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Tag: Army Radio

  • High Court freezes government move to shutter Army Radio pending ruling

    Defense Minister Israel Katz announced the decision to shutter the military broadcaster last week, with the closure slated to take effect in March.

    Ahead of the scheduled hearing, and just hours after the government and the attorney-general submitted their preliminary responses, Supreme Court President Isaac Amit on Sunday ordered that the government’s decision to shutter Army Radio be frozen until further notice.

    The interim order comes amid a widening legal clash between the government and the A-G over the decision to close the military broadcaster, with Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara warning the High Court that the move is legally flawed and risks causing irreversible harm.

    “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 noted that the time between the decision and its execution is only about two months.

    Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara attends the Knesset in Jerusalem. November 18, 2024. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

    Katz announces decision to close Army Radio

    Defense Minister Israel Katz announced the decision to shutter the military broadcaster last week, with the closure slated to take effect in March.

    Army Radio has been broadcasting for 75 years and has long served as a training ground for generations of Israeli journalists. The government has argued that the army has no business operating a news station, especially one that it especially one that it claims leans toward one side of the political map.

    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.

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  • UNIFIL says IDF forces fire impacted close by, one soldier ‘wounded by gunfire, explosion sound’

    Israeli operations affected one of their patrol, with gunfire and an explosion impacting near their forces, according to a report by UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon.

    The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) reported on Friday that Israeli operations interfered with one of their patrols, with gunfire and an explosion impacting near their forces.

    “Heavy machine gunfire from Israel Defense Forces (IDF) positions south of the Blue Line impacted close to a UNIFIL patrol inspecting a roadblock in the village of Bastarra. The gunfire followed a grenade explosion nearby,” said the statement.

    “While there was no damage to UNIFIL assets, the sound of the gunfire and the explosion left one peacekeeper slightly injured with an ear concussion,” it added.

    In another incident, UNIFIL reported that a patrol in the village of Kfar Shouba heard machine gun fire from Israeli troops near their position.

    UNIFIL vehicles drive in Deir Mimas, southern Lebanon, February 18, 2025; illustrative. (credit: REUTERS/KARAMALLAH DAHER)

    UNIFIL leaks information to Hezbollah

    UNIFIL and the IDF had been clashing in the last couple of months, with the UN’s force targeting IDF surveillance drones and allegedly leaking information to Hezbollah, according to a report by Army Radio.

    On November 30, senior IDF officials fear that photographs and documentation taken by UNIFIL peacekeepers of Israeli military operations on the Lebanon-Israel border are being leaked to Hezbollah, according to Army Radio reports.

    The IDF also discovered an official UNIFIL document which referred to Israel as “the enemy,” which, after Israel demanded answers, Army Radio claimed that UNIFIL apologized for the phrasing, claiming they had “copied the wording of the Lebanese army” and had “forgotten” to correct it.

    Additionally, a drone incident occurred on October 27, when UNIFIL reported that Israeli drones flying over UNIFIL patrols in an “aggressive manner,” stating that “the peacekeepers applied necessary defensive countermeasures to neutralize the drone.”

    These situations all took place in the context of an imminent UNIFIL withdrawal from Lebanon, with the force set to remain fully operational in the country until 2026, when the operation will begin a year-long “orderly and safe drawdown and withdrawal.”

    The withdrawal was approved by the United Nations Security Council, with a French resolution that “requests UNIFIL to cease its operations on December 31, 2026, and to start from this date and within one year its orderly and safe… withdrawal… in close consultation with the government of Lebanon.”

    Amichai Stein, Reuters, and The Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.

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  • Israel’s cabinet to vote on Army Radio closure proposal on Sunday

    Defense Minister Israel Katz argued that the station’s original purpose as a platform serving IDF soldiers and their families has been overshadowed by political content.

    Defense Minister Israel Katz is expected to bring his proposal to close Army Radio after 75 years of broadcasting to a cabinet vote on Sunday.

    If approved, the closure would go into effect on March 1 next year.

    Katz’s decision is based on the recommendation of a professional committee, but critics have argued that the panel was handpicked to ensure Katz’s desired outcome.

    The committee had described the very existence of a military radio station broadcasting to the general public as “a democratic anomaly that has no equal in the world,” adding that Army Radio’s involvement in current affairs and news “harms the IDF’s status as the people’s army.”

    Katz: Army Radio’s original purpose has been overshadowed

    Katz argued that the station’s original purpose as a platform serving IDF soldiers and their families has been overshadowed by political content that, in his view, undermines the army.

    “As I have made clear, what was is not what will be. The Israeli government established Army Radio as a military station to serve as a mouthpiece and an ear for IDF soldiers and their families – not as a platform for voicing opinions, many of which attack the IDF and the soldiers themselves,” he has said.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz seen in the Knesset plenum, December 16, 2024 (credit: CHAIM GOLDBERG/FLASH90)

    There was no clear public explanation for why Army Radio could not be partially privatized while severing its direct link to the IDF, as many experts have suggested as a compromise to salvage one of the country’s premier media outlets.

    Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara has said the move “raises concerns about political interference in public broadcasting and questions regarding the violation of freedom of expression and the press.”

    Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.

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