Attorney General against Home Front Command Chief: 'Whitewashed Karai's radio reform - without operational necessity'

The struggle over the regulation of the regional radio market and emergency powers has reached a frontal confrontation between the Attorney General and Communications Minister Shlomo Karai and the Home Front Command Chief, Major General Shay Klepper.

In a response to the High Court of Justice regarding the petition by "Lobby 99" and "Hatzlacha", Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara writes that the Communications Minister's directives to expand the broadcasts of the radio stations "Kol Berama" and "Kol Chai", owned by businessman Yitzhak Mirilashvili, to the north were issued without authority and should be annulled. The Attorney General also sharply criticizes the Home Front Command Chief, Major General Shay Klepper, who she claims surrendered to the minister's pressure and adopted "as a matter of faith" raw data to whitewash the politicization of emergency frequencies.

The Attorney General's response was submitted to the High Court of Justice by attorneys Arin Safdi-Atila and Omer Rosenox from the High Court Department. The response states that the minister's directives to expand the broadcast areas of regional stations beyond their franchise boundaries are illegal, were made without authority, and are void. The petition is directed against a series of directives issued by the minister in May 2026 under special emergency powers in the Communications Law that allow compelling communications providers to act for reasons of state security.

Using this clause, Karai granted "in-principle approval" to the Haredi radio stations ("Kol Chai" and "Kol Berama"), as well as to the stations "A-Shams", "Radio Nas", and "Radio Lev HaMedina-Parvia", to expand their broadcasts to the north of the country, claiming an operational need to transmit alerts and preliminary instructions to the Haredi public that holds "kosher" devices.

However, the Attorney General wrote to the High Court that this is not an emergency directive but a voluntary "program on demand" initiated by the stations themselves to gain a commercial foothold in new areas. The move grants a huge economic benefit to a number of private broadcasting entities in the midst of an election period, and above all – there is a full and accessible public response in the form of the "Kan" broadcasting corporation, which has already announced that it is capable of transmitting preliminary instructions on the "Kan Moreshet" station, which completely undermines the argument of security "necessity".

In any case, the Attorney General writes, granting the benefit is also invalid due to the lack of a tender process: "The amendment grants existing regional radio stations a significant economic and regulatory advantage, without sufficient justification for granting it outside of a competitive process".

"A tower of assumptions"

The most dramatic part of the state's response is directed at the Home Front Command Chief, Major General Shay Klepper. After long months during which the Home Front Command determined that there was no security need to expand station broadcasts on weekdays (only in "silent wave" mode on Saturdays), the Major General made a U-turn at the end of July 2026 – following direct contacts with Minister Karai – and suddenly recognized the existence of an alert gap on weekdays as well.

The Attorney General sharply criticizes Klepper's conduct and determines that his position suffers from fundamental flaws that go to the root of his authority: according to the response, the Major General adopted data provided to him by the Ministry of Communications regarding the existence of about 51,000 kosher devices of 2nd and 3rd generation, without the Home Front Command bothering to perform even one independent check in the field through population officers in the districts. The Attorney General wrote that "the Home Front Command's duty to insist on the adequacy of the data to establish a security conclusion remains in force. The Home Front Command is not a provider of alert solutions for anyone who asks".

The response emphasizes that Klepper based his position on a "tower of assumptions": no one knows how many of the device holders live in the north, whether they do not have other reception means, and there is no basis for the assumption that this population will listen to the radio around the clock 24/7 on weekdays.

In summary, the Attorney General wrote that no sufficient factual and professional infrastructure was laid to establish a concrete security need for expanding the broadcast areas of the stations, and in any case, it was not proven that exercising the exceptional authority set out in Section 13a of the law in this way is necessary given the circumstances.