Can my US company send marketing emails and texts to customers in Israel?

American marketers arrive at this question with CAN-SPAM in their heads, and CAN-SPAM is close to the opposite of Israeli law. The US federal rule lets you send until someone opts out. Israel requires consent before the first message goes out, and prices each non-compliant message at up to NIS 1,000 in the recipient's hands without any proof of loss. A single campaign to a purchased list of 5,000 Israeli addresses is, on its face, a NIS 5 million claim.

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Detailed Answer

Section 30A of the Communications (Telecommunications and Broadcasts) Law 5742-1982, added by Amendment 40 and in force since December 2008, prohibits sending an "advertisement" by email, SMS, fax or an automated dialling system without the recipient's prior express consent, given in writing or in another recorded form. An advertisement is defined broadly as a message distributed commercially whose purpose is to encourage the purchase of a product or service, or to encourage the spending of money in some other way; a 2016 amendment pulled donation appeals and other non-commercial solicitations into the section on an opt-out basis, while leaving political and election messages outside it. Consent is not the only requirement. Every message must be labelled as an advertisement, must identify the advertiser by name, address and contact details, and must carry a free and simple way to refuse further messages by the same channel it arrived on, which the advertiser is then bound to honour. The remedy sits in Section 30A(i): a court may award up to NIS 1,000 for each message sent in knowing breach, with no damage to prove, and the Supreme Court has read the provision purposively, treating NIS 1,000 as the point of departure. A Section 30A claim is also one of the heads listed in the Second Schedule to the Class Actions Law 5766-2006, which is why almost every reported case is a certification motion rather than an individual claim.

There is a narrow route that does not need advance consent, and it is the one legitimate foreign sellers usually rely on. Where the recipient gave their address or number in the course of a purchase or a negotiation for a purchase, the advertiser told them at that moment that the details would be used for advertising, and gave them a chance to refuse, the advertiser may market goods of the same type. Nothing in that exception rescues a bought list, a scraped list, a conference badge scan or a list inherited in an acquisition.

Distance offers a US sender far less protection than it feels like it should. The section attaches to the advertiser, defined to include the person on whose behalf the message was sent, so the brand and the agency are both in the frame even where the sending infrastructure sits in Delaware. Messages received on Israeli handsets and Israeli mailboxes give an Israeli court a real connection to the dispute, service on a foreign defendant is available under the Civil Procedure Regulations 5779-2018, and a judgment obtained in Israel travels to a US court for recognition. Practical compliance for a company with no Israeli entity comes down to three things: segment Israeli recipients rather than treating them as part of a global list, capture and store the timestamp and wording of each consent because the burden of proving it falls on you, and process unsubscribes in hours rather than in the next monthly sync. A company already holding Israeli personal data has a second, separate obligation set to deal with, covered in our answer on Amendment 13 to the Israeli Privacy Protection Law.

In Practice: Section 30A of the Communications (Telecommunications and Broadcasts) Law 5742-1982 makes advance consent mandatory and, under Section 30A(i), allows NIS 1,000 per message without proof of damage, which the Supreme Court treats as the starting point. Claims are filed in the Magistrates Court (Beit Mishpat HaShalom), most often as a class action under the Class Actions Law 5766-2006, and a certification motion in Tel Aviv commonly runs 12 to 24 months before the merits are reached. The limitation period under Section 5 of the Prescription Law 5718-1958 is seven years, so a 2020 campaign is still actionable today, and consent records need to be kept for at least that long.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• You bought, rented or inherited a list containing Israeli contacts. Consent does not transfer with a database, and the acquiring company is the advertiser for every message it sends afterwards.
• You have received a demand letter or a certification motion from an Israeli claimant. The window to respond is short, the number of messages in your own logs will decide the exposure, and deleting logs after notice is a separate and worse problem.
• Your Israeli distributor or reseller markets under your brand. The advertiser definition reaches the party on whose behalf the message went out, so your indemnity wording and your approval of their campaigns both matter.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

We audit Israeli consent records against Section 30A, rewrite the sign-up and unsubscribe flows so they survive a certification motion, and defend demand letters before they become class actions.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.