In Internet video, PM blasts broadcast restrictions

“All day politicians have been speaking in the media,” Netanyahu protests.

Netanyahu had convened a press conference at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, but Israeli media was forbidden from broadcasting his appearance. Under Israeli election law, electioneering is not allowed on Election Day.

Netanyahu protests that left-wing politicians have been appearing in the media for much of the day.

“Tzipi [Livni], Boujie [Herzog], Yair [Lapid], representatives of the left, spoke in every possible studio and conducted flagrant electioneering,” he charges at the press conference, which was not broadcast in Israeli media, but a video was uploaded to Netanyahu’s Facebook page.

“The ‘Just not Bibi’ party doesn’t stop speaking in the media without anyone disturbing them. The only one they decided to prohibit from speaking in the media is me, the Likud prime minister,” he charges in the most direct accusation leveled by the prime minister against Central Election Committee chairman Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran, who made the decision to nix the broadcast.

“No one will shut us up,” he vows. “In a democratic state, even a Likud prime minister has the right to say his piece.”

Joubran himself has called for changing Israeli election law to lift or significantly ease the restrictions against electioneering, and has enforced the law relatively lightly over the course of the campaign. He has not initiated any cancellations of media appearances himself, but has enforced them when competing parties appealed against them. In the case of Netanyahu’s Tuesday press conference, Joubran responded to appeals from Yesh Atid and Zionist Union against the conference.

Joubran also forbade the airing of a Zionist Union press conference this afternoon.