that the court is expected to hear the case by the end of January.
Representing IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Attorney-General’s Office, submitted an accompanying advisory opinion urging the court to issue an interim order freezing both the government’s decision and any preparatory steps taken to implement it until the court rules.
It further notes that the time between the decision and its execution is only about two months.
The government and Defense Minister Israel Katz, who issued the decision to close Army Radio last week, are being represented separately.
Baharav-Miara: Damage caused in efforts to shutter station will be significant
Baharav-Miara warned that “the damage that will be caused by actions taken now to shutter the station will be both significant and irreversible.”
The legal advisory's position is that an interim injunction is warranted both on procedural and substantive grounds.
It stressed that the “balance of convenience” - a legal test weighing which side would suffer greater harm from granting or denying temporary relief tilts decisively toward freezing the situation until the court rules, “given the sensitivity and complexity of shutting down a public radio broadcaster or even advancing steps toward its closure.”
The advisory further noted that the government’s decision was adopted despite a series of legal, substantive, and procedural defects identified by the Attorney-General and formally presented to the cabinet, which was told that the move could not lawfully be advanced in its current form.
As a result, the opinion concluded that the petition against Army Radio's closure had meaningful prospects of success - meaning it raised credible and weighty legal questions, and was not just a speculative challenge. This, too, argues the legal advisory, supports judicial intervention before potentially irreversible steps are taken.
The advisory describes Army Radio as having become one of the cornerstones of Israeli journalism, with a central role in the country’s public discourse and close to one million daily listeners.
It stressed that while the station functions according to accepted journalistic standards and is one of only two public radio stations broadcasting nationwide with a national news desk, it is also a long-recognized anomaly - a military unit operating a major public media outlet. That hybrid status, the legal opinion noted, stems from unique historical circumstances and has fueled repeated debates over the station’s future and governance over the years, including throughout the past decade.
From a procedural perspective, the advisory explained that the origin of the decision was in an advisory committee that met back in August.
It submitted in October two alternative recommendations: the first, that the station “operate as a military unit... without a news division;” the second, that the station be shuttered.
The legal advisory further argues that the committee’s composition raised concerns as many of its members were strongly tied to the leading Likud party, calling into question their ethical position on the matter; the opinion notes as well that the committee lacked both senior officials from the security establishment, as well as experienced journalists with relevant professional expertise.
The Attorney-General's Office further warned that the government’s decision suffers from serious flaws in the exercise of discretion.
The opinion raised concerns that improper considerations may have been taken into account, including objections to the nature of the station’s news coverage and to specific programs or broadcasters.
It also found that insufficient weight was given to freedom of expression and press freedom, a failure that undermines the decision’s legal reasonableness. The advisory added that the government did not conduct a proper examination of less harmful alternatives that could have addressed its stated concerns while minimizing infringement on those fundamental rights.