Central Elections Committee Chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg today (Sunday) ordered the Shas party and its chairman, MK Aryeh Deri, to remove an election campaign video they published yesterday evening.
The video shows a man who appears to be a religious soldier walking home on Friday evening, while his family waits for him to make Kiddush. At the end of the video, text appears stating that 30,000 soldiers voted for Shas in the last elections, followed by a ballot slip bearing the letters Shas.
The “Yashar for Israel with Eisenkot" party argued, among other things, that the video violates the prohibition against using the IDF in election propaganda, as well as the prohibition against using the identifying letters of a candidate list before the 42nd day prior to the election. The party also requested an interim injunction ordering the removal of the video until proceedings on the petition are concluded.
The Chairman of the Central Elections Committee ruled that the petition’s prospects of success regarding the two aforementioned prohibitions justified granting the requested interim injunction. He ordered Shas and MK Deri to remove the video from all of their social media accounts and to respond to the petition within two days.
He noted that Section 2B(b) of the Elections (Modes of Propaganda) Law, 5719-1959, prohibits the use of the IDF in election propaganda in a manner liable to create the impression that the IDF is identified with a political party or candidate list.
In addition, Section 7 of the Elections (Modes of Propaganda) Law prohibits election propaganda that uses a letter identifying a candidate list, except during the 42-day period preceding Election Day.