The government’s decision to shutter Army Radio in December was invalidated on Thursday by the High Court of Justice.
The reason, the ruling reads, is that those who made the decision acted in part because they felt the station did not align with their own positions – considerations the court found to be “improper and invalid.”
The court ruled unanimously in favor of petitions filed against the planned closure, striking down the government’s effort to shut the military broadcaster after 75 years on air.
The government unanimously approved Army Radio’s closure in December 2025, with the station initially set to cease broadcasting on March 1. The closure was delayed after the High Court agreed to hear petitions challenging the decision.
“It cannot be that someone in a position of power will decide that because they don’t like what a broadcaster is saying, that microphone should be ‘turned off,’” wrote Justice Yechiel Kasher.
“Such governance is unequivocally undemocratic, because a cornerstone of any democracy is the recognition that those in power cannot use it to silence voices they disagree with,” he added.
Israel Katz criticizes court's decision, says move 'based on foreign and invalid judgment'
Defense Minister Israel Katz criticized the court's decision later on Thursday, saying it was "made based on foreign and invalid judgment."
"The High Court placed its judgment above that of the elected government ministers, who unanimously believed there was no place for a civilian radio station with political content within the IDF," said Katz.
"Since the High Court ruled that the government was authorized to make the decision and rejected the claim that closing Army Radio required primary legislation - when we win the elections in 2019 and regain the public's trust - we will complete the handling of the issue."
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said the decision encroached on the Knesset's authority.
"No one has placed you above the people and their elected representatives. The government must instruct the defense minister to implement its decision immediately," Karhi wrote in a statement.
"And while we are at it, it is also unclear why the Knesset speaker has not responded to the demand of 25 MKs to bring for debate the decision stating that Knesset laws remain valid and in force despite the High Court.
"If the government and the Knesset do not stand firm in defending their dignity and the dignity of this people in the face of judicial bullying, how can we complain when the public has grown tired of the democratic show at the ballot box?"
Justices agree Army Radio could be shut down in principle, does not have to remain open indefinitely
All three justices agreed that the station, established by a government decision in 1950 and still a military unit, could in principle be shut down without new legislation. The bench did not rule that Army Radio must remain open indefinitely, nor did it find that the government lacked the authority to close it.
The case is about this particular decision. Kasher drew a sharp distinction between closing Army Radio because the military should not operate a national current-affairs station – which he said could be a legitimate consideration – and closing it because ministers objected to the political character or criticism they believed was being broadcast.
The government had argued that the closure rested on legitimate concerns: the unusual arrangement of a military-run current-affairs station, the need to keep the IDF outside political disputes, the role of conscript soldiers in covering controversial political issues, and what it described as distortions in the commercial radio market.
Those reasons could, in principle, support a lawful decision to close the station, Kasher said. But the government had to show that they were the reasons that actually drove the cabinet’s December vote – and the court found that it had failed to do so.
Kasher pointed in particular to statements by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and Defense Minister Israel Katz, who led the move. In a March 2025 letter to Katz, written before the advisory committee examining the station’s future had been established, Karhi called for the closure of Army Radio as part of what he described as the two ministers’ shared “right-wing liberal agenda,” and characterized the station as a political stronghold.
Katz later appointed an advisory committee to examine Army Radio’s future. After 19 meetings, the committee recommended two main options: stripping the station of its news and current-affairs programming while keeping it as a military broadcaster, or closing Army Radio while leaving Galgalatz operating. Katz chose the second option and announced in November that he would seek to close the station.
The attorney-general opposed the move before the cabinet vote, arguing that the process was flawed, that some members of the advisory committee had significant political affiliations, and that there was a real concern that the station’s coverage had become an improper consideration in the decision. Petitioners raised similar arguments and also challenged the government’s authority to close the station without legislation.
The government rejected those claims, maintaining that the committee had followed an extensive process and that ministers were entitled to hold and express policy positions before deciding.
High Court maintains that government could shut down Army Radio with different evidence
But the justices placed particular weight on what happened after the petitions reached court. Kasher said the government did not submit the full minutes of the December 22 cabinet meeting, despite being required to rebut the allegation that improper considerations had driven the decision. Justice Dafna Barak-Erez separately noted that no affidavits from the ministers were submitted after the court issued its conditional order in February.
Justice Alex Stein, who took the broadest view of the government’s authority and said he would otherwise have rejected the petitions, nevertheless joined Kasher’s conclusion because of Karhi’s letter. That letter, Stein wrote, turned an otherwise legitimate effort to separate government from broadcast content into government intervention in the content itself.
Barak-Erez went further on the defects in the process, finding that bias among the ministers and some members of the advisory committee, together with an inadequate factual basis, independently supported striking down the decision. Closing a public broadcaster because those in power perceive it as supporting a different political position, she wrote, amounts to “de facto censorship.”
The ruling leaves the broader debate over Army Radio’s future unresolved. A government could still decide to close the station after a new process based on legitimate considerations, the justices made clear.
“There is a clear legal answer,” Barak-Erez wrote, to whether such a decision can be taken for political reasons and through a process biased in advance: “The answer is no.”