Israeli Military Censor - Parliamentary and Judicial Oversight

Parliamentary and Judicial Oversight

During the 1990s, the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee appointed a subcommittee, chaired by Yossi Sarid, to examine the existence and role of the Military Censor. The subcommittee recommended to keep the Censorship Agreement in place, but amend it by:

• Extending the terms of the Agreement to all media outlets in Israel, not only media outlets with representatives in the Editorial Committee.
• A simple appeal of a decision rendered by the "Censorship Committee" will not be heard by the Chief of Staff but by a Supreme Court Judge, or retired Judge with an Arbitrator status in the Arbitration Law.
• The terms of the Censorship Agreement will also be extended to foreign journalists working in Israel
• A newspaper will be allowed to cite anything published in another newspaper, unless the Military Censor decides the material poses "imminent and immediate danger" in the spirit of the terms established by the Supreme Court.
• The Military Censor or the Interior Minister are to be prohibited from shutting down a newspaper that is not part of the Agreement without giving it the opportunity to appeal the decision in the courts.

The former president of the Supreme Court, Aharon Barak, ruled that, when in direct conflict, the right to live supersedes the right to expression:

Precisely because of the existential nature of the security issues, it is important that the public be aware of the host of problems, in a manner where it is able to arrive at wise decisions on the fundamental problems which trouble it. Precisely because the repercussions that decisions of a security nature have on the life of nation, it is suitable to open the door to openly exchanging of views on security issues.

In March 2005, it became public that the Ministry of Defense-appointed Winograd Commission for reviewing the authority of the Military Censor (chaired by former judge, Eliyahu Winograd), whose members were selected by the then-Chief Censor Colonel Miri Regev, would recommend expanding the authority of the Military Censor, by proposing legislation to repeal the 1989 Supreme Court ruling which limited the scope its authority on legitimate news reporting. But since then, opposition for the move (initiated by commission member, professor Asa Kasher) was expressed by professor Gabriela Shalev, another commission member. The Winograd Probe has yet to publish its report.