This document is submitted on behalf of Zulat and of Ms. Liora Nir of the Fair Regulation Movement ahead of a meeting of the Knesset Economics Committee scheduled for 18 March 2024. It deals with the first version of the aforementioned bill submitted by MK Ariel Kellner, as well as with an updated version dated 13 March containing amendments presumably instigated by the committee’s legal counsel. Both versions consist of unlawful customized arrangements that clearly favor vested interests at the expense of the public purse and the public interest.

In its original version, the bill seeks to cut to a minimum the fee paid by niche television channels for transmission on the Idan Plus system. This is an unlawful customized arrangement specifically tailored to the needs of Channel 14 (owned by Jewish Israeli Channel Ltd.) that seeks to exempt it from this payment.

To cover up its true intent and to fend off claims about unlawful customized legislation, an amended version of the bill seeks to extend this financial benefit to all users, including the age-old commercial channels that transmit on Idan Plus using SD technology (Channel 12’s Keshet and Reshet) and the public broadcasters Kan and Knesset Channel, thereby imposing it on the entire Israeli public under the false pretext of “increasing competition.”

If this were not enough, the bill, in both of its versions, seeks to introduce yet another customized arrangement, whereby Channel 14 would be fully immune from termination of its transmissions for failure to pay its debt to the Second Authority for Television and Radio (SATR), at a time when the latter’s lawsuit to collect this debt is currently pending in court.

In addition, the bill seeks to generate another significant financial benefit for tycoons at the expense of the public purse. At present, the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) is allowed to collect standard rates from commercial bodies for the use of its archive material. The bill seeks to change this situation, and oblige the IPBC to make this material available at operating cost only.

An air of illegality hovers over these proposals, which constitute a clear violation of the public interest. They create customized arrangements tailored to the size, status, and specific needs of Channel 14, which will create a budget shortfall that will be then be passed on to the public. It is an unfounded, unjustified, and disproportionate move that will in no way result in “increasing competition.”

These unlawful arrangements were put forward without any factual basis or financial/competitive examination, and without affording the legislator the opportunity to review the economic and public justification for awarding such major benefits to broadcasters and tycoons. Granting benefits totaling tens of millions of shekels is illegal at all times, and even more so in the country’s current state of emergency due to the war in Gaza. It is absurd that even at such a time the legislator should choose to grant huge benefits to tycoons and exacerbate the harm to the public, instead of acting for its good and wellbeing.