The High Court’s hearing on the publication of the government’s hearing on the corona will be broadcast live on the Internet, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday (26.5). Did not object to the request.The hearing is expected to take place this coming Monday, 30.5, at 15:00.
The petition that will be the focus of the debate will not directly lead to the disclosure of the transcripts, which the government has refused to do for two years, but it deals with a dispute of principle that could pave the way for publication: The Israeli government does not usually publish transcripts and minutes of its meetings on any subject, and its design is usually revealed to the public only after decades.
The petition to be heard next week was filed by a long line of bodies: the Freedom of Information Movement, through attorneys Racheli Edri, Yaara Shalit, Tali Lieblich and Orian Eshkoli; Attorneys Shachar Ben Meir and Yitzhak Aviram; Journalists Noa Landau, Tomer Ganon, Shaul Amsterdamsky, Chen Maanit, Tal Schneider; And the media bodies “Globes”, “time”, “Calcalist”, the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation and the “Shomarim” organization.
The legal saga regarding corona transcripts has been dragging on since the early stages of the plague, in early 2020, when the Benjamin Netanyahu government announced the first emergency measures to address the crisis. The Freedom of Information Movement then appealed to the government to receive the transcripts of the discussions and background materials from the meetings that dealt with the issue, both in the government plenum and in the ministerial committees. The rationale for the exceptional request was the immense importance of transparency in these discussions, especially when they are conducted in a transitional government and in a state of emergency.
When she did not receive what she requested, she petitioned The Freedom of Information Movement to the High Court in April 2020 with a number of other factors. Here began a series of legal delays: the government demanded that the procedure be transferred to the District Court, based on the Freedom of Information Act; Such, she replied in the negative.The petitioners responded with an administrative petition against the government.This pushed the government to release to the public the background materials presented at the meetings, but not the transcripts themselves.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference on dealing with the corona plague, 11.3.2020 (Photo: Flash 90)
In a ruling handed down in December 2020, the district court refused to order the publication of the material, on the grounds that government regulations prohibit the transmission of transcripts from government meetings. The petitioners, who were not convinced by this reason, petitioned the High Court in their case. The District Court, which the Supreme Court is expected to hear only after a decision has been reached on the question of principle.
The hearing that will be broadcast on the Internet is the first to be held by the High Court in this petition, after several rejections, and after some of the transcripts have already been deposited in the State Archives, which may make it difficult to expose them.
President of the Supreme Court, Justice Esther Hayut (Photo: Yonatan Zindel)
Live webcasts from Supreme Court hearings began as an experimental project launched by President Hayut in April 2020. Including a hearing in the arrangement requires a special request and approval from the court, which relies primarily on the public importance of the hearing.
In the first year of the experiment, 12 hearings were broadcast, most of them petitions to the High Court. Later, the hearings in the petitions against the coalition agreement between the Likud and Blue and White and against the Nationality Law were broadcast. It seems that the Supreme Court judges consider the experiment a success, since about two months ago it was decided to extend the arrangement at least until mid-2023, and extend it to civil and possibly even criminal cases in which public interest is found.
Broadcasting of court hearings has never been banned in Israeli law, but over the years judges have restricted the filming that takes place within the walls of the court to a handful of exceptional cases, such as the Eichmann trial and the Demanyuk trial. In the last two decades, there has been a renewed demand to adapt the courts to the technological age, in a series of bills and debates in Knesset committees. The pilot was first cooked on a small fire, using a special steering committee, testing of the appropriate technological means, and a confidential tool experiment for testing the systems (leaked to the grid).
The decision to launch it finally came against the backdrop of the Corona crisis and social alienation regulations, which limited the number of spectators in each hall to just seven people, thereby effectively undermining the principle of publicity of the hearing and the ability of journalists and the general public to reach court.
HCJ 614/21
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