Supreme Court shoots down Ben Gvir bid to block TV exposé

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to block the broadcast of messages from a WhatsApp group he was a member of, in an investigative report to be aired later tonight.

Justice Ofer Grosskopf sides with the Jerusalem District Court’s rejection of a motion to have the broadcast of his WhatsApp messages blocked on invasion of privacy grounds.

The lower court, Grosskopf says, reviewed the entire transcript of the broadcast and found it to be “entirely related to the public activities of the minister,” and therefore had importance to the general public.

The justice says that in exceptional circumstances, when the privacy of a subject is harmed by a publication, a court might consider accepting a request to block it, but notes that Ben Gvir’s case “doesn’t come close” to this situation.

The report is set to be broadcast later tonight on Channel 13’s Hamakor investigative magazine.