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aeli legislation, nor does it limit the power of the Knesset to legislate laws as it sees fit.
However, these clear guidelines fail to describe fully the legal status of the Proclamation
of Independence in contemporary Israeli law [the article was published in 1988]. It is true
that the Proclamation lacks the power to nullify the validity of a law passed by the Knesset,
and when a law is clear and unequivocal, it takes precedence over all the principles set
down in the Proclamation of Independence. However, when the statutory legislation
of the state is open to different interpretations, the courts prefer an interpretation that
sits well with the principles enshrined in the Proclamation of Independence, since these
represent the state's "manifesto". The same applies to all instances where the law offers no
explicit directive regulating the binding principles in a given matter. In such a case, the
Supreme Court explained, the state authorities (a government ministry, for example) must
operate in the spirit of the Proclamation of Independence and avoid performing any act
that stands in contradiction to its principles.
This approach, which awards great legal importance to the principle set down in the
Proclamation of Independence, is illustrated in the Kol HaAm ruling – one of the most
important rulings handed down by the Supreme Court since its founding, in which
freedom of expression and of the press were established as possessing high public legal
value in the practice of law in Israel. In this episode, which took place in the 1950s, a
newspaper published an item claiming that the State of Israel was about to place 200,000
soldiers at the disposal of the US, in the event that the US went to war against the U.S.S.R.
This intention was denied from the Knesset podium, and the publication turned out to
have been entirely without any foundation. In the meantime, however, tempers in Israel
ran high, and the item served as the basis for a biting editorial in Kol HaAm, the organ of
the Israeli Communist Party.
T he editorial leveled heavy accusations at the "war-mongering" Israeli government and
its "profiteering from the blood of Israeli youth.” The Minister of the Interior decided, in
the wake of the publication, to wield his legal authority in accordance with the Journalism
Ordinance introduced by the British Mandate, which remains in effect in the State of
Israel to this day. According to this Ordinance (whose legal validity is identical to that of
a Knesset law), the Minister of the Interior is authorized “to halt the appearance of any
newspaper, for a period that he sees fit, if it has published content which, to his view, may
endanger public safety." The Minister of the Interior believed that the publication could
indeed "endanger public safety," and ordered a cessation of Kol HaAm's publication for
a few days. The newspaper appealed to the Supreme Court, asking the court to nullify
the Minister's decision insofar as it violated freedom of expression and of the press.
The Supreme Court, functioning as the High Court of Justice, faced the following
question: What publication may be described as "likely to endanger public safety," to the
point that justifies a decision of the Minister of the Interior to instruct that its publication
be halted? This was a question of interpretation, since it was clear that the directive of
the law could be interpreted in two different ways. One could, for example, claim that
any publication with a "negative tendency" was enough to justify the exercising of the
T he Declaration at a Distance 253
However, these clear guidelines fail to describe fully the legal status of the Proclamation
of Independence in contemporary Israeli law [the article was published in 1988]. It is true
that the Proclamation lacks the power to nullify the validity of a law passed by the Knesset,
and when a law is clear and unequivocal, it takes precedence over all the principles set
down in the Proclamation of Independence. However, when the statutory legislation
of the state is open to different interpretations, the courts prefer an interpretation that
sits well with the principles enshrined in the Proclamation of Independence, since these
represent the state's "manifesto". The same applies to all instances where the law offers no
explicit directive regulating the binding principles in a given matter. In such a case, the
Supreme Court explained, the state authorities (a government ministry, for example) must
operate in the spirit of the Proclamation of Independence and avoid performing any act
that stands in contradiction to its principles.
This approach, which awards great legal importance to the principle set down in the
Proclamation of Independence, is illustrated in the Kol HaAm ruling – one of the most
important rulings handed down by the Supreme Court since its founding, in which
freedom of expression and of the press were established as possessing high public legal
value in the practice of law in Israel. In this episode, which took place in the 1950s, a
newspaper published an item claiming that the State of Israel was about to place 200,000
soldiers at the disposal of the US, in the event that the US went to war against the U.S.S.R.
This intention was denied from the Knesset podium, and the publication turned out to
have been entirely without any foundation. In the meantime, however, tempers in Israel
ran high, and the item served as the basis for a biting editorial in Kol HaAm, the organ of
the Israeli Communist Party.
T he editorial leveled heavy accusations at the "war-mongering" Israeli government and
its "profiteering from the blood of Israeli youth.” The Minister of the Interior decided, in
the wake of the publication, to wield his legal authority in accordance with the Journalism
Ordinance introduced by the British Mandate, which remains in effect in the State of
Israel to this day. According to this Ordinance (whose legal validity is identical to that of
a Knesset law), the Minister of the Interior is authorized “to halt the appearance of any
newspaper, for a period that he sees fit, if it has published content which, to his view, may
endanger public safety." The Minister of the Interior believed that the publication could
indeed "endanger public safety," and ordered a cessation of Kol HaAm's publication for
a few days. The newspaper appealed to the Supreme Court, asking the court to nullify
the Minister's decision insofar as it violated freedom of expression and of the press.
The Supreme Court, functioning as the High Court of Justice, faced the following
question: What publication may be described as "likely to endanger public safety," to the
point that justifies a decision of the Minister of the Interior to instruct that its publication
be halted? This was a question of interpretation, since it was clear that the directive of
the law could be interpreted in two different ways. One could, for example, claim that
any publication with a "negative tendency" was enough to justify the exercising of the
T he Declaration at a Distance 253
