Politicians shouldn’t violate censorship laws for an election campaign – expert

One expert in media and politics slams top Israeli politicians who rushed to tweet congratulations to the security services today for reportedly catching the terrorists behind Friday’s deadly bombing attack in the central West Bank.

The boasting, says Dr. Tehilla Schwartz Altshuler, an expert on media and law at the Israel Democracy Institute and Hebrew University, amounts to violations of Israel’s military censorship laws just to score political points.

“Elections are rife with censorship violations by politicians. This was true in the past and remains true today,” she says.

“Taking advantage of immunity to commit censorship crimes could be justified if it’s to reveal failures by the security forces, but not [for politicians] to advance themselves personally during elections,” she adds.

The congratulations from Avigdor Liberman of Yisrael Beytenu and Ayelet Shaked of Yamina prompted an exceedingly rare rebuke from the Shin Bet security service, which said in a statement that the search effort was still underway.

“The statements regarding the capture of the terrorists who committed the attack in Dolev do not express the opinion of the Shin Bet nor did they receive approval from the Shin Bet, which is leading the investigation,” the security service said.