Knesset legal adviser urges transfer of media overhaul bill from special panel, citing flawed process

Knesset Legal Adviser Sagit Afik calls for deliberations on Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s controversial media overhaul bill to be transferred from the special committee created to advance the legislation to the Knesset’s Economics Committee, warning that the current proceedings no longer meet the basic requirements of a proper legislative process.

The demand follows a heated committee session this week in which chair Likud MK Galit Distel-Atbaryan barred the panel’s legal staff from speaking, triggering a shouting match and the removal of opposition lawmakers. Afik said in her letter that she had instructed the legal advisers to leave the meeting after they were prevented from presenting their professional position.

In a sharply worded letter to Distel-Atbaryan, Afik rejects her claim that the committee’s legal advisers are responsible for “the many problems with the bill and its deliberations,” and says that “the committee’s conduct itself has created these problems, through the failure to receive answers from government bodies, the failure to transfer data, and the failure to make decisions on key issues alongside the accelerated reading of the bill.”

She asserts that it has become clear that “even the basic conditions of a proper legislative process are not being met” and reiterates her position that “a proper legislative process requires deliberation on the entire bill in the committee authorized to do so — the Economics Committee.”

The special media panel was established in December to bypass the Knesset Economics Committee, which would normally discuss this kind of legislation, because of opposition from its chair, Likud MK David Bitan, who previously blocked Karhi’s bill to shut down the Kan public broadcaster.