Election panel orders Netanyahu to remove videos that violate propaganda laws

Central Election Committee Chairman Noam Sohlberg ruled Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu violated laws against election propaganda on five occasions in recent months, and must remove or partially remove from official and political social media channels videos of speeches he made using public resources.

Petitions were filed by government watchdog groups over six instances in which Netanyahu gave speeches, including election content for his campaign, either on state property such as the press room in the Prime Minister’s Office, or during military ceremonies or situation assessments.

Sohlberg ruled in two cases that all content from the speeches be removed from official social media accounts and from Netanyahu’s personal accounts.

In three cases, Netanyahu must remove all or part of the content from official accounts, Sohlberg ruled, and in one case he determined that the speech was not propaganda and so declined to order the content removed.

One of the videos that was ordered removed covered a visit by Netanyahu to an IDF base in southern Lebanon.

Sohlberg found that though the visit was legitimate as a tool for raising the morale of soldiers, those aspects were edited out of the published video, which instead included remarks that could only be seen as “boasting” on behalf of the government and the man who leads it and “election propaganda whose intention is to persuade the voter.”

In addition, he said, the video “uses public photography and distribution resources, that is to say, the Government Press Office.” Sohlberg noted that a visit to such a base is not a resource available to other candidates in the election.

Channel 12 reported that the video was already removed under a temporary court order.

Sohlberg also ordered that Netanyahu personally pay NIS 29,000 ($9,500) in total expenses to the three watchdog groups that filed the petitions, and to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office.

Israel is scheduled to hold elections for the Knesset on October 27.

Last week, Sohlberg ordered National Security Minister Ben Gvir to remove a video in which the far-right minister, flanked by armed prison guards, told senior Hamas inmate Hassan Salamah, “I want to kill you.”

Salamah is responsible for a pair of 1996 Jerusalem bus bombings that killed 45 people.

Sohlberg ruled in favor of petitioners from two NGOs — Choosing Israel, which advocates for transparency, and the Committee Against Torture — that Ben Gvir “took advantage of his position to produce an election campaign video.”

Ben Gvir was ordered to take the video down from all social media platforms and to pay a NIS 10,000 ($3,240) fine. His Otzma Yehudit party was ordered to pay an additional NIS 10,000 fine.

In August, Sohlberg ordered Netanyahu to remove a video posted online featuring the premier meeting and taking selfies with children at the Malha Mall in Jerusalem, saying it violated campaign regulations.

The same month, he told B’Yachad party chairman Naftali Bennett to remove video clips of soldiers engaged in operational activity from a campaign video in which he slammed the ultra-Orthodox for evading the draft.

The committee has also ordered opposition Yashar party chairman Gadi Eisenkot to take down a campaign video featuring AI-generated images of IDF soldiers “engaged in various military activities.”