Mass Communication In Israel: Nationalism, Globalization, and Segmentation 9781782384526

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Mass Communication in Israel

Mass Communication in Israel Nationalism, Globalization, and Segmentation

Oren Soffer Translated by Judith Yalon

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com English-language edition © 2015 Berghahn Books Hebrew-language edition ©2011 The Open University of Israel ‫תקשורת המונים בישראל‬

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Soffer, Oren. author. [Tikshoret hamonim be-Yisra’el. English] Mass communication in israel : nationalism, globalization, and segmentation / Oren Soffer ; translated by Judith Yalon. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78238-451-9 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78238-452-6 (ebook) 1. Mass media—Israel—History. 2. Telecommunication—Israel—History. 3. Radio —Israel. 4. Television—Israel. 5. Internet—Israel. I. Title. P92.I79S64 2014 302.23'095694—dc23 2014018769

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed on acid-free paper

ISBN: 978-1-78238-451-9 hardback

ISBN: 978-1-78238-452-6 ebook

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction. Mass Communication: Nationalism, Globalization, and Social Fragmentation

1

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

The Structure of the Book

2

The Nation: A Theoretical Framework

3

Nationalism as a Communications Phenomenon

5

Extreme Simultaneity: The Electronic Media

7

New Technologies: The End of the Media National Role?

10

The Evolution of the Hebrew and Israeli Press

17

The Press and Nationalism

17

From Political Party Press to Commercial Press

20

Nationalism and the Case of the Emerging Hebrew Press

22

The Beginnings of the Hebrew Press in Palestine during the Ottoman Era

26

The Press in Mandatory Times

28

The Press in the State of Israel

36

Regulation of the Press: Official and Other Arrangements

40

Party Political Press in the State of Israel

45

The Press Crisis and the Advent of Free Newspapers

69

Conclusion

72

Radio in the State of Israel

75

Radio and National Solidarity

76

vi | Contents

Chapter 3.

Chapter 4.

Historic Background: Radio in the Yishuv Era

80

Radio in the State of Israel: Institutional Aspects

85

Radio and Imagined Israeliness

89

Special Broadcasts: From the Eichmann Trial to Eshkol’s Speech

93

Forerunners of Broadcasting Pluralism

95

The Multichannel Radio Age: Diversification and Decentralization?

109

Conclusion

114

Television in Israel

117

Television in the National Arena

117

Public Broadcasting in Changing Times

118

The “No-Go” Era: The Television Debate in the State of Israel

121

Educational Television

125

The Founding of General Television

127

Television in Israel: Institutional Aspects

129

Chronicles of Channel 1: Socio-cultural Aspects

135

Television Broadcasting in the Single Channel Era: Summary

140

Israel’s Battle over Color TV: The Case of the “Eraser” and the “Anti-Eraser”

142

The Multichannel Era in Israel

149

Digital and Interactive Technology

163

Conclusion

166

The Internet’s Debut in Israel

168

Is the National Media Age Over?

168

The Evolution of Internet Accessibility in Israel

173

Contents | vii

Israelis Surfing the Internet: Between the Local and the Global

175

Internet Use among Children and Adolescents

182

The Internet and Sectorial Communication

183

The Internet and the Public-Political Sphere in Israel

189

Internet Discourse in a Security Crisis

191

Interim Conclusions

193

Conclusion

195

Bibliography

203

Index

221

Acknowledgments

This book originated in a Hebrew version published by the Open University of Israel in 2011. I am grateful for the support and encouragement of the Open University for the publication of an English version of this book. This support exemplifies the great spirit of the Open University of Israel and its true social and ideological commitment to spreading academic knowledge. I am thankful to the Open University of Israel’s Academic Development Unit, and especially to Dina Nusbaum, for their expeditious and efficient conducting of the preparation of the English version of this book—all of which was undertaken in a pleasant spirit. I am grateful for the help, ideas, and reviews I received from colleagues within the Open University of Israel and from other Israeli academic institutions. Especially, I am thankful for all the help and ideas I received from my colleague Professor Motti Regev in the Open University’s Department of Sociology, Political Science, and Communication. Professor Regev’s close academic accompaniment of this project contributed greatly to the formation of the book and its thesis. I am also grateful to Professor Tamar Liebes, who viewed and commented on the entire book, offering her important insight on theoretical and historical matters. I have benefited greatly from the theoretical challenges in my discussions with Professor Anat First, who also served as a reviewer for chapter 1. I am also grateful to the reviewers of the original book: Dr. Oren Mayers, who reviewed chapter 2; Professor Dov Shinar and Dr. Hanan Naveh, who reviewed chapter 3; Professor Jerome Bourdon, who reviewed chapter 4; and Dr. Oren Livio and Dr. Michael Dahan, who reviewed chapter 5. I wish to thank the Open University assistants, Iris Guedalia, Shmuel Nili, and Dana Kaplan, who took part in the original Hebrew project—their contribution is much valued. The Hebrew text was translated into English in an efficient and professional manner by Judith Yalon. And the English version was edited by Dr. Colette Stoeber, who, due to our long period of working together, often understands my ideas and intentions better than I do. Oren Soffer Raanana, 2013

introduction

Mass Communication Nationalism, Globalization, and Social Fragmentation

Modern Jewish nationalism was born in the age of printed mass media—more specifically, the age of newspapers. In fact, the publishing of Hebrew-language newspapers pre-dated the advent of Zionism. In the mid-nineteenth century, these newspapers, which were published in Eretz Yisrael but also elsewhere (mainly in Eastern Europe), became a sort of communications network or printed-word public sphere (Penslar 2000: 7). This network connected Jewish communities that were not only geographically remote from one another but also, quite frequently, culturally and linguistically remote (Frankel 2000: 45). Jewish—and later Zionist—leaders, of whom some of the most prominent (such as Binyamin Zeev Herzl and Nahum Sokolov) were journalists, saw the press as a crucial means of realizing the political goals and hopes of the Jewish people. The State of Israel came into being in the era of electronic mass communication, fifty-one years after the First Zionist Congress of 1897—an event that, more than any other, symbolizes the birth of modern Jewish nationalism. Radio was already universally well established in 1948, and just as newspapers predated Zionism, so did Hebrew radio broadcasts precede the advent of the state. The Zionist leadership perceived the Hebrew radio broadcasts that commenced in 1936, under the British Mandate, as an ideal means for the national political agenda. These broadcasts did indeed substantially contribute to placing Hebrew culture and language on a firm footing both in the Yishuv era and in the first years of statehood. In those years, television was becoming firmly established in many countries—with unprecedented rapidity. But the leadership of the young State of Israel had a different attitude towards the television medium. The political echelons did their utmost to prevent or at least delay the introduction of television into Israel, a resistance that was informed by political and cultural considerations related to nation building and protecting the nascent Hebrew culture against outside influences. Political leaders feared the negative effects of television on the emergent Hebrew public sphere. The Hebrew mass media thus clearly played a key role in the Zionist national and Israeli narrative from the very outset. The evolution of the media in

2 | Mass Communication in Israel

Israel (including the deliberate checks put in place against their development) is inextricably bound up with the chronicles of Zionism, the Jewish Yishuv in Eretz Yisrael, and the State of Israel in the first decades of its existence. However, mass communication is not solely related with forming and reinforcing national solidarity. These modes of communication are accompanied by global, and especially Western and American, influences. Indeed, in recent decades, in view of the changes in communication technology, the media has been blamed for social fragmentation—a process seen to be the result of a decline in social and national adhesion along with a reinforcement of group identity and individualism. These changes can be seen in the proliferation of television channels and access (by means of cable and satellite broadcasts) to international channels, in the increasing predominance of commercial radio and television broadcasts, and, of course, in the increasing penetration of the Internet. Indeed, these changes appear to be part of the social and cultural processes linked to the decline of national solidarity and, alternatively, to the reinforcement of individualist trends and consumer culture. This book seeks to trace the principal milestones in the socio-political history of the Hebrew mass media, from the mid nineteenth century (the nascent Hebrew press) to the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century. The book’s main theoretical axis draws a connection between the mass media, the formation of the Israeli national identity, and nation-building processes on the one hand, and the place of the media in social fragmentation and globalization on the other. Nationalism and globalization are not infrequently perceived as the two opposite poles of a single axis. But the mutual affinity of the relevant concerns forms a complex web of relationships and influences. Various combinations of national and global phenomena find simultaneous expression in the media (Grennfeld 2011). Obviously, this theme, relating as it does to the nexus between the mass media and nationalism—and at the same time to processes of social fragmentation, globalization, and de-territorialization—is hardly unique to Israel. The rapid developments of recent years in communication technologies have led both to a heightened recognition of the place of the mass media in national processes in the past and to warnings or calls for awareness concerning the new era in which we find ourselves today—an era in which the media are ostensibly no longer a source of social and national solidarity.

The Structure of the Book The four chapters of this book each focus on a different medium, the order deriving from the historical order of appearance of the relevant medium. This mode of presentation enables in-depth discussion of the development stages

Introduction | 3

of each medium and its place in the overall social fabric. It also allows me to clearly present the institutional and regulatory characteristics (laws, regulations, supervisory bodies, etc.) of each of these media. In this way, I can effectively compare, on both international and historical levels, the development and place of each of these media in the communications structure. The chapters are structured on the basis of a more or less uniform outline, which takes into account the unique features of the particular medium being discussed. Each of the book’s chapters includes a general theoretical discussion of that medium in the social and political processes relating to nationalism or to the formation of alternative identities. The chapters focusing on the printed press and the radio then look at the social and cultural roles of these media in the pre-state era. With the exception of the chapter on the Internet, all of the chapters examine the regulatory apparatuses governing the media. The analysis unfolds diachronically, as I consider key issues in the development of the media and their place in the fabric of Israeli socio-cultural life. As stated above, one of my key pursuits throughout this work is to estimate to what extent mass media trends in recent decades have in fact weakened hegemonic national concepts and, alternatively, to what extent they have reinforced the rise of an alternative discourse and focal points of alternative identification and identities. The various chapters also include a discussion of minority groups, in particular their attitude towards the general mass media and the media consumption patterns unique to them.

The Nation: A Theoretical Framework The “nation” is a fairly flexible and fluid term. Most people perceive their affi liation to a particular nation as obvious and eternal. As Anthony Smith notes (1996: 360), earlier researchers of the phenomenon of nationalism, influenced by the ethos of the national movements, imagined nations as entities that had existed always and everywhere. The nation is not merely a political phenomenon, relating to clearly demarcated territorial boundaries, bureaucratic apparatuses, and legitimacy, but also a phenomenon of cultural identity. A key motif in nationalism is the demand of those purporting to represent it for a right of self-definition and autonomous management of the nation’s affairs. Such autonomy derives from the national claim that members of the nation share a common identity in several aspects: ethnic, political, linguistic, and cultural. Uniform national identity sometimes becomes a goal in its own right, at which point personal identity is subordinated to national identity (Wright 2002: 255). In recent decades, an acerbic academic—and indeed political—argument has been waged over the roots of nationalism, whose key issue relates to the

4 | Mass Communication in Israel

question of the sources of nationalism. Nation researchers split over this issue into two main scholarly traditions—the modernist and the primordialist— each with its own theoretical approach. The modernist scholarly tradition views the nation as a historically new phenomenon. A predominant stream in this tradition, which is identified with the thinking of Hobsbawm (1983) and Anderson (1991), relates to the nation’s imagined foundations. This concept assumes that the nation is an imagined entity, while national traditions—including the ceremonial practices, which inculcate certain collective values—are invented. According to this view, emphasis on the nation’s ancient roots is part of the invention of its national tradition, the object of which is to consolidate social cohesion. The argument that national traditions are invented holds that what seems to be ancient is actually fairly new, and that, in fact, these practices are designed to create continuity with a long-ago past. This is frequently done by using ancient materials that point to historical continuity, providing a legitimate basis for the nation and contributing to social cohesion within it (Hobsbawm 1983). Researchers holding this position cite the evidence of contemporary historical examples of areas of land in which nations grew as part of a modern process, without any nucleus of ethnic self-awareness, to become vibrant national cultural arenas (Gellner 1996: 367). It should be noted that the concept of nations as imagined entities does not present nationalism as an unreal phenomenon or one that carries less legitimacy than a primordial version of nationalism (see below). The argument can certainly be made that while social phenomena such as ethnic or gender affi liation always have a built-in social dimension, this does not detract from the organizing power of those categories (Roosvall and Salovaara-Moring 2010: 10). The emphasis placed on the imagined element is directed at the nation being first and foremost a conscious process of forming a shared identity among people unacquainted with one another (Regev 2011: 377). Researchers who align themselves with the primordial thesis, the most prominent being Anthony Smith, believe that the modern nation is an incomprehensible phenomenon unless one takes into account the ethnic roots of nations—roots that stretch back to pre-modern times. In other words, underlying nationalism we find ancient historical connections that form the nucleus for the existence of modern nations (Dahan and Wasserman 2006: 16– 17). This concept does not necessarily deny the important place of national memories, values, myths, and symbols. These are frequently communicated by the mass media (Smith 1996: 362), but according to the primordial view, we identify with and respond to them due to original ethnic connections. As I will show below, the modernist approach, viewing the nation as an “imagined” entity, emphasizes the role of media in national processes. For this reason, I will focus more on theories of this type. I will, however, consider

Introduction | 5

other theories alongside these, mainly in my theoretical discussions of the specific media and their connection with nationalism. For example, I will cite the theoretical concept of Karl Deutsch (1994), which emphasizes the need for effective communication systems within the national framework. This concept is especially relevant to the process of building the nation (as a state). Furthermore, theories dealing with language and its place in political and national processes, such as that of Hroch (1994), will prove helpful in linking the nationalist movement to awareness of the essentiality of the national language—a language that is frequently and palpably expressed through the mass media (see this discussion in chapter 1). As the book progresses, I will also emphasize theoretical concepts that relate to the ongoing structuring of nationalism as part of the discourse practices in daily life—such as the concept of banal nationalism.

Nationalism as a Communications Phenomenon Recent decades have seen a strengthening of the research concept that nationalism is a relatively late development, with the French revolution as a principal milestone in its history. One of the most outstanding researchers identifying nationalism as a modern phenomenon is Ernst Gellner, who argued that nationalism is a product of the industrialization and social mobility that characterized the modern social state of affairs. Gellner (1990: 7) offers two definitions of the term “nationalism”: in the first, “two men are of the same nation if and only if they share the same culture, where culture in turn means a system of ideas and signs and associations and ways of behaving and communicating,” and in the second, “two men are of the same nation if and only if they recognize each other as belonging to the same nation. In other words, nations maketh man; nations are the artifacts of men’s convictions and loyalties and solidarities.” Gellner, in fact, defines nationalism in terms of communication and awareness. These are connected through the industrialization and social change inherent in modern society—a society that, based on new technology and a high level of social mobility, requires written communication to allow constant contact among strangers. In traditional agrarian societies of the past, only minority groups such as priests were literate; but in the modern era, literacy has extended into the state’s education system, providing linguistic and cultural knowledge in a common language (or “high culture,” as Gellner puts it). Official educational systems have contributed to the establishment of a literary canon and the writing of the state’s official history. Drawing attention to the cultural domain—even to high culture, in Gellner’s way of thinking—opens the door to understanding the place of other cultural institutions, including the media, in the formation of modern nationalism (Edensor 2002 4; First and Avraham 2009: 6).

6 | Mass Communication in Israel

Benedict Anderson, another significant researcher of nationalism, takes a step further in analyzing the link between nation and mass media. Anderson ascribes the development of nations to processes of industrialization and commercialization, with print production at the forefront. Book publishers, having exhausted the Latin market of readers, sought new markets, developing for commerce printed products written in local vernaculars. In this way, according to Anderson (1991: 44), “they created unified fields of exchange and communication below Latin and above spoken vernaculars.” Over time, the administration also switched from Latin to local printed languages, thus intensifying the differentiation of geographical regions, which became the basis for the formation of new nations. Accordingly, Anderson ascribes the consolidation of local vernaculars mainly to the capitalist process, whereas Gellner views it as a product of the educational system. According to Anderson (1991), the decline of traditional nation or holy dynasties and the rise of new nations was the result of a process of consciousness connected to the thinking of the nation. The structure of a newspaper is a clear example of the technical expression of this new concept. The newspaper, following the book, became a modern industrial product that was sold in numerous copies but, at the same time, rapidly became obsolete. This fact led to an almost simultaneous consumption of newspaper content, which became a kind of unifying national ceremony. The advent of new technologies, and primarily new printing technologies, produced situations in which large groups of people who did not know each other would feel they were moving in the same historic time (Tsur 1999: 15–16). As Anderson (1991: 35–36) argues, The significance of this mass ceremony—Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers—is paradoxical. It is performed in silent privacy, in the lair of the skull. Yet each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion. Furthermore, this ceremony is incessantly repeated at daily or half-daily intervals throughout the calendar. What more vivid figure for the secular, historically clocked, imagined community can be envisioned? At the same time, the newspaper reader, observing exact replicas of his own paper being consumed by his subway, barbershop, or residential neighbors, is continually reassured that the imagined world is visibly rooted in everyday life.

Here, Anderson adopts the modern concept of silent reading as an activity of individualist orientation (McLuhan 1967). However, this activity also creates the sense of a unified national character—through the readers’ awareness that others like them are taking part in the same type of activity. This awareness is supported through the visibility of reading in the public sphere. According to Anderson’s concept, then, mass consumption of communications content

Introduction | 7

is a kind of unifying ritual, with the focus on the ceremonial aspect and not necessarily on the content. While Anderson regards the rise of new nations as having been engendered by common imagination, Karl Deutsch perceived it in terms of a communications hub. According to Deutsch, members of a particular nation are distinguished through common historical experience and standardized symbols. Deutsch argued that this is possible by means of an efficient national communication system, which enables the storage of memory, information, symbols, behaviors, associations, and habits. Deutsch thus points to the role of the media in the advent of nationalism: the development of a sense of cultural commonality and a personal perception of national membership requires a complementary and effective communications network. This network enables communication between members within the community that is more effective than any system outside the community. It is the communications system that holds the people “from within” (Deutsch 1994: 26–27). The degree of social cohesion accords with the quantity of information flowing within a particular political system. The mass media enables the communication of political messages to a scattered population, forming the basis of local political discourse engaging in national and international issues. These are an essential tool for disseminating national information, just as the spreading of gossip was essential to internal unity on the village level (Poster 1999: 235).

Extreme Simultaneity: The Electronic Media Having a newspaper printed in the national language contributed geographically to nationalism, in the sense in that it welded various speakers of a national language in a particular region into a political community; later media went further to effectively bridge gaps in time as well. The first medium to bridge distance and time simultaneously was the telegraph, which enabled the existence of a uniform national economic system. Following this, the radio contributed further to consolidating a national awareness that closed up local distances (Katz 1996: 26). According to James Carey (1998), prior to the establishment of the mass media (cinema, radio, and television) in the United States, people lived in communities that were relatively isolated from one another, in places where railroads and telegraph lines had not yet reached. The advent of mass media—at first nationwide American newspapers, but then mainly television—marked the end of the process of consolidating a sense of nationalism. By means of radio and television, most homes could be connected with other homes, and all of them together to a single central sender. For the first time the nation simultaneously

8 | Mass Communication in Israel

experienced the same content. And as distinct from print medium—which, because its product requires literacy, was not universally accessible—electronic media speak indiscriminately to the general public. The concept of the national role of the media did not always refer only to democratic or utopian aspects of participation. William Uricchio (2009: 66) argues that the leaders of Germany’s Second Reich regarded television as a propaganda tool of the first order. German television was founded by the Post Office on the eve of World War II, but control of its content promptly passed to the Ministry of Propaganda. The relatively early establishment of German television was part of Germany’s display of superiority vis-à-vis its enemies—mainly Britain. The perception of television’s important nationalist role derived, inter alia, from the belief in its persuasive power (in the United States this belief is also highly influential, albeit in a different direction—that of consumption and advertising) . The synchronicity of radiophonic broadcasting, and even more so of mass television broadcasting, is a far more extreme expression of the simultaneity of newspaper reading as Anderson describes it. Television broadcasting exposes mass publics to the flow of visual contents and symbols simultaneously. The television timetable has arguably contributed to the standardization of local time and the organization of national rituals in the public space (Edensor, 2002: 97), as evidenced through the public significance of any disturbance or cancellation of the regular broadcasting timetable (or the failure of a daily newspaper to appear at the regular time). The timetable also provides a link between private time and institutional public time. Through television, abstract national ideas take on substance and are experienced personally. Although different viewers may decode media content in a distinct way, for many years, and still today, one’s familiarity with the broadcasting timetable and programs (e.g., the programming of “final” episodes of reality programs) has indicated the level of one’s social participation in the national community, while the absence of such orientation has expressed social non-affi liation (Edensor 2002: 98). In the beginning, radio news functioned as a kind of national “oracle.” Unlike newspaper reading, where each individual reader chooses in what order to read the paper—radio dictated the presentation of items to the listener. With the establishment of television, it became the national medium that defined, every evening, the boundaries of national awareness and logic (Ellwood 2009: 116). As Carey (1998: 30) maintains, the names of longstanding media organizations, both public and commercial (e.g., American Broadcasting Corporation, the British Broadcasting Corporation) reflected the desired national goal: the creation of a new Grand-Community, bestowing a national identity upon the mass audience. In Europe, national roles were assigned to public broadcasting, such as assimilating national values,

Introduction | 9

imparting information to the public, and providing entertainment (Roosvall and Salovaara-Moring 2009: 13). National media connected the individual to the political center without local mediation, thereby becoming a centripetal force that enabled the centralization of institutional power (Carey 1998: 30). It should, however, be borne in mind that television, through the evolution of niche channels, also opened the door to centrifugal (from the center outward) forces. These niche channels enabled groups to unite according to their common special characteristics, such as their ethnic or religious extraction, or their particular interests. The national trends that mass media promote are also connected with newer concepts in the discussion of nationalism—those dealing with the extent to which nationalism is embedded in daily life. Gellner, Anderson, and other thinkers attempted to outline the history of nation as it was expressed in the modern era, but the contemporary discussion of nationalism also emphasizes aspects related to popular culture in contemporary times. According to this concept, national identity is expressed through talk of nation—through public discourse in which social and cultural assumptions are vested. Those taking part in such discourse are often unaware of these assumptions, and that is the source of their power. Michael Billig (1995) thus argues that nationalism is a product of simple daily routines. He attempts to understand how “we” remember our national affi liation in daily life—even people who do not support nationalist views or who live in nations that have already undergone national consolidation (such as Britain). Billig rejects the notion that our national affiliation is an inner or psychological condition (Skey 2009: 331). In his opinion, in existing and well-established nations, nationalism is maintained and kept operative in a discourse that assumes, for each and every nation, “us” against “them” or “the world,” and “ours” against “theirs.” Thus, newspapers, television and radio seek to express the state’s position. When a newspaper editorial refers to “we,” this does not usually mean a collective of journalists or, indeed, of the newspaper’s readers. This “we” is a national collective. This perspective also reveals the distinction between domestic news (“inside news”) and foreign news: the nation within its boundaries is perceived as the center of the universe (Billig 1995: 114–115). The power of media discourse in consolidating banal nationalism derives from the great popularity and accessibility of media products, both in terms of media content, which can be grasped by the general public, and in terms of the extensive social exposure to this content. That being so, according to Billig (1995: 6), nationalism is a continuing phenomenon and not a product of a passing epoch. It is reproduced again and again and is effective precisely because it is not emphasized and attracts very little attention: in the political discourse of the newspaper, the flag permanently hangs above public edifices, as is customary in the United States or Canada, in cultural products, and so forth. One example of such

10 | Mass Communication in Israel

embedded nationalism is major international sport competitions, in which the contest becomes a metaphorical arena of war between nations. The stereotypes that commentators in broadcasting media and in the press attribute to “the others” are loaded with commonly held group values. The setting of the games intensifies the “warlike” atmosphere—the stadium is filled with rival publics waving their flags and wearing “uniforms” bearing national hallmarks that characterize their team (Edensor 2002: 80–81). These universally familiar expressions recur in every international sport competition—and are the source of their national power (Billig 1995: 8). In this way, nations become a self-evident phenomenon. The theoretical concepts relating to nationalism and communication that I cite above unfold in two main directions. The first, conspicuous in Anderson’s outlook (and other researchers—Carey, for example), draws our attention to rituals. Reference is to the common consumption of communication that exists throughout a particular geographical unit at a particular given time. It is the simultaneous consumption of contents, whatever they may be, that contributes to or actually creates a consciousness that is the basis for the imagination of the nation. The second is Billig’s emphasis on the content expressed through the media—with almost no reference to the media common consumption as a shared ritual. In this book, I deal jointly with both of these two aspects: the ceremonial and the content-oriented. In practice, these two aspects are mutually supportive, reinforcing one another. The distinctions that reflect banal nationalism (“us” and “them”) become valid and logical for members of that nation, since they recur again and again in the simultaneous consumption of the media contents. Newspaper reading and listening to or viewing shared news programs also become powerful shared rituals since they are vested with banal premises that support the conversion of joint consumption into a ritual of national character.

New Technologies: The End of the Media National Role? The advent of cable television and satellite broadcasts offered people alternatives to national television broadcasts, and the nation state’s ability to supervise and control media messages has progressively diminished (Roosvall and Salovaara-Moring 2009: 13). The proliferation of broadcasting channels, even prior to the age of digital television and radio broadcasts, led to new thinking about the national and civic role of radio and television. It was no longer possible to ensure that everybody would watch and listen to the same channel at the same time. The multiplying of commercial radio and television channels in European nations (and later in Israel) illustrates this process well. In most of these countries there operated, alongside the newspapers, a

Introduction | 11

few broadcasting channels, mostly under strict supervision. These brought the nation together. However, the development of broadcasting technologies enabled the transmission of an ever greater number of channels, while at the same time trends of liberal ideology and privatization weakened the regulation of broadcasting and opened up the market to private broadcasting concerns. All of this eroded the social phenomenon of the simultaneous viewing of the same broadcast. Whereas in the past, public television treated viewers primarily as citizens, the commercial television model emphasizes the viewer as a consumer, and as a result, viewing statistics have become crucial (Ellwood 2009: 116). In this process, social fragmentation was perceived as inevitable. As channels proliferated, the central role preserved for news programs was often replaced with entertainment content. Moreover, the number of newspaper readers declined steadily, and the public became increasingly cynical and disinterested with regard to politics (Katz 1996: 25). According to Elihu Katz (2009: 7), television’s role to promote nation building and social solidarity is a thing of the past, giving way to the broadcasting of hundreds of niche channels, the option of recording broadcasts, and movies that can be viewed at any time convenient for the individual. Family viewing in a communal space has been replaced by private viewing in separate rooms, and the national coming together around television broadcasts only occurs in rare instances of disasters or celebrations. Television in the current era is undergoing the processes of individuation that had commenced with radio. At the beginning of the radio age, the radio was a piece of furniture with a central place in the living room; but with the advent of television—and indeed as part of radio’s defensive measures against television—radio became a private listening device: the transistor, the car radio, the Walkman and its heirs, and even cellular telephones (Katz 2009). Territory is perceived as one of the basic elements of nation. The territorial foundation is consistent with the traditional distribution of the newspaper in a particular geographical area, and also with the transmission ranges of the radio and television, which cover a certain national area. However, socio-cultural and technological processes have led to an erosion of the link between place and communication media. Today, it can no longer be assumed that people who identify with a particular culture share the same locale or that cultural homogenization is expressed in that locale through the media. The advent of the Internet was perceived as the end of the nexus between media and locale, and thereby as leading to the subversion of national unity (Eriksen 2007: 1). In Carey’s (1998) opinion, since the end of the 1970s, new media have been replacing the tendency towards national convergence with a global-oriented leaning. Yet the following facts must be noted: global trends have been taking place since the invention of print products; newspapers have used

12 | Mass Communication in Israel

international news agencies, which have themselves used international telegraph services, to forward journalistic materials since the mid-nineteenth century; and governments have used the radio to disseminate information and culture and to reinforce the image of the state among listeners abroad since World War II. It would seem, however, that until the advent of the Internet, television most clearly illustrated this globalizing phenomenon. One explanation for this is that television’s visual aspect bridged cultural and linguistic differences. Another explanation is related to technological developments (e.g., cable and satellite television) that removed the technological restrictions conducting national broadcasts. Globalization, like nationalism, also defies any simple or generally accepted definition. This term was widely used in the 1980s (First and Avraham 2009: xi). Indeed, the emergence of the nation state itself, which occurred simultaneously and in similar formats in different parts of the world, can be considered to be an outcome of processes of globalization. Through that process, the concept of the nation state was a framework—cloned from its European format—used to express a collective identity (Regev 2011: 370; Hall 1991). A discussion of economics in the global context covers a broad canvas and provides a key to understanding the socio-cultural aspects of globalization—through the rise of economic organizations whose operation, financing, and trading, accompanied by cultural influences—cross national boundaries. Globalization is sometimes also seen as the result of the fragmentation of the production process and universal standardization of consumption, which ostensibly led to the unification and homogeneity of the modern world, frequently at the expense of unique local cultures. The global era is also characterized by increasing movement of people around the world and significant migrations. All of these processes are facilitated by the substantial decline in delivery and communication costs and the advent of efficient and reliable communication systems, whereby contact is established between economic end points spread over the face of the globe (Jovanović 2010). These processes have led to the founding of international supervisory economic institutions and also to a change in how we perceive relations between the nation state and individual rights. Cosmopolitan political trends have emerged that impinge on the sovereignty of the nation state as a single political unit, the cultural homogeneity within its borders, and the freedom of its decision makers (Roshwald 2011). For example, international laws governing the safeguarding of human rights assume that people’s right to protection derives not from their belonging to this or that nation state, but to their being human. Such a concept of global citizenship is prejudicial to state sovereignty and to the state’s responsibility for the fate of its citizens (Moyo 2010: 191–192). In media terms, globalization can be seen as a process in which cultural products are available the world over or as a process of the global creation

Introduction | 13

of culture in which the American influence is strong (First and Avraham 2009: 1). The mass media are perceived to play an important role in cultural globalization for a number of reasons: their pivotal role in daily life, their immediacy, and the inherent challenge they pose to the national model of broadcasting (Hall 1991: 27). Dennis McQuail (2010: 253–254) points to a range of diverse ways in which globalization is expressed through the mass media: • in the direct transmission of communication channels from one country to other countries (e.g., the sale of newspapers or books, or television channels originating in a foreign country); • in the founding of international communication channels (CNN, MTV, AlJazeera etc.) and international news agencies; • through imported content that is integrated into local channels (e.g., television series or movies); • in genres or formats that are adapted to the local public (e.g., reality shows); • through international news engaging or produced in foreign countries that is integrated into local news; • in coverage of events (in sports or culture in general and music in particular), publicity broadcasts (advertising), and visual representations related to overseas locales; • through the Internet, which is a cross-border medium.

While all of these phenomena are related to globalization, they are distinct from one another. For example, there is a considerable difference between imported television channels, which are available by means of cable or satellite broadcasts, and the adaptation of formats and genres for consumption by the domestic public. This diversity expresses the multifaceted character of globalization in the mass media and modes of combating it culturally, as reflected in the domestic-cultural sphere. Some of the phenomena that McQuail enumerates—the most conspicuous being the import of entertainment content from the US—are considered to be patent expressions of American cultural imperialism. This trend was especially prevalent during the television era, when the need to fi ll broadcasting time on the one hand and the high cost of local production on the other led to the widespread import of American content. Such import was denounced especially in European nations, in which the public broadcasting model prevailed, with the expectation that television would express and promote local cultures (McQuail 2010: 264). Global influences were perceived to cause the destruction of authentic cultural expression, and some nations accordingly restricted the ratio of imported programs that might be included in the broadcasting timetable (First and Avraham 2009: 2; Laughey 2007: 129).

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But certain of the other phenomena described by McQuail can, on the contrary, be construed as expressing a sort of “negotiation” between the domestic and the global culture and an opposition to globalization or to cultural imperialism. They challenge the assumption of a one-way flow from the West to the rest of the world and call for a concept that promotes a multidirectional flow of materials, merging and hybridizing domestic and foreign cultural components (Regev 2011: 391). As Arjun Appadurai (1990: 206) argues, later global influences are complex and cannot be encompassed by terms noting effects on the periphery originating from the center. The flow of multidirectional global influences is related, among other things, to the movement of people (including work migrants or tourists), goods, machinery, and financial and ideological investments. But an important place is reserved for media content, including visual and aesthetic images, which are the basis for “imagining the world” (Appadurai 1990: 299–301). This alternative approach thus speaks of a hybrid culture that combines local elements with imported elements. One of these combinations is of the “glocal” sort, that is, a combination of the local and the global. An example of this is the adaptation of “global” television genres to the domestic market (on which I will elaborate in my discussion of television in chapter 3). Indeed, doubt may be cast on the assumption that the consumption of global content inevitably leads to the erosion of local culture, since it sometimes happens that the encounter with global or American values may more sharply define homegrown culture (Liebes 1999). It should also be borne in mind that globalization can arouse cultural resistance, again sharpening local cultural aspects, which become increasingly rigid. The rise of such opposing cultures is enabled through, among other things, the weakening of the dominant national culture. The erosion of the national culture enables groups and sectors whose voices were not heard in the hegemonic national culture to challenge that culture and to demand recognition of their alternative version. This alternative culture expresses a merging of various influences, including those from suppressed past cultures, national cultures, and global effects (Regev 2011: 398–401). As Stuart Hall (1991: 34) argues, the social margins have paradoxically become a highly powerful place. This can be seen, for example, in the position occupied by representatives of the fringes in contemporary art—not only in painting, literature, movies, and music, but also in politics and in social life in general. The Internet is generally presented as a prime example of a global medium: non-territorial and cross-border. And sure enough, the advent of the Internet was accompanied by fear that it would contribute to eroding national integration, promoting social fragmentation and universal cultural unification (Roosvall and Salovaara-Morung 2009: 14). It seemed that the Internet would weaken the hold of the national center

Introduction | 15

and national homogeneity and displace local national languages in favor of English (Dor 2004). The assumption was that the age of the “traditional” mass media (newspaper, radio, and television)—invested as they were with national symbols and assumptions—was over. The Internet was perceived as being decentralized, devoid of authority, and lacking a dominant voice, and in this way linking its users to events taking place at a great distance from them (Slevin 2001). These aspects of the Internet subvert the importance of place and international boundaries, contributing to the erosion of the uniqueness of locale and replacing it with products of serial homogeneity, of “non-places,” all of which appear identical. Prime examples of this are international airfields and shopping malls—places in which global aspects stand out more prominently than the local ones (Edensor 2002: 64). The Internet’s unprecedented spanning of time and distance have led to interactions among individuals hailing from different, sometimes even hostile, nations. Furthermore, the sovereign hold of the nation state on matters of intellectual property has been progressively undermined with the advent of the Internet. Statist legislation in the domain of copyrights is to a great extent no longer compatible with the dissemination of digital files from place to place. The “old” copyright laws assume the existence of a material source that must be copied. But in the digital age, the copy is not less “original” or of poorer quality than the original, and copying costs nothing and has no boundaries. Duplication and copying do not depend on the physical movement of an object from one place to another, but rather on cybernetic “motion” from one end point to another. These movements often cross borders without requiring state services, such as mail or customs services (Poster 1999: 235, 239). However, while the new media allow flexibility beyond the national sphere in media consumption, there is evidence that the new media continue to play an important role in the national sphere (Mihelj 2011). As John Postill (2011) argues, the Internet is becoming more localized, engaging in day-to-day affairs in order to serve local activism. Moreover, as the Internet has matured, banal national trends on the Net have strengthened (Soffer 2013). These trends can be seen in the architecture of the Internet (e.g., sites related to a specific country are linked, in most cases, to sites related to the same country; Halavais 2000), in the content in the Internet, in the use of the national languages of websites, and also in the tendency of surfers to remain “at home” (i.e., to surf sites that they identify as possessing a national affiliation identical to their own). These trends seem to undermine the perception of the Internet as a single global entity (Shklovski and Struthers 2010). Moreover, reality does not bear out the forecasts that predicted a borderless world, and, in many senses, the Internet network actually contributes to national unity. Since the 1990s, numerous demands for national self-definition

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have arisen throughout the world. The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have disintegrated into a large number of nation states, and the Kurds in Iraq and many other nations are calling for autonomy, if not full independence (Roshwald 2011). The Internet sometimes plays a prominent role in national struggles. It enables nationally slanted communication through a non-territorial medium. On the World Wide Web, ethnic groups scattered over the face of the earth are able to maintain contact in an unprecedented way (Dahan and Sheffer 2001). In wartime, the Internet is an arena for national identification as well as for “acts of (cybernetic) terror” (Ortis and Evans 2003). Likewise, forecasts that predicted the takeover of the Internet by the English language have not been realized, at least not completely. As it has matured, the Internet’s related technologies have improved, its distribution has expanded, and it has come to host a large number of languages. As we will show, this process is part of the Internet’s investment in local daily life (Dor 2004). Similarly, claims of the death of television as a nationally unifying force are premature and overstated, at least as far as Israel is concerned. There can be no doubt that in its national format, broadcasting is changing and to some extent eroding. Yet, as I will show in chapter 3, commercial trends in the mass media do not necessarily mean that the hegemonic and homogeneous discourse has been lost. On the contrary, the commercial television concessionaries in Israel would like their channels to be seen as contributing to a national Israeli character (Ashuri 2007). Local programs still have the highest popularity ratings among the public, and global formats of programs such as Survivor or Big Brother are adapting to suit the local market. Along with personal and interactive trends that allow the viewer to determine what to watch, viewers can still experience a provided flow of programs (Ellis 2002). So, for the present, it seems premature to eulogize television broadcasting and its place in the national arena. As Billig (1995) argues, the place of nationalism is changing: borders are being opened and information flows from place to place without hindrance. New political identities are surfacing to challenge the national hegemony. However, it would be premature to assume that nation-states are about to give way to a post-modern global village. The idea of a global community or a new world order, expressed through the attitude of the strong nations, does not obliterate national identity; rather it assumes that the national attributes of those countries are universal interests. This is one more example of the indirect hegemonic discourse of nationalism. As Billig (1995: 176) asks: If the nation state is crumbling, why do nations continue to arm themselves?

chapter

1 The Evolution of the Hebrew and Israeli Press

In the introduction of this book, I referred to the importance various researchers have ascribed to the rise of print journalism in the chronicles of modern nationalism. Journalism played an inestimably important part in the history of modern Jewish nationalism as well (Slutsky 1970: 9). Hebrew-language newspapers appeared years before the emergence of the Zionist movement, and, regardless of their ideological agenda, the very fact that they were published in Hebrew contributed to the distinctiveness of modern Jewish nationalism. The newspapers created a bond, frequently secular in nature, among various communities whose distance and cultural differences far exceeded any similarities (Bartal 1994: 161). In the absence of any central Jewish leadership or shared public sphere, or of any common territory, the press served as “paper territory”1 for the development of Jewish public opinion. The various ideological currents reflected in this forum contributed to social and cultural changes in Jewish life—through, for example, reports on various problems in the lives of outlying Jewish communities (Graur 2002: 9). During the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael, Palestine) era, and in the first decades of the State of Israel, newspapers were an important stepping stone on the path to a central political system, building a nation and creating a distinctive Hebrew identity. But before reviewing the attributes of the Israeli press and its historical roots, I will undertake a general historical theoretical discussion of the role of the press in forming national concepts. I will also look at the political role of newspapers and their potential for creating distinctive identities, all of which will lead us to a better understanding of the historical case of the Israeli press.

The Press and Nationalism The rise of the press was due to various interlocking components, all of them related to the rise of modern nationalism. Newspapers are directly linked

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to the rise of national languages, which play a key role in defining national groupings and contribute substantially to the forming of national awareness as a distinct sentiment—that is, to individuals’ perception of themselves as part of a broad socio-political entity. Newspapers help to routinize independent social and political national concepts, presenting national social reality as a natural, unchallengeable state of affairs. Newspapers also fulfill the role of disseminating information, constituting the connective tissue between the various parts of the political system. The cradle of nationalism that formed in Europe was expressed in part through the rise of local dialects in various geographical enclaves. The distribution of these dialects became more widespread due to capitalist processes, especially through the rise of trade of printed materials: initially books, but later, and more intensively, newspapers (Anderson 1991). The dialects gradually evolved into written languages, creating communities in the shape of readerships. Although these communities were broader in scope than the original enclaves, the use of dialects was far more circumscribed and delimited than the use of Latin in the pre-nation era. These communities are frequently described as the cultural and linguistic infrastructure of the nation state (Anderson 1991). Bear in mind that, in the national context, languages are related not only to issues of communication, but also to power, politics, and ideology (Hobsbawm 1994: 154). This, it seems, is why researchers ascribe such great importance to the use of national languages in general and to their use in the printed press in particular. Thus, according to British historian Eric Hobsbawm (1994: 179), from the end of the eighteenth century onwards, a distinctive dialect became a vital component in the definition of a nation, and the point at which newspapers or textbooks came to be written in a dialect was deemed to be a constitutive moment for a nation. In extensive parts of Europe, that moment occurred in the 1830s. Miroslav Hroch (1994: 7), a researcher of nationalism, distinguishes three important phases in the development of national movements, noting that the last two of them are related to social action. He positions language as central to the first phase: this is when a relatively small group of intellectuals, aware of how essential the national language is to the homogenous distinctiveness of a group of people, engages in promoting and disseminating the language. The second phase takes place when activists arise and infuse a wider circle with enthusiasm for joining the national project. And in the third phase, the broad masses respond to those patriotic appeals. Newspapers are frequently part of the first phase, vital in the expression of national aspirations, both in general and in promoting and disseminating the national languages. The use of language is interwoven with another issue to which newspapers contribute: that is, the emergence of a readership and the rise of national

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consciousness. One of the first thinkers to contribute to our understanding of the place of the press in creating the modern nation was Gabriel Tarde (1843– 1904), a French philosopher whose work has been somewhat overlooked (Katz 2006: 263). Tarde argued that the creation of the public depended on the media, which bound individuals together. The main channel for this process was the newspaper, which, based as it was on the development of other communication and transportation means such as the telegraph and the rail network, evolved only during the nineteenth century. Prior to the electronic media era, an individual could not belong to more than one crowd at any given time. This was because in order to be part of a particular crowd, an individual needed to be physically present in a particular physical location, taking part in a momentary interaction. Conceptually speaking, the “public” is a far more complex phenomenon than a “crowd”; the affi liation of an individual to a particular public has different implications than does his or her being in a particular crowd. Throughout human history, crowds have existed—in family relations, for example, or around the tribal bonfire—whereas the public is a modern phenomenon. Physically speaking, a public is far less strictly demarcated than a crowd, and its existence is linked far more tightly to consciousness than to a particular place (Clark 1969: 53). Accordingly, one may consider oneself as belonging simultaneously to several publics. The public consists of a group whose members share identity and interest. Tarde was captivated by the idea that newspaper readers imagine “their fellows” as belonging to the same public, reacting in an identical manner on reading the newspaper (Katz 2006: 267). Tarde (1969: 272) explains that the printed press, as a pioneer of the mass media, created a collective consciousness among the public by disseminating information and beliefs. In medieval feudal society, each village was characterized by its own internal debates and politics: no single, broad, general opinion prevailed; rather, there were only distinctive opinions. The invention of the printing press changed things: while books had contributed greatly to connections among different villages, newspapers, continuing in this role, did the job far more intensively. Newspapers connected people who were unacquainted with each other, welding them into a large public. The bonds between different social and political groups facilitated the emergence of widespread ideological positions. The power of the press is evident in its ability to link individuals who are geographically remote from one another, scattered over extensive territories. The bond between them derives from a sense of common experience, of shared idea or wishes (Tarde 1969: 278). Newspapers, of course, were not the only force driving such social integration. Urbanization contributed by reinforcing secularization and weakening traditional social frameworks. The development of transportation—through the effective and continuous connection between geographically remote groups—also

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influenced the emergence of a common awareness. In Tarde’s opinion, however, the newspaper wielded the greatest power. An approach similar to Tarde’s with regard to the newspaper’s role in establishing a political entity can be found in the above-mentioned and highly influential book by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1991). Like Tarde, Anderson comments on the simultaneity of newspaper reading. The collection of news items appearing on the same day and in the same edition of the newspaper is based on the occurrence of these events during the same calendar time. “The date at the top of the newspaper, the single most important emblem on it, provides the essential connection—the steady, onward clocking of homogenous, empty time” (33). Th is clocking of calendar time symbolizes the nation’s simultaneous historical and secularized motion and is closely connected to the general public’s imagining of strangers as a single community. These concepts of the national imagination were likely validated by the very discourse and content of the press. As research on newspapers has indicated, journalistic norms are frequently subjugated to those of national identity, and the process of selecting and framing the news is influenced by cultural screening (Nossek 2004). Journalists tend to ascribe positive attributes to the side to which they belong. In other words, journalists exemplify the landscape of their homeland, and on the whole they share common understandings and codes with their readers, who, for their part, influence the national culture and the setting of its boundaries (Neiger and Zandberg 2004). Journalists present an organized worldview composed of symbols and myths, and the latter promote the orderly arrangement of a particular social reality. Thus they weave and support a narrative and organizing picture, which relies on value-laden components (Yadgar 2004: 13). The “national story” is one of the most outstanding of the guiding narratives employed by journalists. It relates to the socio-political “we” as a distinctive entity (Yadgar 2004).

From Political Party Press to Commercial Press The perception of newspapers being important political channels is also closely bound up with the history of the press. Leaders and thinkers viewed newspapers and periodicals as tools of great importance for the dissemination of ideas, considering them as a means to shape public opinion. For many years, the political party press was a dominant format. The declared goal of such newspapers was to persuade and create direct affinity in public opinion for the positions and aims of the party the newspapers were connected to (McQuail 2005: 27–28). The political party press was especially prevalent in continental Europe (as distinct from Britain, for example), where a ramified

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party press developed at the end of the nineteenth century as part of the infrastructure of the mass parties (Hallin and Mancini 2004). But in the United States as well, where the commercial press evolved through capitalist production and its accompanying social processes, the roots of the mass press lie in political organs published with the support of the parties. Party subsidies were necessary due to the relatively small circulation of the newspapers at that time, and politicians were willing to bear the cost of these publications, believing in their great potential to bring about or prevent political changes— mainly through the editor’s ability to sort out the relevant information from the profusion of material. Another factor contributing to the idea that newspapers were highly powerful was the newspaper industry’s own view of itself as an institution wielding great influence over political entities and governments (Wolfensohn 1979: 7–8). It was only during the nineteenth century that the press became less politically and more commercially oriented (Hallin and Mancini 2004: 203). This change can be seen in the newspapers’ abandonment of the ideological line in favor of a discourse that sought to appear factual and objective. In this way, newspaper editors hoped to address a far wider audience (Mindich 1998: 39). In the 1830s, the United States saw the development of the so-called “penny press”: these were newspapers sold at very low prices, financed primarily through advertising income. Penny press newspapers adopted a simple, non-factional discourse, designed to attract readers from across the political spectrum. Contributing to the rise of this ostensibly objective writing genre was the advent of the first U.S. news agency (Associated Press), which was established in 1848. Such an agency would send the same news items to various newspapers, but each had its own political hue (Bennett 1983: 79). In the 1890s, objective rhetoric came to be predominant in the American commercial press, whose circulation increased substantially compared with that of the political party newspapers. The commercial newspapers maintained a separation between the news pages and opinion pieces. American journalists believed they had to report what they saw and leave interpretation to the readers (Schudson 1990: 162). Meticulous adherence to supposedly objective and informative reporting was perceived as an important component in journalistic ethics (Mindich 1998: 114–115). The economy-oriented press prevailing in free-market countries gradually spread to countries where the party press was dominant. The political goal of these latter newspapers—which was to motivate readers toward collective political action in the public sphere—was replaced by the goals to inform and entertain, and there was a progressive weakening of the party press worldwide (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). On the face of it, the switch from a press of political party ideology to one of economic orientation attests to the withdrawal of the press from the political sphere and the increasing independence of the newspapers. But the question

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arises: Did this turn towards commercialism dilute the political agency of the press—or more specifically, its role as a national agent? As we will show below, as far as commercial radio and television were concerned, a transition from public/political control of the media to private control does not necessarily mean a weakening of its constitutive power, nationally speaking. Commercialist trends themselves often encourage political messages of a general national character. Even in examining the commercial press, it is clear that newspapers’ increasing economic orientation does not translate into their becoming apolitical. Newspapers continue to wield significant political power. In fact, the commercial press, with a circulation infi nitely higher than that of the party press, is an important political player in determining the social agenda. Moreover, once the press escaped the control of political parties, it assumed a public aspect that was far broader: both nationwide and nonfactional. Newspapers frequently seek the status of “the nation’s paper” not only because of their characteristic patriotism, but also because their economic power derives from a wide circulation. Likewise, the rise of “objective” discourse—which was to present readers with the bald facts, free of interpretation—actually contributes to the national character of newspapers. Various researchers maintain that the culture of the news organization, based as it is on “objective news,” defi nes news and information as being reliable according to the official grades of the information sources and not necessarily according the nature of the journalistic research conducted by the correspondents. Th is organizational culture restricts the spectrum of opinions reflected by the newspapers while emphasizing the central establishment’s official position (Gans 2003; Bennett 1983; Stoker 1995; Schudson 2005).

Nationalism and the Case of the Emerging Hebrew Press The development of the Hebrew press is a unique case. In other cultures, various dialects usually developed in distinctive territorial regions and later served as the written language of the newspaper. The Hebrew press, by contrast, is connected to the secularization of the Jewish holy tongue: the historic written language of the Jews from time immemorial. Moreover, even the element of spatial proximity—wherein print products sprang out of the dialect language—was absent in the Jewish case, since Jewish communities were scattered throughout various lands and continents. The sources of the Hebrew press arose in the Diaspora, and the case of this press has unique historical and theoretic attributes emphasizing the connection between the rise of modern nationalism and the rise of the Hebrew press—making it a case worth dwelling upon.

Evolution of the Hebrew and Israeli Press | 23

Hebrew newspapers evolved in the second half of the nineteenth century in Eastern Europe. Attempts were made to publish Hebrew newspapers as early as the end of the seventeenth century and were stepped up greatly in the late eighteenth century, with the rise of the Jewish Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement. But these were newspapers of a spiritual and educational nature rather than news-oriented organs of current affairs. The use of Hebrew was part of the Enlightenment movement’s ideology: that is, the admiration of the ancient Hebrew heritage and scorn of the rabbinical Yiddish culture. The use of Hebrew was therefore part of the concept of overall social change (Pelli 1979: 73). In 1774, the monthly magazine HaMeasef (The Collector or The Gatherer) was founded in Germany. This periodical is most closely identified with the Haskalah movement, and it was succeeded by other such periodicals as Bikurei HaItim (1820) (The First Fruits) and Kerem Hemed (1833) (Vineyard of Delight, the Hebrew Journal of the Haskalah in Galicia and Italy) (Waxman 1960: 159). However, the accepted premise is that the modern Hebrew press developed with the advent of the weeklies in Eastern Europe. The first of these was HaMagid (The Preacher) (1860), HaTzefira (The Daybreak) (1862), and HaKol (The Voice) (1876). Unlike the Hebrew periodicals that preceded the advent of these weeklies, which were intended primarily to meet aesthetic and spiritual needs, the Eastern European weeklies dealt with daily affairs and eventually gave rise to political discussion on contemporary issues in general and Jewish affairs in particular (Soffer 2004). In 1886, the Hebrew press took another important step forward, with the appearance of the first daily, HaYom (Today), and two weeklies, HaMelitz (The Interceder) and HaTzefira became daily newspapers. The change reflected the mounting demand for a Hebrew press—a demand which had been, prior to this time, fairly limited. However, the publication of Jewish newspapers in other languages, such as Russian or Yiddish, saw little success at this time, and it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that Yiddish newspapers gained a circulation wider than that of the Hebrew newspapers (Greenbaum 2008:1, 26). It should be noted that the choice to use Hebrew in newspapers that were designed to cover current affairs was by no means an obvious one. In Eastern Europe, Hebrew was only one component in a multilingual system that included the dialect language of Yiddish as well as the state language, be it Russian, Polish, etc. (Harshav 1993: 119; Lowenstein 2000: 49). Although Hebrew was never a dead language, it was used primarily in the religious and scholastic context. Jewish commonality was based on Hebrew-language texts, and all young boys learned Hebrew at one level or another through traditional Jewish education. The Maskilim (members of the Haskalah movement) used this linguistic knowledge to give Jews a glimpse of modern secular content, helping them to integrate into the surrounding non-Jewish society. This was

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the same rationale underlying the call to publish newspapers in Hebrew at that time. But in the first half of the nineteenth century, Hebrew was in many ways unsuitable for journalistic discourse, since it lacked the terminology for much of modern life, especially in the political field. Since Hebrew was almost never spoken, verbal innovation in that language was very limited. At that time, Hebrew was not a mother tongue of any speaker (Harshav 1993: 119). However, neither Yiddish nor state languages seemed suitable alternatives for newspapers. The Maskilim perceived Yiddish a decadent jargon, a grammarless language that could not express complex notions. Moreover, it was perceived as a serious obstacle to the penetration of Haskalah values into the general Jewish public in Eastern Europe (Zinberg 1978: 37). And the state language could not serve as the language of Jewish newspapers mainly because few people in the Jewish communities were capable of reading such languages (Orbach 1980: 52, 182). Without delving into the various causes that led to the choice of Hebrew as the language of the various newspapers (for a more in-depth discussion, see Soffer 2009), one can state that these newspapers nourished Jewish intercommunity ties. During the exilic period, the Jews’ self-image as a nation—that is, their ability to envision a simultaneous historic movement of members of communities that were spatially, and sometimes culturally, remote from one another—rested on theological concepts. This envisioning was based on a religious awareness of time, and the use of Hebrew, which was ascribed to religious forces, contributed to the creation of a sense of religious unity (Tsur 1999). The dominant texts in all Jewish communities were the traditional ones, first and foremost the Babylonian Talmud; thus, there existed a kind of textual community (Neusner 1987). The advent of Hebrew newspapers, as part of the secularization and modernization of Jewish communities, reflected a change in the concept of national simultaneity. Newspapers represented the transition to movement based on an axis of time that is extraneous to the theological time-frame. These papers published letters and reports from various communities scattered throughout the world—Europe, the Russian empire, Eretz Yisrael, the various Islamic lands, and the United States—side by side, in the same textual framework and under a single given date. Members of remote communities in different parts of the world were exposed, albeit not on a regular basis, to these newspapers, and consequently reports on their particular affairs were received and published. Editions of the HaMagid newspaper, for example, ended up, evidently via Gibraltar and Algiers, in the principal urban centers of North Africa (Chetrit 2003: 13). Educated individuals in those countries wrote and sent articles to the Jewish newspapers of Eastern Europe. And thus newspaper readers received information on current happenings in those distant communities, and also became aware that

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copies of the newspaper they were holding were reaching the members of those other communities, sometimes by circuitous means, providing an extreme expression of the power of newspapers in the imagination of a nation. Moreover, the Hebrew newspapers addressed the “Sons of Israel” or the Jews as members of one nation and undertook to report on what was happening in the “Jewish world” as a single entity. Outside of the religious context, it was fairly exceptional, given that the Jews were dispersed across the globe, for Jews to address a single Jewish collective. Readers were greatly influenced by reports on what was happening in other communities. For example, a reader of HaMelitz wrote in a letter he sent to the newspaper that he waited until after everyone was in bed at night to read the paper (this was because reading the secular Hebrew press was initially considered an act of heresy) and that he had been so excited by the news of what was happening in the various Jewish communities—news such as he had never read or heard before—that it came to figure in his dreams. Even dreams about pogroms and the difficult lives of the Jewish communities became pleasant to him (HaMelitz 1871). The importance of the Hebrew press in the modern re-envisioning of the Jewish nation was especially conspicuous in times of crisis, for example, during the “Storms in the Negev,” Negev being a biblical word for the south. These were the pogroms that commenced in the early 1880s among the Jewish communities in the south of the Russian Empire. The Jewish newspapers not only provided information on the pogroms, they also sounded the “Jewish voice.” Moreover, they transformed the riots—which were inflicted on various remote communities at different times—into a national event, and their pages reflected a sense of national mourning (Soffer 2007). To sum up, the Hebrew press in the nineteenth century became a kind of a printed-word public sphere (Penslar 2000: 7), in which part of the first linguistic phase in the chronicles of nationalism took place. In the spirit of Hroch’s perception, newspapers celebrated the Jewish intellectual elite’s use of the Hebrew language and its aesthetic nature and gave recognition to the national importance of the language. This phase preceded the standardization and institutionalization of the language: that is, the attempt to give form to a uniform vernacular, to bring Hebrew into use in schools, etc. In the absence of territorial elements, newspapers served as an alternative public sphere. According to Dina Goren (1975: 120), this fact explains the dominance of Zionist leaders in the journalistic field before the “genuine” political institutions gained a secure footing, at least insofar as concerned their Jewish identity. Those who were qualified to engage in statist politics reported on it rather than taking part in it. Journalism as an occupation was thus a substitute for political action.

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The Beginnings of the Hebrew Press in Palestine during the Ottoman Era The first Hebrew newspapers in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) emerged during the Ottoman era, coinciding with the rise of the Hebrew newspapers in Eastern Europe. The Eretz Yisrael-based newspapers that were published in Jerusalem maintained contact with Eastern European newspapers (Halevy 1998: 70). The Hebrew-language Jerusalem press evolved as a tool in an intra-community struggle among the Jews of that city and developed through economic competition. The first Hebrew printing press in Jerusalem was established by Israel Bak in 1841, and for the next twenty years, this press held a monopoly among Jewish Jerusalemites. Bak belonged to the Hassidic stream, which was a minority in the old Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem. The resulting situation was complicated: the Hassidic group in Jerusalem controlled an effective tool— namely a printing press—through which to transmit messages and influence public opinion, whereas the members of the Jewish majority group the “Mitnagdim,” made up of the perushim (a group of students of the Vilna Gaon, originating from Lithuania and Belarus, who were rabbinical opponents of Hasidism), who were conducting an ongoing battle against Hassidism, had no printing press (Kressel 1964: 19). Yoel Moshe Salomon (later to become one of the founders of the Petah Tiqva settlement) and Michel HaCohen were two young men who had undergone training in lithography in Königsberg, Germany. In the early 1860s, they resolved to set up a new printing press in Jerusalem, and were joined by a third partner, Yehiel Brill (Limor 1998: 102). The new printing press was designed to serve Jewish Jerusalem’s perushim. This initiative naturally incurred fierce opposition from Bak, who claimed to hold sole authorization from the city’s rabbis to engage in printing. Ultimately, however, the rival printing press was established and shortly began to turn out Jerusalem’s first Hebrew-language newspaper, HaLevanon (The Lebanon) (Kressel 1964: 21). The founding of that newspaper was thus linked to a socio-religious struggle, and HaLevanon openly sided with the Mitnagdim majority. But there was also an economic aspect: the founders of the new printing press sought to ensure their own livelihoods and create a permanent source of income for their printing press in the shape of the newspaper (Limor 1998). HaLevanon dealt with various topics: alongside news items on the affairs of Eretz Yisrael and the Jews there, it also carried the Kvod HaLevanon (Honor of Lebanon) section, which was dedicated to science and Halakha (Jewish religious law) with the participation of Jerusalem’s rabbis and sages. The newspaper did not go long unrivaled: six months after the publication of the first edition of HaLevanon, Bak’s printing press published the first edition of the monthly magazine Havatzelet (Lily). Thus, in 1863 these two Jerusalemite papers battled for

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the heart of the city’s Jewish community, which then numbered some 8,000 people (Limor 2003: 1021). Each number was printed in a few hundred copies, using manual printing machines (Elyada 1992: 70). After twelve editions of HaLevanon, the Ottoman authorities ordered its printing suspended on the grounds that the newspaper had not obtained a license. However, the closure was likely due to some unknown informer (Halevy 1998: 70) telling of anti-Ottoman content being published by the newspaper. Havatzelet was shut down at the same time, evidently because government officials interpreted the closure order on HaLevanon as a sweeping order to shut down all Hebrew-language newspapers in Jerusalem (Limor 2003: 1021). Following the closure of HaLevanon, Yehiel Brill travelled to Istanbul to obtain a license to publish newspapers, but failing in this mission he began in 1865 to publish HaLevanon in Western Europe—initially in France and later in Germany. HaLevanon remained rooted in the realities of Eretz Yisrael and reappeared in Jerusalem in 1870. Shortly thereafter, other newspapers also began to be published. One of these was the daily HaAriel, published by Michel Cohen, a partner in the original HaLevanon as well as in the resurgent Havatzelet. Withdrawing from the partnership, he founded, as stated, a newspaper of his own (Kressel 1964), which shortly lapsed into disuse. The weekly Shaarei Zion (Gates of Zion) also began publishing at this time, and remained in publication for nine years, seeking to occupy a mid-position between the camps of the Mitnagdim and the Hassidim (Kressel 1964: 55; Schnitzer 1990: 21). With the reappearance of Havatzelet, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda saw his debut as an important figure in the history of Hebrew journalism. Ben-Yehuda is often identified with the renewed use of Hebrew as a national language and with the inculcation of Hebrew as a spoken language, but, as we have seen above, he had many predecessors. Hebrew was increasingly becoming entrenched on the pages of the Hebrew press. In 1878, Ben-Yehuda travelled from Russia to Paris with the intention of studying medicine. He started writing articles for the Hebrew newspapers that were in publication at the time. One of these was Havatzelet, to which, in 1879, he contributed articles on general political matters. In 1881, Ben-Yehuda immigrated to Eretz Yisrael and worked for the Havatzelet newspaper as assistant to the editor, Dov Frumkin. Getzel Kressel (1964: 68) notes that the encounter between these two figures—Frumkin, the orthodox Jew, and Ben-Yehuda, the highly educated skeptic—was a determining moment in the history of Hebrew journalism. Ben-Yehuda transformed the Havatzelet into a readable paper, using it to fight the European philanthropists who advocated the migration of Jews from Russia to the United States rather than to Eretz Yisrael (Kressel 1964: 69). Two years after joining Havatzelet, he began editing an independent supplement with the title Mevaseret Zion (Harbinger

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of Zion), which dealt primarily with matters on the new Jewish colonies in Eretz Yisrael. In 1884, Ben-Yehuda left Frumkin’s Havatzelet to found his own independent paper, HaZvi (The Hart—a flowery synonym for the Land of Yisrael), with some forty numbers published in the first two years. The paper was later renamed HaOr (The Light) (1890–1893) and then Hashkafa (Outlook) (1897–1908), primarily due to licensing problems (Halevy 1998: 97). Ben-Yehuda’s newspapers were seen as supporting the the Haskalah movement, in fierce opposition to the “Old Yishuv” and the “haluka” system (the “haluka” [distribution] consisted of donations from Jews all over the world channeled to Eretz Yisrael and distributed to the members of the old Jewish Yishuv). Accordingly, Ben-Yehuda found himself fiercely denounced, especially by those using Havatzelet as a platform. During this time period, he was ostracized and his family isolated (Halevy 1998: 93). In 1908, about twenty years after HaZvi was founded as a weekly magazine, Ben-Yehuda began bringing out his paper as a daily, adopting more modern journalistic formats under the influence of the European popular press (Limor 2003: 1023). It was a complex task to bring out HaZvi as a daily paper. Jerusalem had a limited number of “authors” and Ben-Yehuda himself was known as a sickly individual (Halevy 1998: 97). His son, Itamar Ben-Avi, was therefore recalled from his studies in Berlin to become the acting editor of the new daily. In the opinion of Uzi Elyada (1992: 77), the tempestuous and youthful Ben-Avi influenced the content of the paper, giving it a much more sensationalist tone. The newspaper was facing closure because of economic difficulties. Ben-Avi had to increase both his readership and the amount of newspaper space dedicated to advertisements. In order to do this, he reduced the theorizing and polemicist articles and extended news coverage, especially of issues touching on the daily life of Jews of Eretz Yisrael. Thus, in the Ottoman era, the Hebrew press was for the most part ideological. The newspapers of that time were privately owned: newspapers were small businesses that had to be self-sustaining and provide the entrepreneurs with a livelihood. World War I more or less put an end to almost all the Hebrew-language newspapers. It was not until after the British occupation of Palestine in 1917 that Hebrew newspapers were published again (Limor 2003: 1024–1025).

The Press in Mandatory Times During the Yishuv era, under the rule of the British Mandate, the institutional and organizational infrastructure for the State of Israel was laid (Horowitz and Lissak 1990: 40). During the 1920s and 1930s, the Yishuv’s institutions matured and became securely established. This era was one of nation

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building, and, among other things, the media provided building blocks for this process—both the political party and the private press, as well as radio broadcasts, which I will discuss in more detail in the next chapter. In 1939, when the Jewish Yishuv in Mandatory Eretz Yisrael—or its official name of “Palestine (Eretz Yisrael)”—numbered 450,000, nine Hebrew-language newspapers appeared fairly regularly, as did eighteen Hebrew weeklies, six bi-weeklies, and thirty-four monthly magazines. There was also an English-language newspaper, which was identified with the Yishuv leadership (Canaan 1969: 20). All of these papers (political party and private alike) played an active role in the building of the nation. The press welded culturally diverse crowds of immigrants into a public, whose commonality was the exposure to Zionist values. The press was perceived by the public as a key tool on the path to establishing a Jewish state (Canaan 1969: 17). According to Kressel (1964: 119–121), a new leaf was turned in the history of the Hebrew press under the British Mandate. The changes in the press can be seen on several levels. First, the daily newspapers took shape and matured during the British Mandate, a process that was especially conspicuous with the advent of the Davar (A Matter or An Utterance) in 1925. Niche papers also appeared: for example, newspapers written for women, or specializing in agricultural issues, or designed for new immigrants. Evening papers were founded that were lighter and less sophisticated than the daily papers. Journalism evolved as a profession with its own unique attributes, and newspapers became large and independent institutions, reaching out in economic and other domains. And finally, the fulcrum of the press shifted from Jerusalem, symbolic of the old Yishuv, to Tel Aviv, a younger and more dynamic Hebrew city.

The Political Party Press in the Yishuv Era Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak (1977) argue that the Israeli political system is a culmination of political and social subcenters, conspicuous among which were parties that worked together toward national goals and which together created a national center. These subcenters preferred centripetal processes—that is, rapprochement toward the center and integration of the political system—over centrifugal, or decentralizing, trends. Nevertheless, the fact that the political party subcenters were founded prior to the establishment of the center itself—that is, the state institutions—affected the status of the parties, giving them great power during and after the Yishuv era, in the first decades of statehood. The role of the parties extended to a diverse range of fields, and they became involved in non-political spheres, such as cultural activity, economic services, and relief services (90). As a result of the volunteerism of the Yishuv—wherein the parties had no means of compulsion

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over their members—the parties resorted to various means, including party publications, to recruit the public, influence public opinion, and disseminate socio-political ideas (Galnoor 1985: 213; Graur 2002: 10–11). The parties used their newspapers to provide information and commentary to the public and to boost their membership. The political party press was assisted in party advocacy and socialization, especially vis-à-vis the other parties. While the audience of these newspapers was relatively limited, these readers were political party opinion leaders, who spread the papers’ messages to party members in the branches or to the general public (Graur 2002: 10–11). As stated, the political party press existed in several countries, being by no means specific to Israel. However, in the atmosphere of nation building in the Yishuv, and with the spread of party functions into other domains, publishing a newspaper was seen as a positive enterprise, an act for the public good. But at the same time, the newspaper was perceived as a factor that could consolidate a party’s grip as a political and ideological entity (Wolfensohn 1979: 22). This approach was shared by leaders across the political spectrum. The prevailing opinion was that each party needed an independent newspaper—a daily or, if there were budgetary restrictions, a weekly (Graur 2002: 44–45). The labor movement and the General Labor Federation (the Histadrut) wielded the greatest power in the Yishuv, and Davar, the newspaper identified with them, was predominant. The General Federation of Jewish Workers in Eretz Yisrael was founded in 1920 by the labor parties in order to ensure employment and provide services to Jewish laborers. The Histadrut exerted ideological and political pressure on Jewish employers to employ Jewish over Arab workers, even though the latter received lower wages. It provided economic relief to its unemployed members and helped them find work, and provided workers with health services and workers’ canteens (Horowitz and Lissak 1977: 90). The Histadrut provided its members with services normally supplied by the welfare state, with the aim of improving the workers’ living conditions in unstable market conditions (Grinberg 1993: 25). It expanded its activity into a diverse range of social arenas, and, among other things, operated a communications system with a motion pictures department (which imported and distributed cinema films for screening in various communities), its own theater (HaOhel, founded in 1925), and a publishing house (Am Oved, founded in 1942). Am Oved published special interest periodicals (for farmers, teachers, etc.), a children’s newspaper (Davar LeYeladim [Children’s Word]), and a weekly (HaPoel Hatzair [The Young Worker]) (Galnoor 1985: 214). The crowning glory of the Histadrut’s publications was Davar, a daily publication that commenced in 1925, at a time when the Labor Federation numbered a mere ten thousand members. Davar, which was more stable than other dailies appearing in the 1920s (Naor 2001: 44–45), assumed an educational, Zionist-ideological and socialist role. Berl Katznelson (1887–1944), one

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of the most outstanding leaders of the labor movement, was editor. Evidence of the paper’s political line can be seen in its publication of the agendas of the Histadrut and party meetings (Galnoor 1985: 214). Davar was initially circulated in some 2,500 copies and is estimated to have had a circulation of around 15,000 in 1939 (Canaan 1998: 142). David Ben Gurion viewed this paper as an important channel of communication with the public, complementing the party’s activities in other channels, and he argued that it should be maintained even at a financial loss (Galnoor 1985: 215). While Davar was the organ of the Histadrut and not the Mapai (Workers’ Party of the Land of Israel), complaints arose that the paper served the top echelons of the party, the dominant force in the Histadrut, without expressing the opposition within the Histadrut. It was as a result of this criticism that the HaMishmar (Guard) newspaper began publishing in 1943, as an organ identified with Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Guardsman), the opposition to the Mapai (Wolfensohn 1979: 108). The labor movement’s rival camps also tried to establish newspapers of their own, in emulation of the founding of Davar. In 1938, the worldwide HaMizrahi movement—which represented the religious Zionist stream—began publishing HaTzofeh (The Watcher), which advocated establishing a Jewish state based on the rules of the Halakha—the Jewish religious law—and emphasized the values of traditional education. Serving as editor of HaTzofeh was Rabbi Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan) (Canaan 1969: 22). The Revisionists made Doar HaYom (Today’s Post) (1931) into their organ, later founding HaYarden (The Jordan) (1934) and HaMashkif (The Observer) (1938), which called for the liquidation of the Jewish Diaspora and the forceful establishment of the State of Israel on both banks of the river Jordan. In 1939, the circulation of HaMashkif stood at around 2,000 copies per day (Wolfensohn 1979: 108; Canaan 1969: 22). The General Zionists founded HaBoker (The Morning) (1935) (Naor 2001: 44–45). As Mordechai Naor (2001: 46–47) points out, during the 1930s and 1940s HaBoker was the organ of a three-pronged opposition: against the British regime, against the autonomous Jewish institutions, and against the labor movement. The paper had an estimated circulation in 1939 of 5,000 copies per day. In 1937, the Communist Party, too, began circulating a newspaper of its own, namely Kol HaAm (Voice of the People) (Limor 2003: 1031).

Private Press in the Yishuv Era The first steps taken in the history of privately owned newspapers are connected, oddly enough, with a propaganda attempt during World War I. While gradually coming to occupy Eretz Yisrael, the Mandatory HQ started putting out editions of The Palestine News in various languages, including one in the Hebrew language (Kressel 1964: 123). These diverse editions, which

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were aimed at the British armed forces’ population as well as the Arab and the Jewish populations, offered similar core information, but varied the content designated for each of the target readerships. The Hebrew-language edition, Hadashot Me-HaAretz (News from Eretz Yisrael), which for a time was printed in Cairo so that the military HQ could more easily monitor it, came out regularly as a weekly, even containing a literary supplement, which became an important rostrum for some contemporary writers (Limor 2003: 1025). Zionist movement institutions took part in financing the publication of this supplement. Although it bore a patently institutional British military character, being suitable for distribution among the Jewish soldiers serving with the British military, this newspaper was also sold in Jerusalem and Jaffa, and moreover served the Zionist establishment (Elyada 2001: 56). Once the British consolidated their rule in Eretz Yisrael, they decided to discontinue publishing the diverse range of editions of the Palestine News, the Hebrew-language edition being one of them. They put these newspapers up for sale, and I. L. Goldberg, with the encouragement of the Jewish Agency, bought the Hebrew-language paper and converted it into a daily under the name of HaAretz (Limor 2003: 025, 1). The principal considerations in the publication of HaAretz when that paper was fi rst launched were national rather than commercial. Its founders, however, wished to achieve economic independence in order to facilitate topical, unbiased reporting. But unable to reach this goal, the newspaper’s owners fund-raised door to door to solicit contributions from Zionist philanthropists in order to keep the paper going. HaAretz suffered both technical and managerial problems and was especially buffeted by competition on the part of Doar HaYom, the daily published by Itamar Ben-Avi, which tended towards sensationalism (Elyada 2001: 57). In 1922, HaAretz closed down for a few days and reorganized so as to reappear as a cooperative controlled by its employees and supported by the Zionist institutions. By dint of this form of management, the newspaper survived only with difficulty, enduring several crises during the 1920s. At the end of 1929, HaAretz issued a populist, tabloid-form evening newspaper which was meant to compete with Doar HaYom and improve its economic position. Yet, its economic position did not improve, and the evening edition was discontinued in 1930 (Elyada 2001: 62). At the beginning of the thirties, the Cohen family, the newspaper’s principal fi nancier, got into difficulties, and the paper’s economic position further deteriorated. In 1933, the cooperative ceased to exist and a share company was founded, headed by David Cohen, representative of that same donor family. Th is paved the way for the sale of the newspaper to Zalman Schocken. To this day, the Schocken family is the controlling shareholder in HaAretz. In socio-economic terms, the paper tilted to the right, being closely allied with General Zionist circles, which held liberal

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rather than socialist views (Caspi and Limor 1992: 55). In 1939, the newspaper had an estimated circulation of some 11,000. The rise of the private press is also related to the ever more pronounced differentiation between morning and evening papers. Thanks to the commissioning of the Reuters News Agency’s telegraph service in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) noontime publications could be shifted earlier into the morning hours, a change that made way for the evening papers. During the 1930s, both privately and party-owned newspapers attempted to produce evening editions, but these only barely managed to survive. It was not until the advent of Yediot Ahronot and, later, Maariv that the evening press started to flourish and its uniquely popular style took root. With later technological developments, the evening paper editions appeared earlier in the day, so that the distinction between them and the morning papers in terms of publication time was progressively blurred (Caspi and Limor 1992: 56). Yediot Ahronot was launched at the end of 1939. The new paper was initially issued in both a noontime and an evening edition, each with a circulation of around 3,000 copies (Caspi and Limor 1992: 57). Historically speaking, Yediot Ahronot was based on the journalism forum of a weekly founded by Aviezer Golan and David Karasik. Due to licensing problems, the weekly remained unnamed. Shortly after it began to appear, it was acquired by Nahum Kumarov, who began publishing it under the name of Yediot Ahronot (Lehman-Wilzig, 1999: 4). Shortly thereafter, as early as the beginning of 1940, the paper went bankrupt. One of its principal creditors was Alexander Mozes, owner of the Mozes printing press, and he obtained the newspaper’s license (to this day, the Mozes family controls the newspaper). Azriel Carlebach, a talented young reporter, was appointed editor. Under his leadership, Yediot Ahronot was able to gain a firm footing, primarily in urban centers. Circulation came to equal that of Davar and HaAretz. Contributing to its success was the sensationalist coverage that characterized the paper’s reportage on World War II and the warnings it served against the direct threat of the war against the Jewish Yishuv in Eretz Yisrael (Lehman-Wilzig 1999: 4–7). But the newspaper’s success was not indicative of its future: unrest was fomenting among the senior staff at Yediot Ahronot over strained labor relations and interference from the newspaper’s publisher, Yehuda Mozes, especially as regards news items relating to economic affairs (Naor 2003: 3–6). This unrest ultimately led to the resignation of a professional nucleus of journalists and other employees from Yediot Ahronot and the founding of the rival paper Maariv. On 15 February 1948, Carlebach and his partners resigned from Yediot Ahronot, establishing a new paper named Yediot-Maariv. The word “Yediot” was printed in much larger font, while the word “Maariv” was shown beneath it in small font. The seceding parties took whatever they could from

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Yediot Ahronot, from printing blocks to newspaper content (Naor 2003: 7). They believed that Yediot Ahronot would shut down after they had left. Mozes, however, formed an alternative Board of Editors headed by Herzl Rosenblum. Shortly afterwards, his son Noah returned home and set to work to salvage the newspaper (Naor 2003: 13). In any event, Carlebach’s new paper (which, following a protracted and scathing legal battle, changed its name to Maariv) emerged almost overnight as the most popular newspaper, with a circulation at that time of an estimated 30,000 copies. Yediot Ahronot and Maariv have become, with fierce mutual rivalry, the two dominant Hebrew-language newspapers in Israel. As I will show below, the balance of forces between them has risen and fallen over the years (Naor 2003: 13). Alongside the Hebrew-language newspapers in the Yishuv era, there were also foreign-language Jewish papers. The Yishuv was composed of communities of new immigrants from various countries, and this provided fertile soil for foreign-language newspapers. Foremost among them was the Palestine Post, which appeared in Jerusalem in 1933. The Post identified with the values and aims of the Zionist movement but was also circulated among representatives of the British administration. Over the course of time, it passed to the ownership of the Histadrut and was renamed the Jerusalem Post (Caspi and Limor 1992: 144). In 1939, six German-language newspapers appeared. Most widely circulated was Yediot Hadashot (New News) which debuted in 1935, translating news items from the Hebrew-language press (Canaan 1969: 144). Thus, the pre-state Hebrew press in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) was characterized by multiplicity and diversity, reflected in the publication of a large number of newspapers, each addressing a population group that was, especially in political terms, both distinctive and clearly defined. The fragmentary nature of the press and the focus on specific public segments typified the entire political spectrum. As a result, the number of newspapers being published was out of proportion to the size of the reading population. However, that very multiplicity and diversity contributed to social and political ferment in the Yishuv at that time. Four Hebrew-language daily newspapers were being published in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) in 1938, at a time when the population numbered some 416,000. In that year, not even one Hebrew newspaper managed to subsist in Poland, which, at the time, had a Jewish population of around three and a half million. This comparison attests that the center of Jewish social, cultural, and political creativity was by that time firmly rooted in the soil of Eretz Yisrael (Kressel 1964: 156). Thus the Zionist press, in all its various factions, regarded itself as tasked with discharging national functions over and above its political ones. It contributed substantially to the creation of a Hebrew reading public, all of whose members shared Zionist national sentiments and were aware that the other readers too, despite their different party political affi liations, were made party

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to the Zionist idea through newspaper reading. The formation of this public was particularly important in light of the linguistic and cultural diversity of the population, as people migrated to Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) from different places. The press sought to serve as a mouthpiece for the Yishuv’s official institutions to counterbalance the Arabic press and to aid in the absorption of new immigrants. It moreover played an important part in channeling information to and from the public (Galnoor 1985: 213–216). Itzhak Galnoor (1985: 216) describes the newspapers’ symbolic expression of uniformity of the national objective on 5 Iyar, 5708 (14 May 1948): on that day, the five principal morning papers published a joint edition setting forth the Proclamation of Independence and the manifesto of the Provisional State Council (Galnoor 1985: 216). Also taking shape during the Yishuv era were the ownership patterns of the newspapers—the economy-oriented commercial papers versus the political party papers—patterns of ownership and action that persisted over the next decades of statehood.

The Palestinian Press in the Yishuv Era Any discussion of the rise of the press in the territorial unit of Mandatory Palestine must take into account the fact that the territory was the natural habitat of not only the Jewish-Hebrew press but also the Palestinian national press. As Mustafa Kabha (2004: 15) notes, the Arabic-language daily press took shape and became firmly established in the years 1929 to 1939. That period saw the publication of eleven dailies, fourteen weeklies, and nine monthly magazines. The daily papers, such as Falastin (Palestine) (publication of which commenced in 1911, initially as a bi-weekly) required financial support from the businessmen who published them. Other newspapers, such as Al-Jamaa Al-Arabiya (The Arab Group, founded in 1927) and Al-Yarmuq (The Yarmuk, founded in 1924), were supported by political or party entities. And as these organizations or parties weakened or vanished, their related newspapers suffered a similar fate (Kabha 2004: 243). There was, at that time, no Palestinian newspaper with a circulation of more than 10,000 copies. Yet as was customary in traditional societies (and, indeed, also in East European Jewish society in the nineteenth century) newspaper circulation did not reflect actual exposure to the press, because often a single newspaper would be passed from hand to hand or read aloud to a whole group (Kabha 2004: 256). Arabic-language journalism took place mainly in the urban centers—Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa—where the newspaper offices clustered and where most journalists lived. Their readership was likewise concentrated mainly in the towns at first, but during the 1930s, the Palestinian press gained more of a footing in villages, too. This was due, among other things, to the adoption by some papers of a more “folksy” linguistic register (Kabha 2004: 245, 265). In

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that politically and nationally fateful period, most journalists were active in the Palestinian national movement. The political debate hosted by the press related to various political arenas, including the intra-Palestinian, relations with Britain, and relations with the Jewish Yishuv. In the first of these, the Palestinian press originally endeavored to engineer a compromise between the Haj Amin al-Husseini and the Ragheb al-Nashashibi camps. The conflict originated in rivalry between the two highly influential tribes, a rivalry that the British administration used to its own ends (Kabha 2004: 31). Over the course of time, however, each newspaper positioned itself with one of the two camps. The Palestinian press also dealt with another internal political divide: those who adopted local-patriotic Palestinian national positions versus those who advocated pan-Arab nationalism, viewing the Palestinians as part of a broad pan-Islamic nation (Kabha 2004: 259–260). In dealing with their relations with the British, the attitude of the Arabic-language Palestinian press towards the British changed over time. At the beginning of the British Mandate, the Palestinian press tried to cooperate with the authorities, in any event taking care to avoid any head-on collision with them (Kabha 2004: 261). As time passed, however, the papers began showing opposition to the British rule, accusing it of cooperating with the Jewish side. Finally, Kabha notes that in dealing with relations with the Jewish Yishuv, the attitude of the Palestinian press toward the Zionist enterprise was clear-cut. The Jewish Yishuv was seen as a danger to the country’s Arab population. The Palestinian press frequently reviled Jewish society, calling for the boycotting of its institutions. In particular, it evinced opposition to the sale of Arab lands to Jews by reporting on such transactions, leading to the harassment and ostracizing of vendors and their families (Kabha 2004: 262). The end of the great Arab revolt (in 1939) and the outbreak of World War II brought about the decline of the Palestinian press. Newspaper circulation decreased dramatically, as did the newspaper’s influence on the public sphere (Kabha 2004: 264).

The Press in the State of Israel The founding of the State of Israel did not fundamentally alter the attributes of the Hebrew-language printed press, as the journalistic elite that had emerged during the Yishuv era—which included journalists, editors, and publishers— continued to control the press. The parties continued to be directly involved in newspaper publication with a view to keeping their supporters up to date and motivated (Meyers 2005: 90). Nevertheless, as I will show, starting in the 1960s there was a steep decline in the number and predominance of political party newspapers. At the same time, privately owned newspapers (along

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with the surviving party organs) had to adapt to the new reality of the ever stronger influence of radio, as well as the later debut and increasing popularity of television. The electronic media had a relative advantage over the press in regional coverage and the supply of information, forcing newspapers to re-define their roles—with all the implications attendant on such redefinition (Caspi 1998). To be sure, with regard to current affairs, newspapers offered more in-depth information and analysis than did radio and television. The newspapers focused on special interest domains, evidenced in the publication of a broad spectrum of supplements. These were aimed at distinct population segments with their own spheres of interest, as well as distinct populations having homogenous consumer attributes (which was also convenient for advertisers desiring market segmentation) (Caspi 1998: 206). The average weekend size of five dailies (HaAretz, Yediot Ahronot, Maariv, Davar, and AlHaMishmar) rose from 10 pages in the fifties to around 250 pages on average in the 1990s. These dailies began publishing large-scale weekend supplements (HaAretz supplement, Yediot Ahronot’s “7 Days,” and Maariv’s “Weekend”). Numerous supplements also appeared on weekdays, each dedicated to a particular interest, such as sports, lifestyle, culture and leisure, computers, and the Internet. Added to these, commencing in the 1980s, were local newspapers (which I will discuss in more detail below), which over the course of time increased in size to more than one hundred pages per edition (Neiger and Zandberg 2004: 212–213). Journalists’ commitment to Zionist ideals also persisted with no significant change, at least in the first decades of statehood. This commitment sometimes imposed voluntary cultural constraints on their work—without their necessarily being aware of it. As Oren Meyers notes, along with their professional values, those engaging in newspaper reporting tended to evaluate the quality of journalistic work on the basis of its contribution to the Zionist enterprise (Meyers 2005: 91). Such Zionist commitment in some cases led journalists to deviate from norms generally accepted in the Western democratic world press (for example, their support for military censorship). Another example of this kind of breach is the military publication of the weekly BaMahaneh (In the Camp), which expanded the army’s role into the mass media and had an influence in the Israeli journalistic sphere (Horowitz and Lissak 1990). Indeed, all regular servicemen and servicewomen were required to subscribe to BaMahaneh until the 1980s, when the High Court of Justice did away with the obligation (Limor, Adoni, and Mann 2007: 77). In contrast, anti-Zionist journalistic voices (such as that of the communist daily, Kol HaAm [Voice of the People]) were usually excluded from mainstream discourse (Meyers 2005: 91–94). However, this did not mean that the political establishment enlisted or exploited the press. In contrast to the argument that professional journalism

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values in that period were subordinated to national ones, Rafi Mann presents a more qualified concept that distinguishes various subjects of press coverage. Mann (2012: 309), in his study dealing with Ben Gurion and his relations with the media, argues that the newspapers tended to adopt the messages of the Zionist leadership in the domain of security. However, his research proves that in other domains, including economic and social, the press of that period, reflecting journalistic diversification, presented not only a range of opinions but also positions that were critical of the leadership policy. Mann is accordingly of the opinion that the national commitment coexisted with a commitment to journalistic values. Various researchers have tried to characterize the nature of the Israeli media model and the modus operandi of the journalists within it. Dan Caspi and Yehiel Limor, for example, note that the Israeli model follows that of developing countries, in which the media are committed to advancing national goals and policy, especially of the national language and culture. State authorities, for reasons connected with the promotion of the state’s interests, are empowered to intervene in or to restrict the actions of the media (Caspi and Limor 1992: 141–142). Alternatively, Caspi and Limor characterize the modus operandi of the media in Israel as a hybrid model, combining the social responsibility model prevailing in most democracies (whereby the media institutions evolve self-restricting mechanisms and self-censorship) and the authoritarian model (in which the media are perceived as servants of the regime and vehicles for expressing its positions). Among the factors that led to the creation of the hybrid model, Caspi and Limor (1992: 140) cite the residual effects of the British Mandatory tradition, which sought to oversee and restrict the press; the problems Israel faced in its early years, which led to a sense that the struggle for independence was not yet over; and the centrality of the security conflict to the Israeli experience. The two researchers point out, however, that the attributes of the Israeli press have altered in recent decades, as the journalistic norms prevalent in other democracies have become more deeply rooted. Tamar Liebes (1997), in her research on news coverage of the Israeli-Arab conflict, focuses on cultural aspects related to the restriction of the journalistic scope of action. According to her, Israeli reporters have internalized hegemonic values, and in consequence have evinced a commitment to establishment interests. One of the most conspicuous examples of journalistic hegemony in Israel is reporters’ self-censorship. The profound commitment of journalists to the Zionist enterprise has infused them with such self-awareness that they will sometimes deliberately choose to restrict their own journalistic freedom (Liebes 1997: 30). This could be seen as a process of cooption, or it could be argued that these journalists are acting in contravention of their professional obligation. According to Liebes, however, the

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deepest cause is their commitment to the collective (31). In certain cases, journalists censor their own work in order to avoid the public interpreting their position in what they deem an undesirable light. What reporters fear is that certain news items will lead to long-term damage of the public’s faith in their work, or to public alienation in face of the “hostile media.” In certain circumstances, however, there may be articles that journalists simply refrain from sending to the censor for fear they might not be approved. Liebes notes that the Israeli-Arab conflict plays an important role in preserving journalistic commitment to Israeli hegemonic values. Generally speaking, the social solidarity of the nation-state is closely linked to military violence and victories, which are embedded in daily life narratives. An important role is reserved for the media in the dissemination, cultivation, and maintenance of such narratives, which attest to the superiority of the nation state over other nation states (Roosvall and Salovaara-Moring 2010: 10). In Israel, too, the conflict, by its very nature, prompts one-sidedness: newspaper writers see themselves as part of the Zionist movement rather than as outside spectators, and this fact impinges on their ability to criticize the establishment (Liebes 1997: 3). In the first decades of statehood, criticism of the military, which was perceived as expressing the anti-Diaspora ideology manifested by Zionism, was especially problematic (Liebes 1997: 4). In wartime, or in security crisis situations, the attempt to express oppositional views faces difficult obstacles. Such times give rise to “hot” nationalism, in which the fighting precipitates a full-blown nationalist sentiment. During such interludes, internal differences of opinion are marginalized, national affi liation strengthened, and the media express a clear narrative based on the distinction between “us” and “them” (Billig 1995). This happens despite the fact that in such periods there is a rising need for more information about how decisions are made, and even how to proceed in order to survive. Yet the less collectivist Israeli society becomes, the bolder the press are in criticizing even such “criticism-immune” institutions as the military, publishing news of blunders, neglect, and negligence. Hegemony is also expressed in the way journalistic narratives are framed. Journalists’ choices, sometimes made through dialogue with editors and colleagues, determine the story’s details and focus—that is, the picture to be presented. In other words, it is not merely self-censorship of the press that expresses hegemonic concepts. Hegemony is seen not only in the question of what to say, but also in the question of how to say it, how the story is told, and what perspective or narrative is adopted (Liebes 1997: 41). Thus, for example, in her analysis of newspaper reporting shortly after the 1948 war, Nurit Graetz (1995: 40) notes that the Jewish public’s battle against the Arab public was depicted as a European front versus a cruel, primitive Asiatic front. The Jewish combatants were represented as part of the Allied forces. And whereas

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prior to the outbreak of the war, Middle Eastern culture was described as authentic and powerful—an antithesis of exilic Jewish life—during the war it was described as old and waning. The Arabs were described as sons of the desert, while Jews were shown as making the desert bloom. As I stated above, alongside the aspects that permeate Israeli culture and ideology, and which played a role in the self-restricting practices of the press, various official arrangements exist that have the power to drastically restrict freedom of the press in Israel. However, there is a gap between the official existence of such arrangements in Israel’s legislative infrastructure (which in itself is injurious to the principles of democracy) and the actual use made of them, which is generally limited. For example, even though publication of a newspaper is subject to licensing, many papers, especially local ones, operate without a license, and launching legal proceedings against them is perceived as contravening freedom of expression and freedom of the press (Caspi and Limor 1992: 145). The official arrangements, capable as they are of restricting freedom of the press in Israel, are for the most part a legacy of the Yishuv era. On the other hand, the activity of electronic media was regulated by special legislation due to their ascribed effectiveness and the perception of broadcasting waves as a limited public resource requiring regulation by legislative means. (I will return to this issue in later chapters of the book.)

Regulation of the Press: Official and Other Arrangements Caspi and Limor (1992: 146–147) distinguish between various types of arrangements, official and unofficial, that regulate and fine-tune the relations between the media and other establishments in Israel. As far as the printed press is concerned, the principal instrument regulating its legal standing is the Mandatory “Press Ordinance” of 1933. This was approved by Mandatory Authorities as a tool for restricting and supervising the press—in particular the Arab press, which inflamed passions against the Jewish Yishuv during the riots of 1929. Also enacted at a later stage, when the rift between the Mandatory authorities and the Jewish Yishuv widened, were the Defense (Emergency) Regulations 1945. Regulation 94 of this subsidiary legislation ratifies the power of the administration to refuse to grant a license for the publication of a newspaper without giving reasons for its decision. These arrangements were made during the British Mandate. However, the Press Ordinance served the British for only fifteen years—it formed part of the Israeli legal system as part of the establishment of the state. Accordingly, we are not dealing with a mere relic of ages past, but with arrangements knowingly adopted into Israeli law (Lahav 2007b: 384). Both the Press Ordinance and the Defense (Emergency) Regulations 1945 include draconic regulatory clauses that are entirely incompatible with a

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democratic constitutional infrastructure. However, the Supreme Court, sitting as a High Court of Justice (HCJ), has over the years imposed limits on the validity of certain clauses of the Ordinance. Thus, for example, as early as 1953 it determined in a precedent-setting ruling—HCJ 73/53: Kol HaAm v. the Minister of the Interior—that even though the Press Ordinance empowers the minister of the interior to shut down a newspaper if it is liable to be detrimental to the public interest, that power is restricted to instances in which there exists a near certainty of detriment to Israeli public safety. In contrast to the United States, freedom of expression in Israel is not anchored in a constitution; moreover, the Basic Laws do not include any direct reference to this key democratic right. In this state of affairs, High Court of Justice cases are the principal anchor for that right, blunting the antidemocratic extremism of the official arrangements. Legal arrangements from the Mandatory era’s legacy have in fact been fiercely criticized over the years, and motions have been tabled for eliminating them, but have never been realized (Negbi 2011). Over and above the above-mentioned legal arrangements, other various laws, regulations, and orders include an assortment of prohibitions on publication: the ban on injury to the individual’s privacy (Protection of Privacy Law–1981); the sub-judice prohibition that bans the publication of articles concerning sub-judice criminal cases (Courts Law [Combined Wording]–1984); restrictions on the identification of minors in the context of legal proceedings, investigative proceedings, or sex offenses (Courts Law [Combined Wording]–1984); prohibition on the exposure of the personal particulars and identity of male and female injured parties in sex offenses (Penal Law 1977 and Rights of Victims of Offenses Law 2001); prohibitions on seditious publications (Penal Law 1977); and prohibitions on the publication of materials from cabinet meetings on defense and foreign affairs and from closed cabinet sessions (Basic Law: The Government 1973 and Basic Law: The Knesset 1958). (For a full and detailed list of prohibitions and a discussion of the classification of the various prohibitions, see Caspi and Limor 1992: 162–165; Limor and Mann 1997: 534–537; Negbi 2011.) The work of the Board of Editors is another type of arrangement that is not anchored in the law, but for many years, this arrangement has given practical effect to certain restrictions on the activity of Israel’s daily newspapers. The Board of Editors started out as a “response commission” founded by the newspapers in 1942 in order to establish a common journalistic position visà-vis the doings of the British Mandatory authorities and to decide how to react to the decisions of the British censors. The response commission acted in full cooperation with the heads of the Yishuv institutions and was accordingly on the receiving end of a great deal of information—which was sometimes not made public in order to safeguard the Yishuv’s political diplomatic interests. Following the establishment of the State of Israel, the committee

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persisted as the Board of Editors, with the aim of helping the Israeli administration gain a secure footing (Lavi 1987: 12). Its members were originally the editors of the Israeli daily newspapers, representing the media entity in which they operated, and these were later joined by editors of the electronic media (Meyers 2005: 93). Membership on the Board was voluntary, and each newspaper was entitled to withdraw from it at any time. David Ben Gurion, the first prime minister, recognized the potential of this forum to prevent the publication of news items that might, in his opinion, be injurious to the State, or which might cause the State and its government political damage vis-à-vis a domestic rival. He and his top aides were accordingly in the habit of conferring secretly with daily newspaper editors on the condition that they refrained from publishing the secrets discussed at the Board’s meetings. As Ben Gurion himself testified, although in 1957 he hesitated over whether or not to share secrets with senior administration officials and other members of his party, fearing they might leak his words, he implicitly trusted the members of the Board of Editors, sensing that he could speak freely in their presence (Meyers 2005: 93). Ben Gurion’s successors in the premiership, as well as senior cabinet ministers, chiefs of general staff, and the heads of the defense establishment, continued to cooperate with the Board of Editors (Lavi 1987: 12). As Meyers notes (2005: 93), the Board, throughout the years, consented to conceal information that was in no way related to security issues, such as police investigations or the extent of the drug use by Hebrew University students. The editors’ consent to conceal such information highlighted the press officers’ commitment to Zionist ideology even at the expense of their commitment to the professional journalistic value of honoring the public’s right to know. It was after the 1973 (Yom Kippur) War and the journalistic soul-searching that it prompted that the status of the Board of Editors began to decline; it deteriorated even further following the 1977 election, which catapulted the Likud party into power. At the same time, journalistic information became more accessible. Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin refrained from holding frequent meetings with the Board, possibly to demonstrate his lack of trust in the press. In 1986, the Articles of the Board were amended to open its meetings to many representatives of the media. This change, while intended to preserve the vitality of the Board and adapt it to the modern age with a freer flow of information, stripped the Board’s meetings of their aura of secrecy and prestige. The Board became a large entity with which it was no longer safe to share information (Lavi 1987: 26), and its power was gradually eroded. The power of military censorship is grounded in law. However, as early as 1949, the Board of Editors entered into an agreement with the Chief of General Staff (CGS) and government representatives regulating the relations between the censors and the daily press. This agreement and those that

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succeeded it actually constitute an apparatus that to a certain extent offsets the draconic nature of relevant legislation. The role of military censorship is to prevent media exposure of security information that is liable to be harmful to the State. In time of war, it will be noted, other democracies also place restrictions on the freedom of the media. No other democracy, however, has security-oriented censorship permanently in place (Lahav 2007b: 385). The legal standing of censorship derives from the (Emergency) Defense Regulations, dating from 1945, which, as stated above, was designed to serve the British Mandatory regime and which was adopted by Israeli statute. The Defense Regulations include a statutory infrastructure for the activation of Israeli censorship (Section 87), not only on defense matters and not only in respect of newsworthy items seeking publication, but also of opinions and commentary (Negbi 2011). Yet, as Moshe Negbi (2011) notes, the censorship’s draconic legal power survived through the censorship agreement; the agreement coexists with the legal arrangement stipulated in the Defense Regulations (Nossek and Limor 2007: 360). The Censorship Commission was formed as part of the 1949 commissioning of the Military Censorship. The commission was empowered to review censorship offenses and decisions relating to the rejection of material by the Military Censorship (Elyada 1998). The first agreement, however, stipulated that the commission had the standing of an advisory body only, and that the ultimate authority on censorship affairs was vested in the CGS. In 1951, after the Maariv daily withdrew from the agreement and petitioned the High Court of Justice against a decision taken by the CGS concerning this paper, a new agreement was reached whereby the power to punish, provided that the decision to do so was unanimous, was vested in a special quasi-tribunal (the Committee of Three) of which both editors and military were members. In return, the newspaper editors waived their right to petition the HCJ (Hoffnung 1998: 298). The revised agreement, which was signed between the defense establishment and the press in 1996, stipulated that it could also include non-daily newspapers, which were not members of the “Board of Editors,” as long as they accepted the agreement as authoritative. This agreement also stipulated (in contrast to previous agreements) that the HCJ could be petitioned against decisions of the Committee of Three, which was composed of a member of the public, a representative of the military, and a representative of the press (Nossek and Limor 2007: 360). In its ruling on the activity of censorship in Schnitzer v. the Chief Military Censor, the HCJ also restricted its powers to disqualify material solely to cases of a near certainty of severe, serious, and grave damage to public safety and public order. The judicial system headed by the HCJ indubitably contributed to freedom of expression and the restraint of security censorship. Negbi (2005), however, notes that even though the military censor abides by and applies the ruling of

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the Supreme Court, restricting censorship to cases of near certainty of damage to security, the courts and the prosecution cultivate alternative censorship mechanisms. The law empowering the courts to hold in camera hearings for reasons related to state security leads to de facto censorship. In a hearing on security matters, judges possess tremendous censorial power in the absence of public interest in the publication of the information being presented before the judge (187–188). The press, which is often entirely unaware of the case lying before the court, is unable to challenge or to appeal the media blackout in the name of public interest, as it can do when “ordinary” military censorship is imposed. In Negbi’s opinion, when courts activate the alternative censorship of in camera hearings, they themselves are failing to apply the test of near certainty of damage to state security inhering in publication. Moreover, the State Attorney’s Office becomes a kind of “executive contractor” for the censorship being imposed by the judiciary system. The State Attorney’s Office forbids the military censorship from examining the feasibility of the publication of material that is before the court in an in camera case (190). Following harsh public criticism, a procedure was established in 2001 whereby the State Attorney’s Office must consult the censor before seeking a judicial gag order. The State Attorney’s Office, however, is not obliged to accept the censorship’s position. Another voluntary system that plots a course for journalistic activity is that of the rules of professional ethics: that is, professional values and the mode of conduct that have been defined by the press community itself and which are intended to serve as professional guidelines for those engaging in journalism. “The Professional Code of Ethics of the Press Council in Israel” generally imposes on journalists more stringent strictures and prohibitions than does the relevant legislation. The rules of ethics sometimes contradict statutory prohibitions. Thus, for example, press ethics prohibit the revelation of any details that could expose the identity of the source of the information, whereas the law may, in certain situations, impose upon the journalist the obligation of divulging such information (Negbi 2011). Ethical rules originated in the press code adopted in 1959. That arrangement presaged the strengthening of Israel’s professional journalism ethos: a process that gained momentum toward the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s, paralleling the weakening of the labor movement’s hegemony (Meyers 2005: 91–94). The Press Council was founded in 1963 as a voluntary body joined by Israel’s various media entities. It is composed of public representatives (40 percent of the membership), journalists (30 percent), and newspaper editors and publishers (30 percent). The Council operates a tribunal against errant journalists, which is empowered to rule on breaches of ethical principles. The tribunal also sees itself as empowered to rule on cases concerning journalists who are not members of the Press Council, even when they refuse to respond or to recognize the competence of the tribunal (Negbi 2011).

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Party Political Press in the State of Israel In the early years of statehood, the press was still directly involved in the political system. In 1948, some two-thirds of Israeli journalists were employed by political party papers (Meyers 2005: 90). The party organ was subordinate, generally speaking, to the top party brass, on which it depended, due to limited circulation, for its budgets. The newspapers’ content reflected this subordination: for example, these papers published minutes of the meetings of the party secretariat and reported on the positions held by the party brass on various issues on the agenda (Wolfensohn 1979: 107–110). Voluntary ideological self-censorship of the newspaper editors was common in the political party press (Peri 1999: 31). However, as Avraham Wolfensohn (1979: 10–11) notes, in Israel, as in other countries, the party press functioned as an entity of autonomous leanings. Sometimes, in the midst of an intra-party confrontation, the papers would support one of the party factions, undermining the function of the press to strengthen the party leadership. Moreover, in certain instances, party organs would adopt positions different from those of their party leadership. The party press was elitist, addressing small readerships relative to the commercial press, whose survival depended on its high circulation. The party press, as stated above, addressed mainly the backbone of party activists and members, serving as an ideological home and an expression of a way of life for them (Graur 2002: 14–15). An exception to this rule was the Davar, which was mouthpiece of Mapai, the ruling party, and of the Histadrut, the dominant political force in the State of Israel. This paper had a circulation comparable to that of the commercial newspapers and far greater than that of the other party organs (Meyers 2005: 88). The circulation of most of the party papers, which progressively declined, made them dependent on party financing. Their position therefore derived in large part from the political success of their party. Party ideology naturally influenced both the world view to which readers were exposed and the newspapers’ version of collective memory. Collective memory refers to a jointly retained picture of the past, attesting not necessarily to a common historical past, but rather to how the perception of that past is structured through socio-political processes (Zandberg 2008: 193–194). Eyal Zandberg (2008), in his study of the collective memory of the Holocaust, shows that the various newspapers reflected a symbolic set of different meanings related to the Holocaust that conformed to their outlook and political ideology. Newspapers that were identified with the values of socialist Zionism—primarily Mapam’s Al HaMishmar—emphasized the heroism of the ghetto fighters and partisans, and also the battle of the socialist “sons of light” against the fascist “sons of darkness.” In the early years, the newspaper stressed the universal dimension of the Holocaust, but this dimension

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weakened over time (202–203). The Histadrut paper Davar—which reflected the values of the dominant ruling party, Mapai—stressed the connection between the Holocaust and the Jewish renaissance, pointing out the differences between the personality traits of the Diaspora Jews and those of the Israelis. This concept actually reflected the Israeli approach of the first decades: rejection of the conduct of those Jews who went “like sheep to the slaughter,” and at the same time seeing the Holocaust as the justification for revolutionizing the life of the Jewish people and for the existence of the new Israel (204–205). At the extreme end of the nationalist-Zionist view, represented mainly through the Herut daily newspaper of the Revisionist movement, the outstanding feature of the Holocaust was the struggle of Herut against the ruling party, Mapai. In face of the historic warnings issued by Zeev Jabotinsky, father of the Revisionist Movement, against the dangers of the Diaspora, the leaders of the Yishuv were described as having abandoned European Jewry. The reparations agreement2 signed with Germany in the 1950s, which led to public outcry in Israel, was described by the Herut newspaper as an act of national obsequiousness (205–206). In contrast to this nationalist concept, Agudat Israel’s HaModia predictably described the Holocaust as religious-spiritual persecution that had led to the destruction of ultra-orthodox life in Europe. The discussion in that paper later shifted to focus on the guilt of the secular Yishuv’s leadership, which had turned a blind eye to this destruction. The attitude of the state leadership to ultra-orthodox Jewry was described as a continuation of the pre-Holocaust abandonment of European Jewry (198–199). In the mid-1960s, as the Israeli press community increasingly adopted a professional ethos (Meyers 2005: 89), there was a corresponding process of accelerated decline of the party press. This decline was experienced worldwide, as the economic orientation of newspapers replaced political or ideological orientation. But other factors also contributed to the decline of the party press. In that period, readers seemed less content with information sources that championed particular ideological lines; rather, they were drawn to the “objective” rhetoric of the commercial press. During the 1960s and 1970s (especially after the 1973 War), the commercial newspapers adopted a critical style more closely resembling that of Western nations. The political party press, on the other hand, finding it difficult to adapt to the spirit of the age, continued in its attempt to educate readers through information conforming to the party lines. The commercial newspapers adopted a folksy, or less sophisticated, writing style, or, in the case of HaAretz at least, a harsher and more critical tone, whereas the party organs persisted in their ornate style (Peri 1999: 33). In this state of affairs, the readership of the party press declined, exacerbating the newspapers’ already dire economic position. These newspapers accordingly began competing with the larger circulation papers, primarily the commercial press, taking action to boost circulation,

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for example, by hiring talented journalists. But as the status of the political parties in Israeli society progressively weakened, the parties themselves gradually lost interest in their own mouthpieces. One example can be seen in the treatment of the newspapers HaBoker (This Morning) and Herut (Freedom) by their own Bloc (Gahal)—that of the Herut-Liberal parties. When the Bloc was founded in the mid-1960s, an inspection commission, appointed to evaluate the future of these two newspapers, determined that the papers were unviable, both economically and in terms of their ability to target a large readership—even one made up of party hacks. As a result, the decision was made to close them down (Naor 2001: 52–43). The decline in prestige of the party press paralleled a general decline in the power of the political parties in Israel (Peri 1999: 39). Thus, the party daily newspapers started closing down one after the other: HaKol (The Voice—Poalei Agudat Israel) in 1967, LaMerhav (Ahdut HaAvoda) in 1971, Kol HaAm (Voice of the People—Communist Party organ) in 1975, and Al HaMishmar (the Hashomer HaTzair movement) in 1995. Many party weeklies also stopped publishing. Exceptional among the party dailies that were still being published were those addressing various religious readerships, mainly because the private, secular, commercial newspapers were unable to respond to the religious public (Caspi and Limor 1992: 43). Conspicuous among them were HaTzofeh and HaModia. The former was a paper of long standing that was identified with the HaMizrahi movement and the National Religious Party. HaTzofeh held out until 2007, when it merged with the right-wing newspaper Makor Rishon. The latter, HaModia, which was founded in 1950, is still being published today, being identified with Agudat Israel. Indeed, a new paper, Yated Neeman, was founded in the ultra-orthodox sector in 1985 and is identified with Degel HaTorah. The closure of Davar in 1996 was a milestone in the ebbing of the party press. Davar had accompanied the Zionist struggle for the founding of the State of Israel since 1925, and it owed its relative longevity to its being part of the labor movement, the predominance of which, until the 1970s, assured it of a place of honor in Israeli society. The fact that the newspaper was officially affiliated with the Histadrut, rather than with the Mapai in all its various incarnations, helped the paper preserve a degree of independence from the party and allowed it to express a diverse range of opinions (Peri 1999: 34). This same attribute extended the lifetime of Davar, which survived while the other party organs were shutting down. Davar, moreover, was a paper of quality that had not diminished over the years. In the 1970s, when Hannah Zemer took over as editor, Davar, influenced by U.S. press trends, took on a lighter and more critical tone and as a result improved its standing (Peri 1999: 35). But for many years, the paper was mismanaged. It survived as long as

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the Histadrut institutions were able to cover its debts, but once the Histadrut financing source disappeared, the newspaper closed down.

The Commercial Press in the State of Israel As stated above, from the mid-1960s onward, the commercial newspapers in Israel gradually increased in strength. However, the private newspapers that had predominated at the founding of the state—namely HaAretz, Yediot Ahronot, and, shortly thereafter, Maariv—remain to this day the key players in the private press arena. Moreover, two families—Schocken, the controlling shareholder of HaAretz, and Mozes, with the core holding of Yediot Ahronot—continue to hold the same papers they did prior to the establishment of the State. The Schocken family also attempted to found another private daily newspaper, Hadashot, a business initiative that proved short-lived. These two dynasties were later joined by the Nimrodi family, who were the controlling shareholders in Maariv until 2011. Globes, an important private paper founded in 1983, started out as a business paper and gradually expanded the scope of its coverage (Caspi and Limor 1992: 54). The newspaper is distributed in the evening, after Israel’s money markets close. Today, Globes is Israel’s only evening paper, since Yediot Ahronot and Maariv are now distributed in the early morning. The rivalry between Yediot Ahronot and Maariv during the establishment of the State largely dictated the relationship of these two papers during statehood. In the first two decades of statehood, Maariv was the nation’s most widely circulated paper, followed by Davar and HaAretz, two newspapers projecting a higher quality image. Yediot Ahronot—which, following the founding of Maariv, had not yet overcome the injury it sustained with the exit of most of its staff—was Israel’s fourth most widely circulated paper. For years, the subtitled slogan on Maariv’s front page claimed it to be “Israel’s most widely circulated newspaper.” Yediot Ahronot continued appearing regularly, to the disappointment of the secessionists, but for many years was unable to match the success of its young rival. The newspaper was largely supported by its owner, Yehuda Mozes, who refused to let it close down. The change in the balance of forces between these two papers came about in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1970, Maariv’s weekday exposure stood at 31 percent and that of Yediot Ahronot at only 19 percent. In 1980, Maariv’s weekday exposure stood at 35 percent while that of Yediot Ahronot had climbed to 44 percent. By 1990, Maariv’s exposure had plunged to 16.1 percent, while that of Yediot Ahronot had reached 50.2 percent (Caspi and Limor 1992: 62). In the opinion of Shmuel Lehman-Wilzig (1999: 6), Maariv at the outset was unquestionably a newspaper of higher quality than Yediot Ahronot: “The CGO read Maariv; his driver read Yediot. For as long as the long-standing

Evolution of the Hebrew and Israeli Press | 49

Ashkenazi ruling elite was ‘the state’ (L’état c’est nous), Maariv could rightly call itself ‘Israel’s most widely circulated newspaper.’ Ultimately, however, there were more ‘drivers’ than CGOs, and the editors of Yediot Ahronot knew just how to recruit the former as regular readers.” The increasing success of Yediot Ahronot derived from its simple, folksy writing style accompanied by a plethora of photographs and, on occasion, a sensationalist style of journalism. Along with adopting this popular style, Yediot Ahronot persistently invested a great deal of effort in marketing itself on the geographical and social periphery (Lehman-Wilzig 1999: 7). It gave access to a wide range of opinion-makers, thus creating a vibrant atmosphere, and at the same time enabling readers to encounter their favorite, regular publicists (Lehman-Wilzig 1999:7). Maariv, by contrast, had a far more rigid policy regarding the range of opinions it would host. Contributing to this relatively closed-off atmosphere was the fact that Maariv’s controlling shareholders were some of its own senior correspondents, who aspired to present their opinions through the newspaper (Caspi and Limor 1992: 60). Bear in mind that the 1970s were watershed years in terms of social and political affairs in the State of Israel. As I will show below (in my discussion of television), global influences were gaining substantial ground during this period at the expense of local nationalist ones; the Ashkenazi-Sephardic split was taking shape and deepening; the Yom Kippur War undermined people’s sense of security and their faith in the state’s leadership; and in 1977, the Likud acceded to power for the first time, bringing with it liberal economic initiatives and other policy changes. All these created a fertile soil for ideological and political confrontations, and Yediot Ahronot served as a forum. The newspaper was nourished through the rise of the peripheral, Sephardic “second Israel,” as that sector, in its protest vote, swept the Likud into power. In the opinion of Lehman-Wilzig (1999: 8), the fact that Yediot was strengthening even as Maariv waned reflected the same broader social process connected to the political volte-face engendered by the Sephardic protest vote, and Maariv failed to grasp the change that was overtaking the nation in those years. In the late 1980s, it appeared that Maariv, whose control was shared by private investors and the newspaper’s staff, had set out upon a new trajectory: businessman Robert Maxwell acquired 50 percent control of the paper, subsequently increasing his holding to more than 80 percent (Caspi and Limor 1992: 58). In the short period when Maxwell was controlling shareholder in Maariv, the newspaper was able to revise its format through the acquisition of color printers. In 1991, Dov Yudkovsky was appointed editor-in-chief of Maariv, having previously been in charge of the work of the Board of Editors of Yediot Ahronot for many years. These changes resulted in a facelift for Maariv, rendering it a Yediot Ahronot look-alike. However, the death

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of controlling shareholder Maxwell left the paper in dire economic straits (Lehman-Wilzig 1999: 8). In 1992, businessman Yaakov Nimrodi acquired Maxwell’s holdings in Maariv, which he integrated as part of an economic conglomerate controlled by his family (Lehman-Wilzig 1999: 9). This move launched a new chapter in the history of the battle between Yediot Ahronot and Maariv , now transformed into a struggle between the Mozes and Nimrodi families. This battle culminated in the 1990s with the “wire-tapping affair,” when Ofer Nimrodi, son of Yaakov Nimrodi and the paper’s editor-in-chief at that time, was convicted in a plea bargain deal of various offenses under the Eavesdropping Law 1979, as well as the offense of disrupting legal proceedings. The verdict against Nimrodi revealed that wiretapping of the phone lines of prominent press figures and businessmen had systematically occurred over a long period of time at Nimrodi’s request.3 Following this conviction, the ethics tribunal of the Press Council determined that Nimrodi was “unfit for inclusion in the press community which he has injured and upon which he has arrogantly cast fistfuls of shame and disgrace.”4 Several years later, Nimrodi was convicted in another plea bargain of criminal offenses related to the disruption of legal proceedings in his first trial.5 His father, Yaakov Nimrodi, was likewise later convicted of witness harassment and disruption of his son’s legal proceedings.6 Arnon Mozes, controlling shareholder in Yediot Ahronot, also came under investigation for eavesdropping on Maariv staff, although the final decision was to not arraign him. Following that decision, Ofer Nimrodi petitioned the High Court of Justice, alleging that the non-arraignment of Mozes amounted to adverse discrimination, but his petition was rejected.7 On the other hand, then-editor of Yediot Ahronot Moshe Vardi was convicted of the unlawful use of materials generated by illicit eavesdropping during his editorship of the newspaper. Vardi was also indicted in respect to unlawful wiretapping and collusion for the execution of unlawful wiretapping, but was acquitted on both counts. Following his conviction, Vardi quit as the newspaper’s editor, despite the fact that the Press Council, reviewing his case, determined that his actions implied no opprobrium against the press.8 As Lehman-Wilzig (1999: 8–9) notes, the wiretapping affair undermined the public’s faith in media leaders, who had been revealed as offenders. The credibility of both newspapers likewise sustained damage because of the conspicuously prejudiced reports each published concerning the affair. From 2007 to 2010, Maariv sustained heavy losses. In 2010, businessman Zaki Rakib became an investor in the newspaper, and routine management of the paper was transferred to him, while the Nimrodi family remained as controlling shareholder. Rakib set out to significantly streamline and cut back the newspaper. One of the moves he considered was to sell Maariv’s printing

Evolution of the Hebrew and Israeli Press | 51

press to the newspaper Yisrael HaYom (Israel Today), controlled by Sheldon Adelson (see below), an act that would inflict considerable economic damage on the HaAretz newspaper, whose printing press was at that time producing Yisrael HaYom (Aberbach 2011). Rakib’s efforts, however, did not alleviate Maariv’s difficult situation: the paper’s serious financial deterioration in 2010, combined with pressure from the newspaper’s creditor, Bank HaPoalim, led to press reports of Maariv’s imminent closure (Shalita and Averbach 2011). In 2011, Discount Investments Group controlling shareholder Nohi Dankner acquired control of Maariv (Shauli and Averbach 2011), a move that many wondered at in view of the printed press’s commercial crisis, and Maariv’s in particular. Opinion was voiced that the move was designed to serve that group’s many economic interests. However, despite the funds channeled to it by Discount Investments, the newspaper’s situation continued to deteriorate. In 2012, the newspaper went into a stay of proceedings, and the option of absolute closure and the dismissal of its staff was back on the agenda. Ultimately, Shlomo Ben-Zvi, publisher of the free daily Makor Rishon (First Source), acquired Maariv, providing employment for some of its staff. The paper’s printing press and the land on which it was built were sold separately (Toker 2012a). The HaAretz daily, which has been in existence longer than Yediot Ahronot and Maariv, is still predominant in the Israeli journalistic scene. In the dichotomy of “quality” versus “popular” press, HaAretz has the image of the former, with a readership consisting of the Israeli elite. Quality press is generally described as serious, informative, and critical journalism that contributes to the oversight of the government in a democratic framework, whereas the popular press is perceived as sensationalist, entertaining, and superficial (Roeh 1994: 39). Amit Kama (2005: 17) notes with regard to HaAretz, that it is perceived and presented both by its employees and by researchers as a communication channel that is created by and for a well-demarcated social group: these are people of higher education, economically well established, Jews of Ashkenazi origin and also having a “left-leaning” orientation in the context of the Jewish-Arab dispute and a neo-liberal one in the economic context.

This evaluation of HaAretz as a “quality” paper—compared to the “popular” or “mass” press—implies a normative hierarchy that ascribes positive traits to quality papers and negative traits to the “tabloid” or “yellow” press. But Yitzhak Roeh proposes a different reading of this division of two newspaper types—namely, between HaAretz and popular dailies such as Yediot Ahronot or Maariv. Roeh (1994: 50), comparing a news report in HaAretz with the matching report of the same issue in Yediot Ahronot, points to a tendency of HaAretz to voice establishment concerns (in the spirit of the

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above-mentioned “objective” approach), choosing a distant, restrained, and “colorless” vocabulary. The Yediot Ahronot report, by contrast, intensifies emotion, expressing the voice of the “people-in-the-street” and using photography to intensify the readers’ experience and sensations. Based on these differences in newspaper coverage, Roeh opines that the “quality” press is perceived as elitist while the “popular” press is perceived as unpretentious. Roeh’s alternative approach views the “popular” press as contributing to democracy, to dialog, and to pluralism, serving as a mouthpiece for the general public (53). This approach sees HaAretz as a paper that strengthens elite and institutional concerns to the exclusion of popular and collective expressions or demonstrations of solidarity (52). HaAretz’s elitist image has to do, among other things, with the middle-class liberalist positions the paper has adopted over the years, even when the prevailing public political mood was more socialist leaning. Gershom Schocken, publisher of HaAretz during the 1950s, was at that time also a member of Knesset (Israeli Parliament), representing the Progressive Party (Rozin 2006:13). Liberalism largely shaped the newspaper’s values and work patterns. The newspaper’s content often expressed incisive criticism of the socialist government’s policy and of other Zionist concepts that were generally accepted at the time. As seen in a previous example, varying treatments of the Holocaust revealed how the political party affi liation of the various newspapers influenced their outlook. In this context, HaAretz challenged the Zionist presentation of the Holocaust, reflecting the spirit of the liberal humanist approach through emphasizing the universal dimension of the Holocaust. In contrast to the generally accepted Zionist view that the Holocaust was a reason to reject the passive Jewish exilic life, HaAretz compared the spiritual richness of life in the Diaspora with Israel’s culturally meager patriotism. HaAretz, therefore, regularly posed incisive questions, calling for re-examination of issues that were presented in other papers as self-evident truths (Zandberg 2008: 200–201). In the spirit of liberalism, Schocken believed in the value of the market of ideas in the proper functioning of a democracy, declaring that his paper would provide space for articles opposed to its ideological line (Rozin 2006: 17). However, HaAretz’s liberal stance and identification with the middle class sometimes led to problematic positions on social issues, for example, with regard to the paper’s attitude toward immigration to Israel of Jews from the Islamic world in the 1950s. Because of the many difficulties encountered through this wave of immigration in Israel’s early years of statehood, and in view of the nation’s deteriorating economic position, as it was verging on bankruptcy, HaAretz advocated that immigrants be subjected to a selection process. As Avi Picard notes, the newspaper trumpeted demographic anxiety

Evolution of the Hebrew and Israeli Press | 53

and the fear that immigration from the Islamic world would change Israel’s character, blurring its Europeanism. The paper published patronizing articles describing North African immigrants as primitive and ignorant (Picard 2006: 126). The newspaper actually sent an emissary on its behalf to North Africa to survey the Jewish communities there. This survey took an aloof stance in describing the communities, emphasizing their lack of hygiene, poverty and many diseases (Picard 2006 130–132). Given the predominance of the three commercial dailies I have discussed, it is interesting to look briefly at a private weekly that maintained a weighty journalistic presence in the first decades of the State of Israel and that sought to position itself as an alternative to the hegemonic press discourse—namely HaOlam HaZeh (This World). This weekly was founded in 1937 by the journalist Uri Kesari under the name of Taysha Ba’Erev (Nine P.M.). In 1946, it was renamed HaOlam HaZeh, and in 1950 it was bought from Kesari by two young men, Uri Avneri and Shalom Cohen. Avneri became the editor and the person most closely identified with HaOlam HaZeh, which continued to appear weekly until 1993. It became the one and only popular opposition newspaper, with an estimated circulation ranging from 13,000 in 1954 to 25,000 in 1966 (Meyers 2008: 386). The paper’s uniqueness in the Israeli press landscape could be traced, among other things, to Avneri’s own distinctiveness. Most Israeli journalists of the 1950s, writing either for party organs or for the private press, had difficulty adopting a critical tone towards the newly established State. A majority of them were middle-aged graduates of the Yishuv era. They admired the Israeli military and its officers, whom they perceived as miracle-workers. They deemed themselves charged with a role in realizing the Zionist vision, and in that capacity they subjected themselves to various professional restrictions (Liebes 1997: 25; Meyers 2008: 374). Avneri, by contrast, was in his twenties, had fought in the War of Independence, and regarded himself as a greater battlefield expert than many officers. HaOlam HaZeh was a private business enterprise; nevertheless, it frequently attacked the commercial newspapers, alleging that because of circulation considerations they did not necessarily adhere to their true positions on political matters. It also attacked the party organs, which stressed the achievements of party members and refrained from criticizing any of their activities. HaOlam HaZeh presented itself as a newspaper of integrity, guided primarily by journalistic considerations even at the risk of paying a financial price. Politically speaking, HaOlam HaZeh defined itself as independent (I would note that 1965 saw the founding of a party by the name of “HaOlam HaZeh–Koach Hadash” [This World–New Force] that nominated Avneri for the Knesset.) compared to the other papers, both party and private, describing them as being linked by their umbilical cords to the establishment and as disseminating its false worldview. In line with this attitude, the paper saw

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itself not only as promoting a different political and ideological position, but as being the sole Israeli newspaper to accurately represent Israeli realities (Meyers 2008: 375). HaOlam HaZeh aggressively criticized government policy, discussed information that was considered harmful to Israel’s image, and adopted marketing strategies that drew vigorous denunciation—for example, it not infrequently carried illustrations of nude women (Liebes 1997: 25). The paper expressed positions recognizing the Palestinian people and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the jurisdiction of the State of Israel and was also in favor of stripping the Israeli statute book of its Jewish theocratic features (Meyers 2008: 374). In positioning itself as a professional journalistic alternative, HaOlam HaZeh adopted the journalistic genre of investigative reporting, which was not widespread in the Israeli press at that time (Meyers 2008: 382). The paper could be said to have adopted a unique journalistic perspective. For example, on the third Independence Day of the State of Israel, while most papers were engrossed with the military parade, presenting a narrative of fondness for the military, HaOlam HaZeh’s description focused on the gap between the dignitaries reviewing the parade and the desperately poor and uneducated boy who had immigrated with his family from Iran and who on Independence Day could forget his troubles for a few hours. This coverage leveled criticism at the gaps in Israeli society and against the festive world view offered by the daily papers (Meyers 2008: 386). HaOlam HaZeh had an interesting tactics for bypassing censorship. For example, in one issue it ran two articles that were seemingly unrelated in close proximity to one another. One was about the decision of the then Prime Minister Ben Gurion to depose his minister of defense, who was demanding reforms; the other was on the capture of a spy ring in Egypt five years earlier. Through the juxtaposition of these two articles, the paper enabled sophisticated readers to infer the context in which the minister of defense was fired (against the backdrop of what would eventually come to be known as the “Unfortunate Affair” in Egypt9) without expressly spelling it out. The military censor, receiving each of the articles separately, could hardly influence what pages they appeared on in the paper and thus remained powerless (Liebes 1997: 33–34). However, it was not only journalistic content but also style that lent the paper its radical tone. Headlines were brief, dramatic, and frequently sardonic. Texts reflected disgust with the ponderous, florid newspaper writing style that characterized the journalism of the fathers of Israel. HaOlam HaZeh, moreover, went so far as to coin new Hebrew words and terms, some of which became assimilated and conventionalized (Meyers 2008: 382). Due to these attributes, which might be referred to as excrescences by the more respectable, mainstream Israeli press (then Prime Minister David Ben Gurion described “a certain weekly” as being dirty and despicable), HaOlam

Evolution of the Hebrew and Israeli Press | 55

HaZeh and its editors became the targets of a great deal of harassment. In 1952, 1953, and 1955, bombs were found in the newspaper’s offices and in the printing press that published it. The General Security Service (GSS) tapped the paper’s phone lines. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officially boycotted reporters of HaOlam HaZeh. Governmental organizations refrained from sending it any of their publications. One of the weapons employed by the GSS against the paper was to publish a rival weekly, named Rimon (Pomegranate or Grenade), which adopted a style similar to that of HaOlam HaZeh, to compete with it while attacking it head on (Meyers 2008: 374). During the 1980s, the Israeli press market underwent a significant change when the Schocken family decided to publish a new popular paper to compete with Yediot Ahronot and Maariv. The decision was made in view of the elitist character of HaAretz, which predetermined that paper’s limited circulation. Thus, Hadashot (News) was published in the years 1984–1993. Hadashot aroused a furor as soon as it appeared. One reason for this was that its staff was employed under personal contracts rather than a collective agreement, which had been the standard in the daily press in Israel until then (Naor 2004: 180). But Hadashot also introduced higher graphic standards into the Israeli press market by printing its news pages in full color, sporting gigantic headlines, and featuring more photographs in its columns alongside relatively brief news items. These attributes, which later percolated into other papers, gave Hadashot a loud, tabloid image, which the paper had difficulty shaking off (Naor 2004: 181). At the outset, Hadashot took an anti-establishment line. For example, it severely criticized and refused to join the Israel Press Council (The paper did ultimately join in 1991.). Hadashot was also the only paper to publish, without the censorship’s permission, details on the circumstances of the death of the two terrorists who had taken part in the hi-jacking of an Egged bus (a case that would eventually become known as the “300 Bus Route Affair”10). The paper was closed down for two days following publication of the article, which gave it the image of left-wing political leanings (Naor 2004: 183–184). Innovative though it was, Hadashot was unable to draw a large enough readership to continue its publication. Even seven years after it began appearing, rates of exposure to Hadashot stood at 7.2 percent, compared to 16.1 percent exposure to Maariv and 50.2 percent to Yediot Ahronot (Caspi and Limor 1992: 62). Its position deteriorated even further with the official inauguration in 1993 of Channel 2, the official commercial television channel, which competed with the newspapers for advertising. Maariv and Yediot Ahronot, too, did their best to shorten Hadashot’s life; for example, they adopted layout innovations such as color printing and a loud graphic style. These latter moves also fitted in with the need to adapt to the television era and compete with its visual stimuli. The veteran newspapers, moreover, head-hunted Hadashot’s

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most successful journalists. Ultimately, less than one month after the launching of the commercial television channel, Hadashot’s publisher announced the decision to close down the paper (Naor 2004: 188–190). Another private commercial newspaper that succeeded was the economic daily Globes, founded in 1983, which survived due to its having its own specialist niche. Over the years, the paper expanded to cover more than only economic affairs (Caspi and Limor 1992: 54). Globes provides daily coverage of developments in the financial markets and is accordingly published in the evening hours. Globes advent and the secret of its longevity seem to be linked to economic development in Israel—more specifically, the business elite’s need for focused economic reporting (an earlier response to this need was seen in the 1960s, with the publication of the Shaar [Gate or Exchange Rate] newspaper, which also dealt with economic issues but which shut down in 1991) (Naor 2004: 242). This global economic trend (Moshe 2009: 194–195) has been reinforced in Israel in recent years through the debut of yet another economic newspaper, namely The Marker, affi liated with HaAretz. In 2008, Yediot Ahronot, too, decided to enter the field of economic journalism, and starting publishing the Calcalist, which is distributed separately from the paper’s main edition (Nossek 2009: 360). A diverse range of periodicals also flourished in private journalism in Israel over the years (an exhaustive list is impossible), aimed at specifically targeted populations. An outstanding example is that of “women’s papers.” The separation between general and “feminine” newspapers prevailed among the press even during the Yishuv era, seen both in women’s sections (beauty tips, domestic matters, etiquette, and decorum) and in separate publications (such as Davar’s Dvar HaPoelet, first published in 1934). This separation expressed the distinction between the general public news domain, identified with the masculine world, and the private domain, identified with the feminine world. LaIsha (For the Woman), Israel’s predominant commercial women’s paper (owned by Yediot Ahronot), was originally published in 1947 as a Yediot Ahronot four-page supplement on domestic and family matters. Six months later it became an independent weekly edited by Shmuel Schnitzer (Leiden 2000: 36; Limor, Adoni, and Mann 2007: 276). Because this weekly distances itself from politics or economics in favor of “lighter” subjects, it generally ranks low in the public and journalistic evaluation. LaIsha significantly influenced the institutionalization of beauty contests and “Mother’s Day” (Herzog 2000: 49; Leiden 2000: 40). Its profitability engendered other attempts to publish “women’s papers,” but most were short-lived. At (You), a periodical published by the rival paper Maariv, was founded in 1967, its first editor being Yosef (Tommy) Lapid. A monthly magazine to begin with, At has been appearing as a fortnightly paper since the 1990s (Limor, Adoni, and Mann 2007: 276). Herzog notes that interviews with the women’s newspaper editors and with

Evolution of the Hebrew and Israeli Press  |  57

their leading journalists suggest they see these papers primarily as economic projects, designed to address as broad a readership as possible and to focus on “feel-good” contextual content (Herzog 2000: 49). One of the advantages of these papers is that they do not deal with current affairs, thus assuring them of a relatively long shelf life. Women’s papers, however, have also influenced the general press, as Herzog (2000: 51) notes: “In the late twentieth century, a blurring of boundaries is taking place: the walls of the feminine ghetto have been breached. Many subjects that formerly belonged to ‘women’s papers’ and ‘women’s sections’ only have broken into the male fortress.” The circulation of commercial newspapers has been showing a decline, albeit a relatively moderate one, in recent years. This decline results from the general crisis of the printed press, due to, among other things, the rise of the on-line press, and also due to the advent of free dailies (which will be discussed below). Table 1.1 shows newspaper exposure data, including free papers, according to a Target Group Index (TGI) survey.

The Rise and Fall of Local Newspapers The 1980s saw the beginning of a decline in the number of newspapers published in Israel, with ownership increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few business entities. Yet, at the same time, the press market was going through a process of decentralization, characterized by the rise of local press and an increase in segmented papers, especially those of a commercial nature. These trends were related to profound changes that Israeli society had been experiencing since the 1970s. However, the rise of new journalistic formats, such as local papers, is also linked to the growing strength of electronic communication and the increasing threat it posed to the printed press market. As the newspaper market adapts to a reality in which the electronic media plays the key role, at least in the realms of news and current events, new Table 1.1. Exposure to the various newspapers, 2008–2011, TGI data (in percentages) Weekday percentage

Weekend percentage

Newspaper

2008

2009

2010

2011

2008

2009

2010

2011

Yediot Ahronot

36.2

34.0

34.9

35.8

47.1

46.7

43.4

43.4

Maariv

14.5

14.0

13.0

11.5

19.5

17.7

16.0

13.1

HaAretz

7.3

7.1

6.6

6.6

8.7

8.5

7.7

7.3

Yisrael HaYom

21.5

26.8

36.3

38.1

—

—

28.0

31.3

Globes

3.3

4.2

4.0

4.4

—

—

—

—

Jerusalem Post

4.2

6.8

8.7

8.3

—

—

—

—

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newspaper formats have arisen to satisfy new requirements. These formats sometimes express alternative journalistic concepts and may even challenge the hegemonic national values that the press reflected in the first decades of the State’s existence. The local press grew centripetally—from the peripheral to the central communities—and was bound up with local advertising needs. For small and medium-scale advertisers directing their publicity at a specific regional audience, the cost of advertising in the national press was both prohibitive and ineffective, whereas the local paper offered a suitable alternative. But beyond the economic aspects, newspaper coverage of the periphery had been neglected for years. The State of Israel, with its small area, was deemed a single territory, and newspapers tended to focus on national issues. This led to newspaper editorial boards being concentrated in central Israel, or, more precisely, in Tel Aviv. The under-allocation of resources for local coverage was accompanied by political changes—spurred by the switch to a direct election system for the heads of municipalities. This led to an emphasis on local communication needs—needs to which the nationwide press was not responding (Caspi 1998: 208–209). National news reports referred to the periphery in the context of “disorder,” frequently presenting these communities and their inhabitants as stereotypes and leaving no room on their pages for local matters, such as culture, education, and sports. The local papers filled this gap, reinforcing a sense of autonomous local identity (Kohen 1997; HaCohen 2001). Many new local newspapers started out as leaflets made up mainly of bulletin board advertisements, which were printed on the initiative of local advertising agencies. It was the desire to promote these bulletin boards that led to the inclusion of additional local information in the leaflets, and later to the publication of articles and news items dealing with local affairs as a means of attracting readers. The local papers in this format were usually small private initiatives with a low level of institutionalization: they did not separate administration and the editorial board (many local rags were “one-mannewspapers”), they showed little commitment to the values of journalistic ethics, and they often failed to abide by the norms of professional journalism (Caspi 1998: 209–211). Once the national press corporations entered the market, the character of the local papers changed considerably. In the beginning, the national press ignored the growth of the local papers, even demonstrating contempt for them, but in the late 1970s, the major press corporations, realizing the economic significance of the local papers, concluded that they could not afford to ignore the local markets. At first, they attempted to publish local supplements as appendixes to the national papers, but the costs were high relative to those incurred by the local newspapers, and thus they were not an adequate substitute.

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Discussions over the founding of commercial television in Israel likewise prompted the major press corporations to seek marketing niches that would enable cheaper advertising. The press corporations assumed that the principal advertisers on television would be large commercial firms and that their television advertising budgets would cut into their budgets for the national press (Caspi 1998: 214). The first press corporation to enter into the local press market was the Schocken chain (HaAretz), which began publishing the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha’Ir in 1978. About a year later, the Tel Aviv weekly Ha’Ir (The City) appeared. Within a few years, the Schocken corporation’s local press chain expanded to include fourteen local newspapers. Shortly after that, the Yediot Tikshoret (of Yediot Ahronot) and Maariv corporations (as part of the Kan chain it had founded) began to develop local newspaper chains competing with the Schocken corporation. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Schocken chain and Yediot Tikshoret were the two predominant concerns in this market, owning around two-thirds of that market’s most widely circulated local papers (Caspi and Limor 1992: 72). Reading surveys dating from the early 1990s indicated that 40 percent of the population consumed at least one local paper on a weekly basis (Caspi and Limor 1992: 72). However, interviews conducted with the readers of the central local paper, Kol Ha’Ir (Voice of the Town), indicated a superficial reading pattern, characterized by merely glancing at the headlines. This was due to the broad scope and highly diversified character of the local paper and the perception that, as a source of local information, it did not require careful reading (Gazit 2003: 71). Currently, exposures to weekend local papers continue to be high, even though recent years have seen a decline. In the first half of 2007, exposure to the Schocken chain local papers stood at 29 percent of respondents, to Yediot Tikshoret local papers at 30.8 percent, and to Maariv local papers at 21.5 percent. The Ha’Ir local paper closed down at the end of 2010, leaving the supplement Akhbar Ha’Ir (City Mouse). The major local newspapers coming out on weekends are broad in scope, frequently numbering more than a hundred pages, with advertisements taking up a very large volume of space. Alongside reportage on “trivialities”— what is happening in this or that neighborhood, cultural events, and town gossip—they also feature reference to nationwide and global events. Nir Gazit (2003: 44), who examined the Jerusalem local newspaper Kol Ha’Ir in the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s, notes that the number of local news items in the paper’s news section is about equal to the number of national news items, and the two categories are not separated. Local papers also offer a variety of writing styles and veer among different themes. For example, Jerusalem’s Kol Ha’Ir seeks to cultivate solidarity among Jerusalemites, aiming to structure imaginary local public arenas that cultivate local patriotism. Yet at the same time it emphasizes social differences

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of opinion and social rifts in Jerusalem, especially the polarization between the secular and the ultra-orthodox sectors, which it presents from an intolerant, secular, ethnocentric viewpoint (Gazit 2003: 48). Along with reporting on various current affairs, local papers assign plenty of space to personal columns and articles dealing with social phenomena in their human, rather than establishment-oriented, aspects. The rise of local newspapers constituted an important contribution in various cultural fields. Thus, for example, the local papers, especially in Tel Aviv, inspired by foreign newspapers, included an unprecedented volume of detailed reporting on pop music. According to Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi (2004: 39), the Tel Aviv local papers (the Schocken chain’s Ha’Ir, Yediot Tikshoret’s Tel Aviv, and the Kan chain’s Zman Tel Aviv [Tel Aviv Time]) dealt extensively with the local rock/pop culture, promoting Tel Aviv as a cultural center. The music culture and creative work in Jerusalem were given similar coverage. Until that time, the main newspaper forum for discussing popular music and entertainment was the Lahiton (combination of “Hits” and “Newspaper”) weekly, which came out from 1969 to the mid1980s (Limor, Adoni, and Mann 2007: 276). The inclusion of discussions of pop/rock culture in the local papers contributed to the professionalization of these topics in the national press as well (Regev and Seroussi 2004: 39). The papers’ reportage on popular music can be seen as a rebellion against journalistic seriousness and an attempt to offer alternative content, reflecting an environment looking to forge a new identity (Taub 1997: 38). These local papers used the natural, fluent language of protest. They expropriated cultural criticism from the “experts,” giving expression to the cultural codes of a particular group (Taub 1997: 39). These papers employed a sarcastic style, a position in which, according to Gadi Taub (1997: 37), they ultimately entrenched themselves. The youthful rebellion expressed by the local papers eroded over time, with talented writers moving on to more prestigious newspapers or media.

The Arabic-Language Press As I noted above, the Arab press is rooted in the Palestinian press of the early twentieth century. The establishment of the State of Israel severed the mutual ties between Palestinian journalists belonging to the wider Arab world. The Arab intellectual elite was uprooted, hindering the rehabilitation of the Palestinian press. In fact, in the years 1948–1967, scarcely any Palestinian newspapers were being published in Israel. One exception was the Histadrut publication Al-Yawm (Today), published from 1948 to 1968. After Al-Yawm closed down, the government began publishing Al Inbaa (The News), whose main readership was in the political circles related to the labor movement

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(Jamal 2006: 53). The purpose of this press was to mold the awareness of the State’s Arab population, reconciling Arabs to their new reality. As Amal Jamal (2006: 51) argues, these newspapers were part of the State’s official communications policy that stressed the supremacy of Jewish culture while justifying the colonization of the Arab geographical and social expanse. The publishing of government-sponsored newspapers in the Arabic language was part of the Jewish majority’s activation of various means of controlling the Arab minority (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 47–48). The Communist Party, however, published a newspaper of its own, Al Ittihad (The Union). Although this paper also advocated the integration of the Arab population into the life of the state, it became, in the absence of any other podium, a channel for Palestinian intellectuals to express their opinions on current affairs (Jamal 2006: 53). One exception was the Palestinian weekly El Ardh (The Earth/The Land), an organ of the El Ardh movement, which preached non-integration of the Arabs into Israel and the reinforcement of ties with the Arab expanse. However, only fourteen editions of this paper were published before the El Ardh movement was outlawed (Mansour 1990). Following the 1967 (Six Day) War, the Palestinian citizens of Israel came into closer contact with the Arab expanse in general and with Palestinians living on the other side of the Green Line (pre-1967 frontier) in particular. Newspapers from Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria crossed from the West Bank and from Gaza into Israel. During the 1970s, various attempts were made to found new newspapers, but these were unsuccessful (Mansour 1990). In the early 1980s, the Israeli establishment lost interest in publishing newspapers representing its views, and the Al Inbaa paper closed down. At the same time, new Arab political parties with national tendencies started to evolve, seeking to make their voices heard through political newspapers. The Al Watan (The Homeland) was founded in 1983 as the weekly organ of the Progressive Movement for Peace, and it was followed in the 1980s and 1990s by other party papers, such as the Arab Democratic Party’s weekly, Al Diyar (The Regions), published in Nazareth since 1988, and the Al Sirat (The Upright Path), the organ of the Islamist movement, which appeared in 1986 as a monthly magazine in Umm El-Fahm. These publications stressed the independent national Palestinian identity (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 62). At the same time, inspired by developments in the Hebrew press, independent commercial Arabic-language papers began publishing. Mustafa Kabha (2006) distinguishes four central groupings in the Palestinian press of recent years: The Communist Party press. Despite this group’s very diverse journalistic heritage, the 1990s marked a downturn in the circulation of the communist press, due to, among other reasons, the fall of the Soviet Union. The most outstanding of the communist papers is Al Ittihad. In an attempt to stem the

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downtrend, Al Ittihad in 1991 became an evening paper, but its economic position did not improve. National-oriented party press. This group includes papers that stress Palestinian nationality on the one hand (for example, Al Midan [The Square], 1989–1991, of the Abnaael-Balad [Sons of the Land]; and Al Watan [Homeland], 1983–1994, of the Progressive List) and newspapers emphasizing the all-Arab regional identity on the other hand (for example, Fasl al Maqal [The Decisive Treatise], 1996 to 2004 and resuming in 2005, of Balad). The First Intifada, which broke out in 1987, was a milestone in the history of the newspapers emphasizing the Palestinian identity, since it led to expressions of solidarity with the Palestinians residing in the Territories. Due to the support of these papers for the intifada, the Israeli censorship imposed restrictions on them, disqualifying articles and expressions and actually closing down some newspapers (Kabha 2006: 13). The religious press. The roots of the religious press can likewise be traced to the pre-state era and the fi rst decades of statehood. The religious press in its original format refrained on the whole from dealing with political issues. With the strengthening of the Islamic movement from the second half of the 1980s, its content changed. In 1986, the movement published the newspaper Al Sirat (The Upright Path) and in 1989 the paper Sawt alHaq (Voice of the Truth). The Islamist movement’s newspapers are closely supervised by the censorship, especially in times of security tension, and some have already been closed down. Attempts to publish Islamic newspapers not belonging to the Islamist movement have been short-lived (Kabha 2006: 15–16). The commercial press. In the 1980s, as the establishment press waned, private Arab newspapers began to be published, some as ventures by private Jewish concerns. Initially published as local papers, these later became national newspapers (Kabha 2006: 16). A pioneer of these private newspapers was Al Sinara (The Fishhook), which came out in 1983 as a nationwide weekly. Its success engendered two more private weeklies: Kul Al-Arab (All Arabs), under joint Jewish-Arab ownership, was first published in 1987, and Panorama in 1988. These and other papers that followed in their footsteps reflected the adoption of general economic patterns in Jewish society (for example, the rise of the local papers). This indicates a rise in the standard of living and the reinforcement of consumer culture trends. The newspapers tend towards sensationalist coverage and lack in-depth journalistic work. Advertisements account for around 50 percent of their volume (Jamal 2006: 53–54). In Kabha’s (2006: 18) opinion, one of the most conspicuous attributes of this commercial press is the adoption of Palestinian nationalist rhetoric alongside “Israelification” processes, especially in the domains of advertising and consumerism. This press addresses a diverse range of topics using a light tone (Jamal 2006:

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62), and challenges the journalistic tradition that depended on the Israeli establishment or on political parties and movements. However, most newspapers of this group are in difficult economic straits and as a result employ only small part-time teams and are thus unable to adopt professional journalistic codes (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 60–64). The unique patterns of development of the Arabic-language press are also reflected in the press consumption patterns of the Arab public, which differ from those of the Jewish public. A survey of the Arab public indicated that only 9.3 percent of respondents read daily Arabic newspapers, compared to 43.5 percent reading weekend Arabic newspapers. According to Jamal, these figures indicate that the Arab public has adapted its reading patterns to the current structure of the press, in which commercial newspapers are published once a week. Moreover, the absence of any widespread or ongoing Arab journalistic heritage and the relatively late development of the Arabic-language press, at a time when electric media are already prevalent, seems to have inflicted long-term damage on the reading habits of the target crowds of the Arabic newspapers (Jamal 2006: 59–60). Bear in mind that some Arabs also read Hebrew-language daily newspapers. The proportion of respondents to the above-mentioned survey who claimed that they read daily papers in Hebrew stood at 17.4 percent. This rate is high compared to readers of Arabic-language dailies, but still less than half the number in Jewish society. This situation seems to reflect the alienation Arab readers feel vis-à-vis the Hebrew press, and the fact that Hebrew is not their mother tongue (nevertheless, the proportion of Hebrew speakers in Arab society is far higher than that of Hebrew newspaper readers) (Jamal 2006: 60–63). It should be noted that this sense of alienation is not ungrounded. As Eli Avraham (2001) shows in his study, Hebrew newspapers do not regularly cover Arab communities. Moreover, most of the correspondents allocated to cover those communities are Jews and strangers to the Arab culture. This has affected the character of the coverage, how the articles were framed, the use of words and terminology, etc. The “otherness” of Arab citizens is a recurrent motif in the Hebrew press, reflected in the distinction between “them” (the Arabs) and “us” (the Jews), and proceeding from the basic premise whereby Hebrew newspapers are intended for the Jewish “us” (111). A sampling taken by Avraham of articles dealing with the Arab population in the Hebrew press showed that great prominence is given to articles focusing on crime, life quality issues, involvement in hostile activity, declarations and demands of the establishment, disasters, and accidents. In a substantial number of cases, the coverage of Arab affairs includes a motif of violence. These trends in coverage seem to derive in part from a link between the security establishment and the journalists (138). Avraham notes, however, that there are differences in the

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nature of coverage of the various newspapers, and that over the years HaAretz has made appeals for Arab integration into Israeli society and protested discrimination against them (14).

Russian-Language Press During the years of the state’s existence, a great many newspapers have appeared in various foreign languages, including German, French, Romanian, Bulgarian, Yiddish, and Ladino. These papers flourished especially in the first twenty years of statehood. They were meant to provide a response to the masses of immigrants who were not fluent in the Hebrew language. The political parties, recognizing the recruitment power of the foreign language press among recently arrived immigrants, predominated in this arena. These papers contributed to the immigrants’ adaptation to life in Israel, but over time became less and less relevant. The need for an Israeli foreign-language press lessened as the immigrants became better integrated into Israeli reality through reading those same foreign-language papers. Moreover, the waves of immigration became progressively smaller in size. Israeli foreign-language newspapers inevitably started losing their readership. The waning prestige of the political party press as a whole also contributed to the disappearance of that press (Erez 1998; Caspi and Limor 1992: 49–50). Because of the small Russian readership in the first decades of statehood (due partially to the fact that during part of that period Jews were prohibited from leaving the Soviet Union), the press in that language was negligible compared to that of other foreign-language newspapers. In the first two decades, four or five publications appeared at relatively low frequency and regularity. The year 1968 marked a milestone in the development of the Russian-language press, with the advent of the weekly Nasha Strana (Our Country) (which after some years became a daily). This weekly paper, like a few other publications appearing in the Russian language, survived by adapting to the needs of the approximately one hundred thousand people arriving in the first wave of immigration from the Soviet Union in the 1970s (Caspi and Elias 2000: 431). But as Nelly Elias (2005: 12) recounts, the Russian press did not prosper until the 1990s, following the second wave of immigration from Russia, which was far larger than the first, numbering about a million. Russian-language newspapers and periodicals flourished following that major wave of immigration: during the 1990s an estimated 130 publications appeared in the Russian language, including four dailies and about sixty weeklies. This press flourished for number of reasons. It was influenced not only by the size of the immigrant population arriving in Israel during that period from the member states of the former Soviet Union (FSU), but also by the attributes of this population. Due to the restrictions imposed under the Soviet

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regime, most of the immigrants arriving in Israel knew neither Hebrew nor Yiddish, and very little about Judaism. The Jewish identity of some of the immigrants was translated, to a certain extent, into their affiliating with the elite intellectual group that regarded the Russian language and culture as meaningful identity components that must be preserved: “Alongside their great appreciation for Russian culture, many of the immigrants interpreted Israeli culture as being inferior to the Russian, thus reinforcing their sense of “European” superiority” (Elias 2005: 17). The intelligentsia viewed newspaper reading as a leisure activity encouraging cultural inspiration. Interviews conducted by Elias (2008: 65) indicate that access to the Russian-language press helped preserve the immigrants’ perception of themselves as educated and enlightened people, despite the fact that their employment status may have deteriorated significantly and notwithstanding the difficulties of cultural, social and economic absorption. While desiring to feel part of Israeli society, the immigrants tended to preserve attributes of a distinctive cultural group, seen through their choosing to live in residential areas with large concentrations of people originating from the FSU and interacting with others of their extraction (Elias 2005: 17–18). Contributing to this reality were trends occurring in Israeli society in the 1990s that played a significant part in the absorption patterns of this wave of immigration and the development of Russian-language media. Israel’s first decades of existence were characterized by the concept of the melting pot, which required immigrants to shed their Diaspora cultural heritage and adapt as quickly as possible to the renascent Hebrew language and culture. By the 1990s, however, the concept of multiculturalism was becoming fairly widespread, giving various cultures equal standing within Israeli society. As a result, the Russian language was viewed as a legitimate channel of communication for the transmission of information, education, and culture for immigrants (Elias 2008: 34). This attitude helped preserve the social and cultural attributes unique to immigrants from the countries of the FSU, and thus the media in general and the press in particular became a means to this end. Within multiculturalism, media consumption in the language of one’s country of origin was considered to be completely legitimate, whereas previously, indulgence in such activity would have meant exclusion from the Israeli collective (Elias 2005: 46). In the late 1980s, with the rising waves of immigration from the countries of the FSU, the leaders of the Israeli press believed that Russian-language supplements to existing Hebrew daily newspapers would respond to the immigrants’ needs. This strategy had been used during the mass waves of immigration in the 1950s and 1970s, but the approach then was to prompt immigrants’ integration into their new society and encourage them to become loyal readers of the newspaper. In the spirit of the melting pot, the message of

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these early supplements emphasized that the need for press in the language of the country of origin was only an interim stage in transforming the immigrants into an integral part of the Hebrew readership (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 110). Similar to ownership patterns of most of the Hebrew printed press, the Russian press was concentrated in the hands of three principal corporations. Dan Caspi and Nelly Elias (2000: 434) view these corporations as a type of shopping mall, in which a few small, not very well known, stores cluster around a large anchor store of a well-known firm. Similarly, every such press corporation relies on an “anchor newspaper,” surrounded by small periodicals and local papers. This structure allows papers to reduce production costs while increasing exposure to readers and also to procure marketing advantages vis-à-vis advertisers. The “Novosti” group owns the flagship paper: the daily Novosti Nedeli (News of the Week). In the 1990s, this newspaper was considered the second most widely circulated among the Russian-language press, after Vesti. At the very outset, this core paper advocated social cultural segregation, while severely criticizing Israeli policy towards immigrants from the FSU. This editorial line changed when the socio-economic position of the newspaper readers improved (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 113). The same corporation also publishes the newspaper Vermia. This paper, which originally formed part of the Maariv corporation, took a severe blow when the control of the corporation passed into the hands of the Nimrodi family: in 1992, following a labor dispute, most of its employees deserted in favor of the Yediot Ahronot group. Vermia was ultimately acquired by the Novosti group (Roth 2007). Apart from these three dailies, the corporation brought out other publications during the 1990s, including weeklies and local papers. Yediot Tikshoret, the second corporation in the Russian-language press market, holds the daily paper Vesti (News), considered the most widely circulated and highest quality of the Russian-language daily papers. This daily was founded by a nucleus of Vermia’s staff who switched to working for the Yediot Tikshoret corporation (Caspi and Elias 2000: 437). The third corporation, “ESR Russian Press,” is the smallest of the three. In the 1990s it published several daily and weekly papers in Russian (Panorama, 24 Hours and Globus), and is also a partner in a few Russian-language local newspapers. Russian-language newspapers are usually small businesses, most of them resource-poor and with a meager staff who are often under unfavorable terms of employment (Caspi and Elias 2000: 445). Some of the journalists have professional experience from their country of origin, but many are from a wide range of other professions (engineers, teachers, musicians). These employees, unable to find work in their original professions, have found a substitute in journalism. As a result, the Russian newspapers have at times been adversely affected by the journalistic inexperience of staff. Moreover, even

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the experienced journalists have been forced to abandon the norms that they were familiar with from the Soviet press for those generally accepted in Israel (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 114–115). Along with the original material contributed by its reporters and correspondents—both staff and freelance—the Russian-language papers have run material copied from newspapers in the FSU. Frequently, they did so in violation of copyright and without payment of due royalties (Ben-Yaakov 1998; Caspi and Elias 2000: 448). The Russian-language press in Israel also got its content from another important source—namely, the Hebrew press. To what extent do these newspapers reinforce the cultural separatism of Russian society in Israel? According to Elias (2005), the consumption of Russian-language publications does not necessarily prove a separatist agenda; on the contrary, these papers attest to a high degree of involvement in Israeli affairs. In interviews conducted by Elias with readers of Russian newspapers, most interviewees showed little interest in what was happening in the FSU. Moreover, since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, the Russian-language press has shown a marked upsurge in interest in current affairs and commentary on daily events in Israel. This interest has become an important agent of socialization. The Russian-language newspapers enable readers to continue using Russian, for which they have a great sense of cultural and emotional affinity, while at the same time adapting to Israeli reality and its political discourse. Elias accordingly disputes the view that the segmentation of the Russian-language press represents the risk of dissociation and division in the Israeli public. In her opinion, “the case of the Russian-language media in Israel actually shows that the structuring of the collective identity of Russian speakers by media in their own language does not encourage their separatism but rather contributes to a new type of social interaction while accelerating their entry into the public sphere” (47). This concept gains strength in view of the declining prestige of the Russian press in recent years, as Russian-speaking immigrants integrate into Israeli society. The circulation of Russian-language newspapers has declined substantially (Epstein and Cheimetz 2007: 84), and, as a result, many have closed down. Israeli Russian-language newspapers have found it difficult to compete with the Russian-speaking mass media, especially television and radio. Also, Russian-language Internet sites originating in Israel have flourished since the beginning of the twenty-first century and provide up-to-the-minute information on events in Israel (Elias 2008: 34).

The Ultra-Orthodox Press In Israeli press circles, the ultra-orthodox press is one of the most long-standing segmental arenas. The highly diversified ultra-orthodox newspapers in the

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State of Israel are published at varying frequency and with varying consistency. One of the most predominant is HaModia, which was first published in 1950. This newspaper is identified with Agudat Israel and linked to the Gur Hassidic sect. In the 1950s, it became the main organ of the moderate Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox camp. Its hegemonic status within that group remained firm for about two decades. At the end of the 1970s, with rising political rifts within ultra-orthodox society, other papers began to appear. Yated Ne’eman, (Strongly Anchored Peg), first published in 1985, represents the voice of the Lithuanian camp (Levy 1990: 30). Yom LeYom (Day to Day), identified with the Shas Movement, began appearing in 1993. The image of the ultra-orthodox press was thus profoundly affected by ultra-orthodox politics and its internal struggles (Levy 1990: 34). Other publications that identify with parties or communities are also currently in press, as well as commercial weeklies, such as Mishpacha (Family) since 1987 and BaKehila (In the Community) since 1977 (Levy 1990: 30–31; K. Kaplan 2006: 16). Some of these papers are run by or in cooperation with secular businesses. The commercial newspapers seek to reach the broadest possible ultra-orthodox communities. Their graphic style is innovative, incorporating photographs and simple language (Levy 1990: 35). The ultra-orthodox commercial press, too, contains attacks against secular society, sometimes even more vicious than those typical of the party press. Yet at the same time, this press reflects a rapprochement with secular society. These papers are, among other things, a convenient means of advertising for secular commercial firms looking for a suitable channel through which to penetrate ultra-orthodox society. These papers also publish interviews with secular individuals that focus on matters important to ultra-orthodox society (Levy 1990: 49–50). The rise of the commercial ultra-orthodox press thus has come about at the expense of the old, ideological press. It is not surprising, therefore, that veteran newspapers such as HaModia and Yated Neeman make it their practice to attack the commercial newspapers, protesting their pernicious social influence (K. Kaplan 2006: 32). Thus, in recent decades the ultra-orthodox press has been undergoing a renovation, becoming more pluralistic in terms of the voices, currents, and interests that it reflects. In character, however, it differs fundamentally from Western secular newspapers. Kimmy Kaplan (2006) comments on a long line of attributes common to ultra-orthodox papers, including some that contravene the generally accepted definitions of a newspaper, which I consider below. • Distinct from the secular newspapers’ modern democratic view that the public’s right to know is an important basic value, the ultra-orthodox papers actually adopt a position whereby “the public has the right not to know.” These newspapers report on life not as it is, but as it should be (Levy 1990: 310).

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•

•

•

•

Ultra-orthodox papers omit reporting on many topics, such as those related to sex affairs, criminal activity, or sports. As a rule, news coverage is secondary to opinion pieces. “Forbidden” events are sometimes presented, but given negative coverage. For example, the reporting of a win in a sports match will include a general denunciation of sporting events, which will be presented as an act of “hellenization” (Levy 1990: 33). Ultra-orthodox newspapers are supervised by rabbinical spiritual committees. These committees examine their contents to ascertain that they are not reporting on matters that are taboo in orthodox society and that the tenor of the news reflects the official ideology that the newspaper is supposed to promulgate (Levy 1990: 32). The committees will censor any content that puts a positive slant on the secular or the religious Zionist world (Rashi 2008: 53). Women authors and events relating to women are almost totally excluded from newspaper writing. If a paper does include text written by a woman, her gender is concealed, for example through the use of initials or a pseudonym. (Levy 1990: 31). These newspapers provide a forum through which intra-ultra-orthodox groups can provoke one another ideologically. They sometimes also include sharp self-criticism on events within the ultra-orthodox community. The newspapers employ acid rhetoric accompanied by high-flown and graphic language in order to goad rivals. Writers rely on their readers being thoroughly well acquainted with Jewish traditional sources. The degree of hostility toward the State and its institutions varies with the various identities of the newspaper: the most fiercely outspoken are the organs of the extreme ultra-orthodox groups HaHoma (The Wall) and HaEdah (The Congregation), which liken the State of Israel to a Nazi state (Levy 1990: 47). The negative attitude of ultra-orthodox society towards secular society is demonstrated by, among other things, the use of alternative appellations for current secular terms, for example ASI (Army of the State of Israel) in lieu of IDF (Israel Defense Forces) (Levy 1990: 41).

The Press Crisis and the Advent of Free Newspapers In recent years, the printed press has been in the throes of a crisis that grows worse as Internet infiltration spreads. The downturn is felt most particularly in the developed capitalist world, where digital communication devices abound. In developing countries such as India, newspaper circulation is on the rise, but as the use of the Internet spreads to Asian countries, the trend will presumably reverse and newspaper circulation will decline (McNair 2009: 348). Surveys on newspaper reading in the United States indicate that whereas among adults newspaper reading as a daily practice stands at about 70 percent, only 20 percent of young people read a newspaper on a daily basis (Mindich 2005: 3).

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The decline in the circulation of the printed press, and, as a result, in their advertising income, derives in part from the change in news-consumption habits. The tendency to keep up with the news through rigid time frames, such as reading a morning paper, is not as dominant as it once was. The perception of the press is changing. New journalistic genres like blogging undermine the vertical relations between newsmakers and news consumers, while, alternatively, horizontal citizen-to-citizen media relations are created. This era is also the harbinger of a crisis of the conventional press, reflected in the decline in the number of professional journalists employed in news organizations and the overthrow of professional journalistic concepts. Many budgets are switching from advertising in the printed press to advertising on the Internet. In spite of this, Internet journalism has not yet attained the income enjoyed by the printed press in the past, and its financial capabilities are still limited. Moreover, the printed press is still the biggest employer in the newspaper market today (Weaver 2009: 396). Yet the decline in their revenues is shrinking the size of newsrooms, curtailing the ability to publish independent, in-depth investigative reports, and causing work conditions to deteriorate—and with them journalists’ professional autonomy (Weaver 2009: 396). In the United States, there is a prevalent phenomenon of different newspapers partnering up on the same news desk in order to reduce overheads, undermining news heterogeneity (Bird, 2009, 294–295). One response to the decline in demand for the printed press is the rise of free dailies. These giveaways are a kind of journalistic appetizer for readers who are not particularly hungry for the news and would not necessarily spend money on a paper. They are aimed at a relatively young public and present local and international news items accompanied by little, if any, editorial comment. Alongside these items, most of which are fairly brief, appear slightly longer columns dealing with matters of local culture, sports, or economics (Wilcox 2005: 356). Advertisements published in the free paper account of 50 percent of its volume and constitute the economic basis for its existence. Free papers usually rely on non-independent journalistic sources, such as other news sources, public relations agencies, authorities, or news agencies. The savings in costs is achieved, for one thing, by employing non-tenured staff, such as freelancers (Franklin 2006: 153). The global press trends that brought about the rise of the giveaway newspapers are clearly discernible in Israel, too. The traditional (paid-for) newspapers are in crisis, despite the relative stability of their rates of exposure. Maariv is suffering ongoing losses and personnel cutbacks, and time after time finds itself at risk of closure. The Schocken group raised capital by selling about one fourth of its shares to German investors. Moreover, HaAretz, in order to stabilize its economic position, entered into the market segment of economic journalism and in 2005 launched The Marker as an economic

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supplement of HaAretz. This supplement originated online, starting out as an independent economic Internet newspaper. Taking on gradually increasing weightiness as part of HaAretz, it ultimately became that newspaper’s economic anchor (Nossek 2009: 360). As stated, the rise of the free newspaper has spread to Israel as well. In 2006, the giveaway paper Israeli began being published. However, it ran into difficulties after a short time, when the owner’s financial resources were depleted and the partnership between him and American-Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson failed (Koren-Dinar 2007). In 2007, the Israeli had a circulation of some 60 thousand copies, which were distributed at railway stations and bus stops. It ceased appearing at the beginning of the year 2008 (Weltzer 2007a). In 2007, Adelson began publishing Yisrael HaYom (Israel Today) which, abandoning generally accepted giveaway paper distribution tactics, was handed out door-to-door and not only in concentrated population hubs. Within a short space of time, Yisrael HaYom reached 250 thousand printed copies a day (Weltzer 2007b). According to TGI surveys, in the second half of 2007, the rate of exposure to Yisrael HaYom was more than 15 percent, and it was rated as the third most widely read newspaper after Yediot Ahronot and Maariv. Even so, following publication of Yisrael HaYom, the exposure rate of all readers to daily newspapers did not increase, since most readers of this paper also read another paper (TGI survey 2007). In 2008, the rate of exposure of Yisrael HaYom rose to 21 percent, and it was ranked as Israel’s second most widely circulated newspaper after Yediot Ahronot (TGI survey 2008). The newspaper’s rate of exposure rose again in 2009 to 26.8 percent. In that year, the paper also began distributing an expanded weekend edition. In 2010, exposure to Yisrael HaYom for the first time surpassed that of Yediot Ahronot (36.3 percent as compared with 34.9 percent; TGI survey 2010). In 2011, too, exposure to Yisrael HaYom outstripped exposure to Yediot Ahronot (38.1 percent compared to 35.8 percent; TGI Survey, 2011). With the rapid ascent of Yisrael HaYom and with its owner, the Jewish American Sheldon Adelson, being positively identified with the right-wing camp in general and with Binyamin Netanyahu in particular, a bill was tabled in December 2009 that was designed to restrict the involvement of foreign residents in the Israeli press market. The third giveaway paper, Metro Yisrael (Israel Metro), was launched shortly after Yisrael HaYom. It was quickly renamed Israel Post, following an action by Metro International alleging that the name of the free newspaper was causing it damage (Halpern 2009). The choice of a name including the word “Post” was intended to hint at a link between the giveaway paper and its publisher, the Jerusalem Post group. In early 2008, the Yediot Tikshoret corporation began publishing the 24 Dakot (24 Minutes) free paper, containing leisure and sports sections and a little news (Weltzer 2008), originating

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from Yediot Ahronot and the Ynet site belonging to that group. The newspaper ceased appearing in 2009. The free papers collaborated with the printed press corporations on matters of printing and distribution (Ben-Tzur 2007).

Conclusion The phenomenon of modern nationalism is strongly bound up with the rise of the modern press. The press enabled the welding of a public possessing a common awareness and created an affinity among people unacquainted with one another. The use of national languages by these newspapers marked a milestone in the chronicles of nations. Newspapers were a platform from which to effectively transmit information, thereby facilitating political integration within the framework of the national unit. Even greater importance was attached to the press in the history of modern Jewish nationalism. It was no accident that many Zionist leaders were journalists. In the absence of a common territory for the Jewish people, the newspapers constituted a public domain—a “paper territory”—and the journalists holding sway over that domain enjoyed preeminent status. The importance of the press published in Eretz Yisrael was not less than that of the Hebrew press in the Diaspora. Newspapers accompanied the Zionist project, helping to enlist the public in favor of collective national goals, contributing to the dissemination and assimilation of the Hebrew language among immigrants, and encouraging the transformation of immigrant crowds, greatly differentiated on a cultural level, into a public with shared yearnings. Today, too, in an age when the nation-state is weakening and the media cross international boundaries, the newspaper remains, on the whole, a means of communication possessing more nationalistic features than other media. For example, while satellite television channels transmit broadcasts that can be seen simultaneously in different countries, and while the current music hit can be heard in London, New York, Delhi, or Tel Aviv, newspaper authorship, even on foreign affairs, is written in or converted into the national language. And it is the very use of that language that often provides the setting for nationalism and for relating to the nation in natural, even banal, terms. Of course, the printed press arena is not free of global influences: writing genres, foreign affairs reporting, etc. all infuse and influence the national press. Accordingly, in this arena too, we can identify global trends. Newspapers may also contribute to processes of social decentralization and fragmentation, which are reflected in the strengthening of the segmental and the local press. However, as indicated through the discussion of the Israeli-Russian-language press, the existence of a segmental press does not necessarily delay adaptation and assimilation into the national space.

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Notes 1. The term “paper territory” was taken from Nahum Sokolow’s article “To Combine, to Inquire, and Clarify”[Letzaref, levarer, ve-lelaben] in Ha-Asif [The Harvest] vol. 2 (Warsaw, 1885), pp. 1–14, which discussed the “phraseology government,” i.e., the “government of expressions,” which characterizes the dominance of the press in modern times. 2. The reparations agreement was signed in 1952 between Germany and Israel. Pursuant to the agreement, Germany covenanted to transfer monies to Israel for the settlement and rehabilitation of Jewish refugees and also to transfer payments to Jewish organizations. It did so out of the recognition that inconceivable crimes had been committed against members of the Jewish people during the Nazi regime, and by way of compensation for those crimes. This agreement aroused severe opposition in Israel, since it was perceived as a means toward the normalization of relations between Israel and Germany (Levin 1988: 272–273). 3. Criminal Case 5880/95: State of Israel v. Ofer Nimrodi. 4. Case 85/98 at the Ethics Tribunal of the Press Council: The Press Council v. Ofer Nimrodi. 5. Criminal Case 40450/99: State of Israel v. Ofer Nimrodi. 6. Criminal Case 2216/01: State of Israel v. Yaakov Nimrodi. 7. HCJ 4736/98: Maariv Modiin Publishing House Ltd. v. the Attorney General (Volume 54, First Part). 8. Case 86/89 at the Ethics Tribunal of the Press Council: Press Council v. Moshe Vardi. 9. The “Unfortunate Affair” (or the “Lavon Affair”) became public following the arrest of eleven Jews in Egypt in 1954, on suspicion of having placed explosive devices in public places in Cairo and Alexandria (in U.S. information centers, among other places), in order to undermine relations between Egypt and the West during the negotiations over the evacuation of the Suez Canal. The then minister of defense, Pinhas Lavon, maintained that he knew nothing of the operation, but Intelligence Branch Chief Binyamin Jibli alleged that he had been expressly ordered by Lavon to execute the operation. This affair was one of the reasons for Lavon’s resigning his post. The affair was resurrected with the trial of the “third man,” a double agent who was allegedly linked to the act. Lavon continued his efforts to clear his own name and once the government had confirmed his innocence, Ben Gurion resigned. In the 1961 Knesset elections, Ben Gurion was reelected prime minister but tendered his final resignation in 1963 and withdrew to Sdeh Boker. In 1964 Ben Gurion called upon his successor, Levi Eshkol, to appoint a commission of inquiry to examine the declaration regarding Lavon’s innocence. Eshkol’s refusal to do so was ratified by the Mapai conference, causing Ben Gurion and his supporters to resign from the party and set up the Rafi Party (Hattis-Rolef 1988: 138–139). 10. This affair commenced with the hijacking of an omnibus travelling the 300 route from Tel Aviv to Ashkelon on 12 April 1984, which was then taken in the direction of Gaza. In the operation for freeing the bus, two terrorists were brought out alive and handed over to the GSS. They were later put to death, in flagrant violation of Israeli law. Media representatives who were present at the time had snapshots of the two living terrorists dismounting the bus, but the censorship banned their publication, and Minister of Defense Moshe Arens argued at the Press Council that an internal commission of inquiry had been appointed to examine the circumstances of the terrorists’ death. Hadashot, which was not a member of the Press Council, published an article on the subject titled “The Hi-Jacked Bus Affair; commission of inquiry

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formed to investigate how the terrorists were killed.” In response, the censorship ordered the paper shut down for four days (it was actually shut down for two days only). The paper’s petition to the HCJ failed to lift the closure. The case revealed acts of cover-up and concealment by the GSS. The political echelon turned a blind eye to it all, going so far as to dismiss Attorney General Yitzhak Zamir, who would not rescind his decision to launch a criminal investigation into the matter. In an exceptional move attesting to a sweeping change in favor of hushing up the affair, President Chaim Herzog pardoned the GSS chief and three of his aides in this affair, even before the case was brought to court (see: Lahav 2007a: 580–617).

chapter

2 Radio in the State of Israel

Radio is the most paradoxical of modern mass media in that, despite its ubiquitous nature, it receives little public—or academic—attention. Radio is a sort of “oral tapestry”—we can encounter it at any given time and never stop to think about the meaning of its existence (Bennett, Emmison, and Frow 1999: 81). It is such a natural part of our lives that we can barely grasp its contribution (Tacchi 2000: 290). In terms of its media market position, radio is also a relatively marginal player. The profits that stand to be gained from radio broadcasts are far lower than those in the television industry. A diverse range of explanations may be advanced for why radio is seen as marginal from a socio-cultural and even a research viewpoint. One is that the predominant status of television has diverted attention from radio (Hilmes 2002). Another explanation relates to the oral nature of the medium: whereas newspaper pages can be preserved and read over and over again, this is not the case with radio. Historical studies of radio are often challenged by the irreproducibility of early live broadcasts—since at the time that radio broadcasts began, the technical capabilities for recording did not exist (Rotenberg 2007: 1). The relatively marginal status of radio may also be linked to its being a secondary medium. Most people listening to the radio are doing something else at the same time. Radio broadcasts can affect the principal activity in which the listeners are engaged, and they will sometimes engage their imagination. On the whole, however, such principal activities are not replaced by program listening, as occurs while watching television or reading, for example (Crisell 1996: 228). Unlike television, which operates simultaneously on vision and hearing, radio operates on only one of our senses; as a result, it must fight a constant battle against the effects of other activities on listeners’ other four senses. Until recent years, radio in Israel has been pushed to the margins of research, which is quite surprising given that radio, more than any other mass medium, is identified with the establishment of the Israeli state and the creation and dissemination of Hebrew culture (Liebes 2006: 70). Television—the

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mass media most often associated with the creation of modern nations after World War II—began broadcasting in Israel only in 1968, some twenty years after the establishment of the State. To be sure, as we have seen, the first decades of statehood were characterized by a lively printed press, but this lacked the immediacy offered by radio (Penslar 2005: 183). Jewish communities in the Diaspora, it will be recalled, never abandoned the practice of writing Hebrew. But “live” Hebrew speech (unrelated to prayer) was rather rare. Hebrew, in other words, was nobody’s mother tongue for thousands of years (Harshav 1993: 119). Radio—which, distinct from the printed press, operates in the audio (oral) arena—was perceived as the medium that revolutionized the place of the Hebrew language in the life of the Jewish people, representing the nexus between the language and the political-national renaissance.

Radio and National Solidarity As I have shown in a previous chapter, Benedict Anderson (1991) established a direct link between the rise of nationalism and the advent of newspapers. According to Anderson, the ritual of reading the morning paper, which exposed numerous readers simultaneously to identical stories and identical information, reinforced the individual reader’s sense of sharing a common fate with many other readers, with whom he was mostly unacquainted. Radio would appear to have been another link in the chain of the national connection: it contributed to the nation being conceived in a new way, in both the geographic and cognitive dimensions of the attributes of that process (Douglas 2004). Geographically speaking, radio expanded the spread of the messages that were being distributed by the printed press, making them more readily available regardless of reading capabilities. Cognitively speaking, the nation-imagining experience that radio facilitated, even for listeners who did not identify with the nation or who actually opposed it, was far stronger than that enabled by anything in print (Douglas 2004). To a certain extent, radio transported people back to pre-literacy times. That is to say, it awoke and reestablished attributes of the oral era, in which communication was a function of the teller of tales, of listening, and of collective memory. Whereas reading cultivates the reader’s inner self-orientation—and thus, also, individualism— simultaneous listening welds listeners around the same experience (story or music), even if not all of them respond in an identical manner to the content being relayed (Douglas 2004: 12). The act of listening involves the awareness on the part of the individual listener that many other unknown people are having the same experience at the same time. The radio, more than any other mass medium in the past, provided listeners with a sense of immediacy and of live, supposedly unmediated,

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reportage of events. The possibility of experiencing, almost in real time, events just then actually taking place in remote locales changed listeners’ perception of the present from one composed of a continuum of local events to one that also included remote events. The broadcasting networks that united listeners in tuning in to presidential speeches, conferences, comedies, dramas, and so on enabled the public to take part in the communicative process, for example, by laughing or applauding together during the broadcast (Douglas 2004: 25). This unifying force of the radio finds expression, among other things, in what Susan Douglas (2004: 12) dubs “audio signature.” The radio announcer greeting listeners at the beginning of the news with the phrase “This is the Voice of Israel from Jerusalem” is actually making use of an abbreviation known “to us all”—and just as a private person is identified by their signature, so does the audio signature identify a large public of persons perceiving it as addressing them and regarding it as natural. According to Douglas, the internalization of the radiophonic signatures attests to the influence of the radio on our inner lives and our sense of identity. The radiophonic audio signatures are daily routines that listeners are unaware of and pay no attention to. They are highly powerful in the replication of nationality since they are “natural” and therefore do not give rise to incisive questions concerning national identity (Billig 1995). Accordingly, the national-cultural potential inhering in radio is linked with the creation of a sense of participation in national life. Radio and, later, television were means of forming common national attributes on the one hand and a sense of national commonality on the other. By means of the broadcasts, the private space of the listener connected with the public space— in terms both of the event arena to which the broadcast related and of the fusion of the private spaces of all listeners into a single community. Broadcasts of ceremonies and regular holidays, both sacred and profane, strengthened the sense of simultaneity and common progression through the society’s calendar, with an expectancy of participation in the planned events, which are reiterated annually (Scannell and Cardiff 1991: 277–278). The introduction of the public broadcasting model that prevails in parliamentary democracies (such as the U.K., West European countries, Australia, and Canada) derives from the national and social concepts that were ascribed to the radio broadcasts in those countries. The public broadcast model is based on the independence of the broadcast from the direct grasp of the government and on it being organized as an autonomous public service whose budget derives from fees paid by the receiver owners, from money transfers from commercial radio stations, or from the broadcasting of advertisements (Hendy 2000: 17). A number of justifications have been put forward for public broadcasting. The first argument to be advanced is the technological one: electric media broadcasts make use of transmission waves (the frequencies

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spectrum), which are a limited public resource and accordingly must be under public control. The second reason relates to the assessment that the electronic mass media (i.e., radio and television) have an important potential for influencing the public at large. Media organizations are perceived as part of the public-cultural arena, which includes, among other things, the educational system, theatre, museums, and opera. The activity of the electronic media is perceived as being of far higher significance than that of a business, whose operation is driven by economic factors. And thus, the lack of confidence in the market’s ability to meet social needs led to a preference for public monopoly over the competition of private ownership of the media. The very fact of knowing that the broadcast is financed by the public has a soothing aspect since, if the broadcast is publicly financed then the commitment of the broadcaster first and foremost is to the public (Atkinson 1997: 19–20). The British example is the most outstanding in terms of the development of public radio (followed by television). The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was established in 1927 as the direct heir of the governmental broadcasting company that was founded in 1922 as a union of local radio firms. BBC was formed as an independent corporation by virtue of a royal charter, and it operated for many years as a monopoly (Etzioni-Halevy 1987: 11). The change in the character of broadcasting in Britain (i.e., from government radio to independent broadcasting service) reflected the liberal atmosphere in that country—guarding the independence of radiophonic broadcasting against the intervention of the ruling establishment (N. Cohen 2003: 35). In the opinion of the founders of British public broadcasting, radio’s role was to present the greatest possible number of listeners with the best of human knowledge and achievements. Broadcasting should guide, rather than bow to, the dictates of public taste. It was perceived as being vested with educational, cultural, and moral functions, and as a political means to bridge class rifts and encourage social cohesion. As a result, radio broadcasting was a service that must be provided at a uniformly high standard to all of the nation’s citizens (Caspi 2005: 21–22). Despite its advantages for the minority, this concept came in for no small measure of criticism. A common complaint against the BBC was that most listeners were not getting what they wanted—and moreover, that they were getting far too much content that they did not want (Crisell 2005: 33). Another complaint was that the broadcasts were elitist— that BBC staff ’s desire to provide listeners with “the best” cultural content led them to prefer “high” cultural content over popular cultural content (Crisell 2005: 34). The alternative to the public broadcasting model evolved in the United States, where broadcasting is seen as a commodity of which listeners (and later, viewers) were the customers. The commercial model of television operates in an environment of free market competition and entrepreneurship,

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based on the concept that listeners must be allowed to hear (and also, in the case of television, to see) whatever they want. The management of commercial broadcasting networks is committed first and foremost to its shareholders. The key consideration in program production is economic: the more widespread the audiences listening or watching the programs, the higher will be the income from advertising. The American commercial model evolved as a result of rivalry among radio manufacturers that—seeking to boost their profits—fostered the creation of broadcasts. The national radio stations that began forming in the 1920s evolved over time into television stations (Williams 1974: 29). While the goals of the commercial model, which are directed towards making profits, do not seem to be based on the societal and national concepts that characterize the public model, in practice this is an erroneous assumption. First, the very act of radio broadcasting has a constitutive role in national-political terms, even without any direct connection to the actual content of the broadcast. It should be remembered that newspapers and books, to which Anderson assigns a decisive role in the rise of imagined nationality, were also part of the development of capitalist commerce and were intended to make profits for their distributors. Second, the commercial broadcast is based on the sale of advertising time (as distinct from the public broadcast, which is usually financed by means of fee payments). The larger the broadcast audience and the higher the program rating, the more advertisers will be prepared to pay. This concept encourages the consensualism that addresses the listeners’ broadest common denominator. Accordingly, commercial broadcast will prefer popular content that does not challenge society’s core values; that is to say, expressions of nationalism are not necessarily either given prominence or declared in advance (Billig 1995). Along with its potential for unifying the nation, radio can also address separate groups—that is, there is a demassification (segmentation) of broadcasts in order to address specific, predefined audiences. Radio encourages people to identify their relationships with others based on regional or community affi liation. Listeners can also identify themselves according to their individual preferences: that is, their favorite type of music or genre of program or series (Douglas 2004: 11). Awareness of this inherent potential in radio has led some European nation states adhering to the public broadcasting model to restrict regional or local radio broadcasts, fearing they might threaten or offer a cultural alternative to the nation state (McCain and Lowe 1990). However, in certain countries, regional radio broadcasts coexist with nationwide broadcasts. Recent decades have seen a reinforcement in the perception of the radio as a medium with domestic and communitarian potential. That radio has veered in a more localized and restricted direction is related to the technological

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development of multiple channels (VHF/FM), to radio’s adaptations in the face of television dominance, and to the redefinition of radio’s functions. The demassification of radio broadcasts is also connected with a trend of localization prevailing in the 1960s and the early 1970s in Europe. In many nation states in which radio was a public broadcasting monopoly (e.g., France or Switzerland), dozens of local broadcasting stations began to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s (Browne 1991; McCain and Lowe 1990). As I will show below, in Israel the radio was seen by policy makers to be a highly powerful tool in building the Hebrew nation and shaping its culture. The decentralizing potential of radio, rooted as it is in the multiplicity and diversity of channels, was postponed, at least officially, until the mid-1990s. This concept—that radio is a national asset and a means of communication that must be protected against commercial influences—can be traced to the Yishuv era, in British Mandatory times. An understanding of that period is thus key to understanding the place and characteristics of radio in Israel. The British influence on broadcasting was seen initially in the choice of the public (radio and television) broadcasting model rather than the commercial, and subsequently, in the choice of a dual model combining public with commercial aspects (I will elaborate below on these institutional aspects). The very fact of the national struggle to establish Hebrew-language broadcasting linked radio to the battle for national independence and boosted its position in that process. Moreover, the Hebrew-language Mandatory broadcasts commenced at the same time as Arabic-language broadcasts. Consequently, a clear distinction emerged between broadcasts aimed at the Jewish public and those aimed at the Arab public.

Historic Background: Radio in the Yishuv Era Regular radio broadcasts commenced in the United States in 1920 and in Britain at the end of 1922. In that year, regular radio broadcasts also began in the Soviet Union and in France. Since most of the Jews in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) in the 1920s were immigrants seeking to preserve their ties with the world they had come from, they were well aware of the worldwide radio broadcasts and moreover made every effort to receive them (for one thing by means of high frequencies enabling remote reception). The Fourth Aliya (wave of immigration, customarily demarcated as the period 1924–1928) made a special contribution to awareness of the importance of radio. This wave of immigrants was composed of middle-class Jews from Europe possessing technological expertise in matters of electricity and radio. The British Mandatory Regime made the possession of radio receivers subject to licensing, and commencing in 1924, the Mandatory administration began

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recording applications for licenses. These, however, were few in number: by the end of 1926, a total of 91 receivers under Mandatory license were registered in Eretz Yisrael (Almog 2003: 220–222). The need to receive radio transmissions from overseas increased significantly after 1939, in view of what was happening in Europe. In the course of time, the Yishuv institutions came increasingly to perceive the political potential inhering in Hebrew-language radio broadcasts. The Yishuv leaders were influenced by the view of the radio as tomorrow’s newspaper and ascribed great importance to technological means in the nation-building process (Penslar 2003: 4). Tamar Liebes (2006: 71) notes, in accordance with the newspapers of that time, that the radio was perceived by the Yishuv’s policy makers as a central forum in which would be delineated the nature of the collective culture that was coming into being. Fearing the potential political power of such broadcasts, the British Mandatory authorities rejected applications for permits to operate independent radio stations, preferring central and mandatory regulation of broadcasting in Eretz Yisrael. Approval of applications for setting up a local radio station was postponed until 1932, when a license was issued for local radio broadcasts from the Levant Trade Fair (Penslar 2003: 5). The Levant Fair radio initially transmitted from a hut near the exhibition grounds and later settled under a pavilion of trees in the grounds of the fair. The public would frequently assemble around the hut’s open window, passing smart remarks in the hope of their being transmitted over the radio (Almog 1996: 67). Out of considerations pertaining to the interests of the British colonial administration and for the consolidation of its rule, a radio station was ultimately established in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael). The British believed that the Zionists would sooner or later set up a radio of their own, which would not be directly subject to the oversight of the British regime and with which the Arabs would not cooperate (Gil 1961: 297). Accordingly, they viewed the establishment of a Mandatory radio station as a means of cooption, which would ensure that aspirations in the realm of radio would still be kept under government supervision. The riots of the summer of 1929 lent urgency to the need for mass media that would enable control of the population in times of crisis. Radio broadcasts were also perceived as a means of propaganda for the British Mandatory authorities, and the importance of such propaganda increased in view of the possibility of receiving anti-British propaganda from Egypt or from Syria, which was under the control of France (Almog 2003: 232). Likewise, the British sought to develop radio as an educational means and for imparting some of the basics of modern agriculture to both Arab villagers and Jewish settlers. The dramatic upsurge in the number of radio receivers in the 1930s— from 836 licensed sets in 1932 to 42,600 in 1939, almost all of them in Jewish

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hands—promised stable and long-term financing for the Mandatory radio broadcasts. Since most broadcast financing came from the fee paid by Jews holding radio sets, Mandatory radio had perforce to assure the Jews of adequate representation in the management of the broadcasts, despite their being a minority in the population of Palestine (Eretz Yisrael). A joint commission comprising representatives of the Jews, the Arabs, and the British administration was formed to work with the BBC delegate in charge of establishing the Mandatory radio station (Almog 2003: 235). On 30 March 1936, the (Mandatory) Palestine Broadcast Service (PBS) commenced broadcasting, including Hebrew-language broadcasts. Due to topographical considerations, the radio’s transmitters were located north of Ramallah, while the broadcasting studios were located in the Palace Hotel in Jerusalem, in token of that city’s unique status as the capital of Mandatory Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) (Almog 2003: 235). Oral Hebrew-language communication emanating from the soil of historical Eretz Yisrael was perceived as a key phase in the redemption and renascence of the people, where, for the first time, the Hebrew language joined the national languages being broadcast worldwide (Avida 1976: 91). The first moments of broadcast assumed a quasi-religious significance, connecting the Hebrew nationalism that was then in process of formation to a moment of spiritual epiphany. The linking of the aspect of divine revelation with the radiophonic broadcast emerges clearly from the song composed by Avigdor HaMeiri to celebrate the inauguration of the radio: Hello, this is Jerusalem, listen peoples the world over [ . . . ] and Hear, O Israel, in the lands of the Diaspora, pay attention for a moment, Assembly; this is the City of God calling from within the mist, here the capital city shall lift its voice; here Jerusalem speaks. (quoted in Gil 1961: 298)

In the beginning, the radio broadcasts of the Voice of Jerusalem were limited in scope: they included one hour of broadcast in Hebrew, one hour in English, one hour dedicated to Western music, and two hours in Arabic. It was only toward the end of the Mandate, in 1945, that Hebrew broadcasting was allowed broader scope. Hebrew-language broadcasts were at first lengthened to five-and-a-half hours a day, and later, following the installation of an additional transmitter, the Hebrew broadcast could be severed from the Arabic-language broadcast (Caspi and Limor 1992: 96). The financial resources available for producing the Hebrew programs were fairly limited, and the ongoing existence of the transmissions was facilitated by the volunteerism of intellectuals and artists, who waived the fees due to them for taking part in the programs (Gil 1961: 299–300).

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The contribution of the radio to keeping the public informed about political events taking place in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) was somewhat limited, given the heavy-handedness of the British censor (Gil 1961: 301). The Voice of Jerusalem initially broadcast one news edition, which was based on bulletins from the Reuters News Agency that had been translated into Hebrew. Censorship became even more stringent during World War II (Lavie 2001: 30). Yet in spite of these restrictions, the broadcasts did contribute substantially to the formation of the collective consciousness and the nation-building and imagining processes. The radio played a key role in inventing a Hebrew tradition: the Voice of Jerusalem broadcast texts related to Jewish holy days, which stressed the link between Jewish tradition and pioneering values and the love of the land. It was in this spirit, for example, that a Tu BeShevat (New Year of Trees) tree-planting ceremony was broadcast from one of the kibbutzim (Penslar 2003: 7). The Hebrew Bible, too, perceived in Zionist ideology as the authentic expression of the independent political existence of the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael, was reserved a place of honor in the Voice of Jerusalem broadcasts. When interviewing for jobs, newsreader candidates were required to read out a chapter of the Bible. On days when there were clashes between Jews and Arabs and the broadcasts were heavily censored, that problem was bypassed by means of quoting or paraphrasing relevant biblical passages. After 1945, two chapters of the Bible were read out every evening at 10 P.M. (Penslar 2003: 7). The radio also helped promote and firmly root Hebrew music among the public, as well as taking part in the task of educating people in familiarization with and settlement of the land. The Voice of Jerusalem notably expressed a high culture in line with European cultural influences. The culture of Middle Eastern Jewry, on the other hand, was perceived as belonging to the realm of folklore, or as destined to provide inspiration for cultural creativity in a European format (Penslar 2003: 7). Thus, Sephardic culture was not acknowledged in its own right, but primarily served other Zionist values, such as the search for the “authentic” Jew. Nonetheless, with regard to Hebrew-language accent and pronunciation, the radio made the ideological decision of choosing the Sephardic rather than the Ashkenazi dialect. The radio made a special contribution to the teaching of the Hebrew language. In many countries, the radio as a medium, by virtue of its oral dimension, has been involved in ideological battles over the languages of broadcast. For example, in an attempt to impose a uniform and “official” English voice in BBC broadcasts as far back as 1929, broadcasters were required to undergo training in elocution. This trend had a later sequel in the 1930s in many of the institutionalized radio stations in the United States (Douglas 2004: 103). However, Hebrew broadcasting appears to have been

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even more crucial during the Yishuv era for imparting the Hebrew language, since confl icts were being played out in the Yishuv on issues related to spoken Hebrew, and, moreover, there was no heritage of spoken Hebrew in the public space. In the battles that raged over the choice of pronunciation, decisive weight attached to the radio’s preference for the Sephardic rather than the Ashkenazi pronunciation (Penslar 2003: 6). Sephardic society was perceived as part of an “authentic” Jewish culture and was linked to the invention of the modern national Hebrew culture. The Voice of Jerusalem collaborated closely with the Hebrew Language Committee (the Yishuv entity whose task was to cultivate the Hebrew language, and which eventually became the Hebrew Language Academy). Radio staff would turn to academy personnel with questions on pronunciation, and academy members trained broadcasters. There were also initiatives for the promotion of the use of correct Hebrew (Liebes and Kampf 2009). As the Voice of Jerusalem was becoming established, rival clandestine radio stations began operating with intentions of bypassing the strict censorship of the Voice of Jerusalem. However, beyond their function of transmitting information, these clandestine broadcasting stations had a symbolic dimension, having to do with the battle for control of Eretz Yisrael and sovereignty therein (Rotenberg 2007: 45). As in many other cases of national struggle and state-building processes, in Eretz Yisrael control of the ether waves was deemed significant to political independence. In 1940, the clandestine station of the Hagana Organization, Voice of Israel (Kol Yisrael), commenced operations. The station’s broadcasts ceased after only a few months and did not resume until October 1945. The station transmitted in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The various political camps also operated clandestine stations: the Etzel (Irgun Zvai Leumi–National Military Organization) operated an underground radio station (The Voice of Zion Combatant), which challenged the Mandatory rule and the Yishuv’s restraint in face of Arab terrorism (Galnoor 1985: 214; Rotenberg 2007: 34). The most noteworthy radio event in the Yishuv era—more deeply etched into the Israeli collective memory than any other—was the broadcast of the historic vote at the United Nations Assembly in Lake Success and the partition of Eretz Yisrael into two states. On this occasion, listeners were far from a passive audience. They had the sense of facing a collective trial a moment before sentence was pronounced. Many listened to the broadcast in the streets by means of radio transmitters fitted with loudspeakers and hung on balconies or in public squares. It was close to midnight, and they all listened to the broadcast in total silence. After the results of the vote were read out, spontaneous celebrations swept through the crowds. The connection between members of the community derived not only from the collective imagination but also from the very presence in the streets of such huge numbers of people.

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Listening to the radio broadcast of the UN vote transformed the remote event—taking place at the other end of the earth—into one of mass rejoicing in the streets (Liebes 2006: 79–81).

Radio in the State of Israel: Institutional Aspects In the young State of Israel, facing, as it did, so many military, political, and social challenges, radio was seen as a high-powered mouthpiece for the administration and the ruling party, and hence the political echelons had the direct oversight of its content. In the time of the Provisional Council of State in the years 1948–1949, the radio operated under the auspices of the Minister of the Interior. Later, until the founding of the Broadcasting Authority in 1965, it formed part of the Prime Minister’s Office, and the task of supervising it was entrusted to the Prime Minister’s assistants and members of his inner circle. Office holders in the radio service were mostly appointed on the basis of political considerations. Radio employees were deemed civil servants, thus enabling them to be supervised (Rotenberg 2007: 37). The main broadcasting radio channel was Reshet Aleph (Channel A), and special-purpose broadcasts took place alongside this channel: for example, 1950 saw the launching of the Voice of Zion to the Diaspora, a channel designated for Diaspora Jewry. Initially, the station transmitted in three languages: Yiddish, English, and French. This fulfilled the wishes of the pre-state heads of the Yishuv institutions for short-wave broadcasts to Diaspora Jewry, wishes that the Mandatory Government had refused to approve even after World War II and the atrocities of the Holocaust (Avida 1976: 96). In 1958, broadcasting was divided into Hebrew and Arabic transmissions, and the Arabic-language Reshet Dalet (Channel D) began broadcasting. Until then, Arabic-language broadcasts had been integrated into the general broadcasts of the Voice of Israel. They were mainly propagandist in character, constituting a response to the broadcasts being put out by other nations in the region (Tokatly 2000: 80). In 1960, the Hebrew-language broadcasts of the Voice of Israel were also split, and the Light Wave (later known as Reshet Bet [Channel B]), broadcasting entertainment and music programs and financed through advertising, started operating alongside Reshet Alef (Penslar 2003: 9). Reshet Alef continued broadcasting classical music and talk programs (see the Broadcasting Authority’s site: http://www.iba.org.il/kolisrael70). Following the establishment of the State, the Voice of Israel radio broadcasts were accompanied by military radio transmissions. On 24 September 1950, the military radio broadcasts were consolidated and the Galei Zahal (Galatz) (Army Radio) station was founded. Ben Gurion was personally involved with the establishment of the station, regarding it as a means of security

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and self-defense (to call up regular and reserve forces in time of emergency) and as an educational and cultural tool that would assist in the absorption of immigrants and the teaching of the Hebrew language. It was not until David Ben Gurion resigned the premiership in 1963 that conditions became ripe for the radio to be removed from the Prime Minister’s Office and transformed into a public authority (N. Cohen 2003:49). Oren Tokatly (2002) maintains that the founding of the Broadcasting Authority should be viewed as an important change. He suggests that the decision of the Israeli legislature to establish an independent statutory authority to assume responsibility for radio broadcasts reflects the influence of the British model for the BBC, ensuring that the broadcasting entity is not directly dependent on the government. Caspi and Limor (1992: 99), however, opine that a different consideration motivated the change, arguing that the removal of the radio from the Prime Minister’s Office was intended primarily to ensure it remained neutral and outside of the political struggle over the leadership of the ruling party (Mapai) at that time. A scrutiny of the mode of appointment of the Broadcasting Authority’s institutions reveals that the public broadcasting model (in which the transmitting entity is a statutory authority) enabled the political echelon to oversee broadcasts of an official, public nature. This oversight was reflected in the staffing and management of the Broadcasting Authority institution (the former stipulated by the Broadcasting Authority Law), and later was even seen in overt intervention in the affairs of the Authority (Caspi 2005: 45). Politicians would ask questions about the Authority’s budget and exert other pressures of various kinds: for example, in the appointment of department managers or senior correspondents. Although the Broadcasting Authority attempted to demonstrate greater independence, this merely provoked greater hostility from the political system (Limor and Naveh 2007: 40). In the Israel Broadcasting Authority’s (IBA) efforts to extricate itself from political surveillance and establish a more independent professional journalism, Nakdimon Rogel in 1972 formulated a professional code of ethics for broadcast journalists, designed, among other thing, to stave off external pressures (this document, known as the “Nakdi Paper,” was revised in 1985 and again in 1995. For a discussion of the subject, see Limor and Gabel 1997: 22). Along with problems stemming from the politicization of the Broadcasting Authority, complaints were made about its negative influence on Israel’s communication map. These referred to the lack of heterogeneity of the broadcasting entities, since the Broadcasting Authority was the sole entity charged with providing the communication needs of all population segments. This concentration was to some extent the result of Israel’s “melting pot” agenda, which viewed the media—and the radio in particular—as a means of achieving cultural uniformity (Shinar 2000: 192).

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Over the years, other stations joined the Voice of Israel, primarily due to the influences of channels that were not included in the public broadcast. In 1975, the Broadcasting Authority inaugurated Reshet Gimmel (Channel C), which hosted Israeli and foreign light music programs. The formation of Reshet Gimmel was driven mainly by the need to compete with the broadcasts of Galei Zahal, which had changed in character, and those of the Voice of Peace, a pirate station that began transmitting from the Mediterranean Sea in 1973 and which focused primarily on pop music (I will discuss Galei Zahal and the Voice of Peace further in a later section.). With the founding of Reshet Gimmel, the Light Wave was transformed into Reshet Bet and henceforth focused on current affairs broadcasting. Over time, the persistent exclusivity of the IBA radio broadcasts began to break down, due to the growing presence of pirate radio stations. The rise of these stations was very largely a continuation of the developing trend of alternative media channels (Limor and Naveh 2007: 134); during the 1980s, as discussed in the last chapter, the printed press began a process of decentralization, seen most conspicuously through the rise of the local newspapers. Pirate stations are privately owned, are free of any institutionalized public oversight of their content, and are financed through advertising or donations. The political establishment treated their existence with great indulgence, since on the one hand they were not perceived as threatening to the monopoly of public broadcasting in the domain of news and current affairs, while on the other hand, they intensified the illusion of media pluralism (Limor 1996). When the tight rein over public broadcasting loosened and local stations began broadcasting, pirate broadcasts were flourishing, and their types and operating means becoming more diversified. This development can be ascribed both to cultural changes and the deepening of societal rifts and subcultures in Israel and to the technical simplicity of setting up such broadcasting stations (Limor and Naveh 2007). Pirate broadcasts violate three rules: the Wireless Telegraph Ordinance (New Version) 1972, which stipulates that operation of wireless telegraph (radio broadcasts forming part of this category) is permitted solely in accordance with a government license; the Second Television and Radio Law 1990, which stipulates that the operation of radio broadcasts is permitted solely by concessionaries as set forth in the Law; and the Telecommunications (Bezeq and Broadcasting) Law 1982, which likewise prohibits electromagnetic broadcasting except by virtue of a permit (Limor and Naveh 2007: 17). In any event, the most significant institutional and legal change in the configuration of Israeli radio broadcasts took place when regional radio entered the picture, with the founding of the Second Television and Radio Authority. In the next chapter of the book, which discusses television, I will show that the enactment of the Second Television and Radio Authority Law 1990

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was accompanied by long, drawn-out political confrontations. Because the rise of the regional radio stations had been an adjunct of the regulation of commercial television broadcasts, the debut of commercial radio into Israel was delayed until the mid-1990s. The commissioning of commercial regional broadcasting was preceded by attempts on the part of the Broadcasting Authority to establish local broadcasting stations in order to frustrate the intention of the Ministry of Communications to issue concessions to regional stations. One such local station was established in 1986 in Eilat, but it ran into budgetary difficulties and suffered from a shortage of technical equipment and personnel (Caspi and Limor 1992: 104). The configuration determined for the operation of the Second Authority reflects the influence of the British system, designated a “dual broadcasting model,” in which public and private aspects merge. British legislation in 1954 established a new configuration for television broadcasts, enabling competition between the BBC and privately owned commercial channels. The commercial channels were unified under the Independent Television Authority (ITA), which is a public authority in terms of its legal standing and its commitment to the public. In terms of the attributes of its associate firms, however, as well as the mode of financing of its broadcasts (the sale of advertising time), the ITA is a commercial entity (Williams 1974: 30). Similarly, the Second Television and Radio Authority Law 1990, stipulates that the new broadcasting channels, including regional radio stations, operate as private businesses and are financed through advertising sales. But since these private businesses make use of a national resource—the broadcasting frequencies— they are under the supervision of a public authority, whose job is to represent the public interest and to counterbalance the economic orientation of the broadcasting channels. The Second Television and Radio Authority is the public regulator whose job is to supervision regional radio broadcasts and secure the public interest in commercial broadcasting. Over and above its authority to grant commercial broadcasting concessions, the Authority is empowered to establish rules and guidelines pertaining to broadcasting ethics (safeguarding of the freedom of expression, the public’s right to know, journalistic ethics etc.). The Authority also oversees the advertisements that are broadcast on the regional radio stations. It also monitors broadcasting language. In principle, it has the power to determine whether a concessionaire has violated the terms of the concession and may impose various sanctions, including depriving a station of advertising broadcasting time. The first group of regional stations started broadcasting in 1995. Of the thirty-four candidates for operating the broadcasting stations that tendered bids, concessionaires were chosen for operating fifteen broadcasting stations (Patir 2000: 65). Most proved economically unviable, due in part to the surge

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of pirate broadcasting stations and the authorities’ inability to deal with them. In 2002, an amendment to the Second Broadcasting Authority Law was approved, extending the concessions of these radio stations. And despite the Knesset’s approval for the extension of the concession by a further term, the Second Authority resolved to issue new invitations to tender for the operation of the radio stations (Limor and Naveh 2007: 51). Invitations to tender were also published in 2008. In most of them, with the exception of the Jerusalem region, the companies operating the original regional stations had their concessions extended. In the Jerusalem region, a new group by the name of Radio HaBira (Capital City Radio) commenced broadcasting in 2009. The religious station Kol BaRama (A High Voice or Voice in Highland) also began transmitting that year, and, at the end of 2009, Galei Israel (Israel Waves) started broadcasting to the settler community beyond the Green Line. In order to promote the founding of this latter station, the general officer commanding Central Command ordered that “The Second Authority for the Region of Judea and Samaria” be established, one of whose functions was to oversee concessionaire broadcasting in that area. This step took place following a petition by Gush Shalom (the “Peace Bloc”) to the High Court of Justice1 (HCJ) on the grounds that it was not within the remit of the Second Authority to act outside the borders of the State of Israel. Following the founding of the Second Authority for the Region of Judea and Samaria, Gush Shalom alleged that it was a fictitious entity devoid of any independent judgment, and that its office holders were those officiating in the “original” Second Authority. But the HCJ ordered the petition stricken out, accepting the legislative infrastructure that had been created consequent on the founding of the new entity.

Radio and Imagined Israeliness As I have shown, radio is perceived as possessing constitutive national potential, creating a sense of participation in national life. Radio gives its listeners a common experience and a sense of belonging to a collective through the dissemination of symbols and images, enabling listeners to participate in joint ceremonies that create and reinforce the routine life of the nation. While this ritualistic aspect of radio’s history is significant in discussions of long-standing nation states, the young State of Israel lacked a tradition of national ceremonies. In practice, the first years of its existence were characterized by a search for routines, for a way to create a national quotidian commonality that would unify the diverse range of migrant groups arriving from around the world. In 1948, there was one radio receiver for every four Israelis—a higher ratio than in most industrialized nations at that time. In Israel, the radio was

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charged with an essential educational mission, whose vital role in the Israeli melting pot was to weld the Jewish immigrant communities into one nation (Penslar 2005: 183). This view of the radio as a means of mass education largely reflected how the media was seen in developing countries. Israeli radio featured Hebrew lessons for new immigrants, lessons in sports, and both Hebrew and classical music (Liebes 2006: 73). In the statist spirit of Israel’s early years, the radio was perceived as first and foremost serving the state and the people, with the individual being only a secondary concern (Penslar 2005: 183). The broadcasts of Voice of Israel were mainly directed at an adult audience, but the station also ran some children’s programs—based on the same educational concept of imparting Zionist values (Penslar 2003: 17). As in other countries, the radio was seen as an agent of modernization and a means for importing high cultural values, such as classical music and literary works. Reflecting this, as Berer (1961: 92) notes, the prevailing tone of radio broadcasts during the 1950s was high-flown, monotonous, and arrogant, with a sense of education being handed down from on high. Broadcasts were emphatically patriotic, and the patronizing tone treated listeners as a “mentally handicapped public.” Hebrew radio, which was seen as a key agent in establishing Israeli nationality, was perforce of a Jewish, albeit fairly secular, character. This was not only because the programs were written, produced, and consumed mainly by Jews, but also because the programs reflected the day-to-day concerns of individuals in their lives in the Jewish state (Penslar 2003: 21). One program that remains etched in the Israeli collective memory is the Search Bureau for Missing Relatives, in which the Voice of Israel would broadcast the names of Jews who had been separated from loved ones during the Holocaust and were now seeking to trace them or discover their fate (Doron 1998: 169). The radio would rouse Israelis in the morning with the well-known phrase from Genesis, “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob,” and close its broadcasts at night by playing the national anthem, “HaTiqva” (Almog 2004: 94). There were also daily readings of Today’s Verse from the Pentateuch, a custom that began in the Mandatory era. The broadcasting of Bible readings was reasonably popular: a listener survey in 1965 revealed that 30 percent of interviewees of all age groups were in the habit of listening to them (Penslar 2003: 20). In radio’s role to advance the esthetic and political education of immigrants, especially those originating from the Middle Eastern states, it produced in the 1950s a series of interviews with immigrants from those countries. They were presented as changed and modernized, as having become “useful citizens” by taking on “found work” initiated by the Jewish National Fund. Some of the broadcasts of the Voice of Israel, of course, expressed sympathy for the immigrants from Middle Eastern states, but that sympathy was often tainted by stereotypical typecasting (Penslar 2005: 183). The yearning

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of immigrants from Islamic countries for Arabic-language broadcasts would sometimes lead them to listen to the broadcasts of the Voice of Israel in Arabic, which were aimed at the Arab population of Israel and elsewhere. These broadcasts were not nationally inclusive, designed on the contrary to preserve the distinction between Arab and Israeli cultures, highlighting their differences (Liebes 1999: 94; Penslar 2005: 187–188). The serious and educational tone of Israeli radio was also reflected in the prominence of broadcasts for the elites, especially the participation of government officials, professors, and other administrative and social top brass (Berer 1961: 95). News and current affairs broadcasts were different than those familiar to us today and were aired far less frequently: in the beginning, news editions were broadcast only six times a day, with an expanded daily news program four times a week in the evenings (Almog 2004: 94). Similarly, radio interviews of the 1950s were of a very different style than contemporary interviews. Yitzhak Roeh describes them as monologues, dominated by the voices of interviewees, mainly heads of state, who would respond to only one or two questions posed by the correspondent. These interviews were long-winded affairs, rife with tokens of respect and ceremony vis-à-vis the leader being interviewed. For all intents and purposes, any dialogue characteristic of daily life—that is, in the format of a conversation between equals—was absent from the radiophonic newscast. In Roeh’s opinion, it was not until the 1980s that dialogue-type interviews began to emerge on Israeli radio, characterized by more frequent exchanges between interviewer and subject, interruptions by the former into the latter’s remarks, equal air-time for both interviewer and subject, some confrontation between the two, and fewer honorifics bestowed upon political leaders (Roeh 1992: 153–156). Noteworthy among the more entertaining broadcasts of the early 1950s and the 1960s was Teivat Noah (Noah’s Ark), which was transmitted in the presence of an audience from an army clubhouse in cooperation with the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers. The program was a live broadcast featuring regular combinations of orchestra, vocalists, a quizmaster, and other various acts (E. Mann 2008: 136, 139). The quizzes, which underlined the motifs that were seen as the basis of Hebrew culture, were very popular. Commencing from the 1960s, the Voice of Israel organized annual song contests featuring new, original songs. The live broadcasting of these contests on Independence Day—over the radio and, later, the television—became an annual national ritual contributing to the enrichment of the Israeli musical arena (Regev and Seroussi 2004: 36). The radio, as the official mass medium of the state and as an educational tool, was designed to present and express the Hebrew language in its normative, correct form, which listeners might emulate. Since radio is an aural medium, addressing the ear, great importance is attached to correct enunciation,

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and it was perceived as establishing conventions in the linguistic realm and in the pronunciation of the language (Rotenberg 2007: 84). In 1954, the government expressly determined that the radio must take an active part in teaching Hebrew to the public and stipulated the broadcasting of two Hebrew lessons a week (Rotenberg 2007: 43). Indeed, the great importance ascribed to the correct use of the Hebrew language on the radio is clearly illustrated through the responses and comments of politicians, cabinet ministers and Members of Knesset on linguistic errors in broadcasting (Rotenberg 2007: 55–60). The Committee for the Hebrew Language and, later, the Academy of the Hebrew Language were also at pains to update the linguistic advisers of the Voice of Israel, with who they were constantly in touch. Even so, the institutionalization of the radio’s preoccupation with the language was not indicated until the 1960s with the appointment of an Academy of the Hebrew Language linguistic adviser for the Voice of Israel. In 1974, the matter was fully institutionalized with the publication of the Guide to Radio and Television Language (Rotenberg 2007: 88). One exceptional program in the radiophonic landscape of the time—on a linguistic level as well—was the satiric Three Men in a Boat (referring to the book by Jerome K. Jerome), which was first recorded in February 1956. The program’s format was that of a team of three responders giving whimsical and frequently spur-of-the-moment answers to amusing questions. The program also included musical improvisations in various styles and was recorded live before an audience. Prominent cultural and journalistic personalities took part in the programs. Three Men in a Boat was characterized by biting humor that touched on all aspects of life: boy meets girl, civil servants (one program referred to Civil Servants’ Secret No. 803—they arrive at the office at eight, do nothing, and leave at three), politics, religious life, and daily life. As in other countries, humorous programs became a platform for rebellion against the proper use of the language. As Douglas points out concerning the language of the American comedies, the use of this linguistic register is connected with battles over power and culture (Douglas 2004: 103). This use of a low social register raises questions of who merits being heard on national radio channels and touches on the place of this central mass medium in the life of the nation. And sure enough, these broadcasts often drew wrathful reactions and were even debated in Knesset. Listeners complained that the program overstepped the bounds of good taste and gave expression to cheap humor, swearing, and coarseness, which damaged the children and youth listening to it. With regard to content, four senior National Insurance officers filed legal action against the program team members, alleging that they had been injured by the program referring to them as “parasites” (Shimoni 1996: 101–102). The first hints of change in the character of the Voice of Israel programs appeared in 1960, with the establishment of the Light Channel. This

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broadcasting wave reached out to young listeners, who were in those days seeking non-Israeli radiophonic alternatives. Especially popular was the Jordanian broadcasting station Radio Ramallah, which aired pop music (Barer 1961: 93). Voice of Israel personnel thought the Light Wave would be the local answer, bringing listeners back “home” to listen to Israeli radio broadcasts. Whereas Reshet Aleph broadcast mainly news and current affairs, the Light Wave aired light music and entertainment programs. With the commissioning of the Light Wave, advertising was introduced for the first time into the radio broadcasts of the Voice of Israel (Limor and Naveh 2007: 38). However, the broadcasts on this wave were criticized for the total lack of intellectual effort they required from listeners (Berer 1961: 93).

Special Broadcasts: From the Eichmann Trial to Eshkol’s Speech Over and above its contribution to creating daily routines in the life of the nation, the radio was also a mediating tool in moments when the nation felt threatened or traumatized. In times of crisis, the radio became a virtual town square: Israelis clustered around its broadcasts at home, at work, and in the street in order to experience collective national events in real time (Liebes 2006: 74). The Eichmann trial in 1961 was one such pivotal event. The radio had not originally been meant to be such a key player in the trial (Pinchevski, Liebes, and Herman 2007: 17). This trial is customarily viewed as a turning point in the attitude of Israelis to the Holocaust and its victims (Loshitzky 2001: 16), and the radio is frequently attributed with having played a key role in transforming the Eichmann trial into a constitutive event in Israeli society. The live broadcast of the event is deeply etched into the Israeli collective memory, even though in reality only parts of the trial featured in live broadcasts. Every Monday through Thursday evening, a Daily Trial Broadcast presented a condensed version of that day’s happenings in court. The profound significance of this event may be due to the fact that the trial’s first day of hearing was transmitted live. According to data of the Central Bureau of Statistics, 60 percent of the population over the age of 14, which is to say more than 700 thousand people, listened to the live broadcast on the day the trial commenced. Newspaper headlines on the opening of the trial stressed how much attention was diverted to the radio broadcast. HaAretz even reported on a Tel Aviv physician who was inundated with requests for a one-day sick leave so that people could stay home and listen to radio broadcasts of the hearing (Pinchevski, Liebes, and Herman 2007: 17). The broadcasts could be heard everywhere: in school yards, in offices and factories, at cafes or from parked cars, or through transistor radios carried on the street.

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Following that day of broadcasting, the Voice of Israel announced that it would be airing live broadcasts of further hearings of special importance. On the days of such broadcasts, the Voice of Israel, as the State’s principal mass media channel at that time, put aside its regular schedule. Whereas in the 1950s the Holocaust had been excluded from Israeli public discourse and Holocaust survivors had faced alienation and suspicion, the Eichmann Trial for the first time provided survivors with the opportunity to be heard in the public sphere, forcing the nation to confront its historic memory in relation to the Holocaust. By virtue of radiophonic broadcasting, the heartrending testimonies in the trial gained greater resonance, permeating all strata of society (Liebes 2006: 82–86). Wars also highlighted the prominence of the radio. The radio was the first to announce the outbreak of a war and the first to provide information and reporting from the front. In a certain sense, the radio actually took part in the wars themselves, serving as a means for calling up reserve forces (Liebes 2006: 74). At the same time, the radio did not always serve to soothe. Thus, Israelis carry in their collective memory the broadcast speech of Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Levi Eshkol on the eve of the 1967 (Six Day) War. His radio address to the nation was meant to fortify the public’s faith in its political leadership. Eshkol read out a printed speech from the Tel Aviv studio (E. Mann 2008: 215). However, just before the broadcast, his political secretary removed a sentence from the original version and added another in his own handwriting. Eshkol, unaware that he was being broadcast live and unable to decipher the handwriting, stopped reading the text to ask his secretary a question about the correction. While Israelis at home listened to some incomprehensible exchange, the Voice of Israel representative at the studio hastened to disconnect the microphone. Seconds later, Eshkol went on reading his speech. Liebes notes that Israel was left dumbstruck as a result of this event. Eshkol’s “stammered speech” was grist for the mill of his critics, who alleged his weak leadership at a time so fateful for the future of the nation. Sure enough, following the bumbling speech, Moshe Dayan was appointed to replace Eshkol as Minister of Defense (Liebes 2006: 76). During the 1967 War itself, the radio played an important role in keeping the public informed, switching to an emergency format of non-stop, round-the-clock broadcasting. Continuity of broadcasting was seen as a central goal given the proximity of the main broadcasting studios in Jerusalem to the battlefront in 1967. Broadcasts focused on news and stories from the front. They included, for example, recordings from the battlefield and interviews with wounded servicemen awaiting evacuation, all subject to the approval of the military censorship. On the one hand, the radio did not refrain from providing information on attacks with the heartland of Israel; on the other hand, it was careful not to overplay the achievements of Israel’s forces at the start of

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hostilities. This greatly contributed to the public’s faith in what it was hearing from the radio. While fighting was in progress, foreign language songs, in an act of patriotism, were excluded from the playlists (a custom that subsequently persisted in times of emergency or mourning). Prerecorded programs of greetings from the front were also broadcast. When it became known that IDF forces had reached the Old City of Jerusalem, the radio played music bespeaking love for the City for several hours, and with the announcement of the occupation of the Golan Heights, songs in praise of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) and the Golan mountains were played (Oren 2004: 119). The success of the radio broadcasts during the Six Day War was a result not only of Hebrew-language broadcasts, but also of those in Arabic. As noted above, over the years, the Voice of Israel Arabic-language broadcasts had included soft propaganda put out by the Jewish majority for the Arab minority. These broadcasts attempted to mitigate the intensity of the political conflict and draw listeners’ attention to non-political issues such as education, health, agriculture, and science. These broadcasts propagated the idea that the Arabs could profit from the achievements of Jewish society (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 64–65). With the outbreak of the 1967 War, the Voice of Israel’s scheduled Arabic-language broadcasts were dropped in favor of sharply focused propaganda transmissions aimed primarily at the Arab population outside the borders of the State of Israel. The Arabic broadcasting used psychological warfare, aimed at undermining the confidence of Arab listeners in the military leadership of the combatant Arab states. Newscasts were the vehicle for this effort, emphasizing the defeat of the Arab armies by airing interviews with Egyptian prisoners of war, as well as programs stressing the horror of wars (Oren 2004: 119). Instructions were also directed at the besieged Palestinian population to fly white flags and lay down their arms. As I will show in the next chapter, the effective functioning of the radio during the war, and also the results of the war itself, greatly influenced the decision to set up a television station in Israel.

Forerunners of Broadcasting Pluralism The foregoing discussion outlines a picture of highly centralized radio broadcasting in the first decades of the State of Israel, whose control would ensure that the radio achieved its national and political goals. The harbingers of media pluralism did, however, appear in the 1970s. Those years saw increasing global influences on radio broadcasts, especially with regard to the music being played on the air. Contributing to global pressures were two radiophonic phenomena from outside civilian public broadcasting. The first was the Galei Zahal (IDF Waves[Army Radio]) station, which, from the 1970s, became very

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popular among radio listeners. The second was the Voice of Peace, an offshore pirate radio station that broadcasted in the Mediterranean Sea not far from the Tel Aviv shoreline. While military and piratical stations are not unique to Israel, the attributes of transmission, the reaction of the political establishment, and the needs these stations satisfied made them exceptional in Israel. Both the military and the pirate station appeared to have achieved cultural dominance and public sympathy through the very fact that each was rebelling in its own way against existing broadcasting conventions: against the formalism and the gravitas of the Broadcasting Authority and also against the direct influences of the political establishment on radio broadcasts. In other words, it was their departure from the “normal” broadcasting landscape in a democratic state that contributed to their image and attracted listeners.

Galei Zahal (Army Radio) Israel does not hold a patent on military radio broadcasts; their roots may be traced to the Spanish Civil War of 1936. In World War II, military forces made extensive use of radio broadcasts. These broadcasts reflected the prevailing faith in radio’s effectiveness and direct influence on listeners. Radio broadcasts provide relatively cheap advocacy and propaganda, especially for soldiers positioned at the front, where preservation of morale sometimes poses a quite a challenge (Culbert 2002: 476). An outstanding example of such use of the radio following World War II is the U.S. Army’s establishing numerous radio stations in Europe with the aim of transmitting to U.S. forces stationed there. To that end, the Americans set up the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS), whose object was to provide radiophonic broadcasting materials to overseas radio stations. The AFRS initially operated out of New York but soon switched to Hollywood, the American entertainment capital (Morley 2001: 70). The assumption was that the U.S. forces stationed overseas would want “normal” transmissions from home, and accordingly most programs provided by the army radio were recorded from commercial radio networks in the United States. However, before being forwarded to the men in the field, the recordings were purged of advertisements and content that might prove detrimental to the troops’ morale (Webb 2004: 90). Despite the fact that there was no underlying commercial consideration in play concerning the military broadcasting, the AFRS adopted the assumption of the commercial broadcasting model, whereby the soldier public should be given what it wanted (primarily entertainment and pop music). The British army also operated radio broadcasts for its forces. The broadcasts began in 1944 and were meant for the British forces stationed in Algeria. But the British Forces Network officially began transmitting in 1945, two days after

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the surrender of Nazi Germany (Rudin 2004: 235). The British Forces Network broadcast for many years from studios built on German soil for the British troops in that country. During the Cold War, British military radio broadcasts were also aimed at listeners behind the Iron Curtain, in European countries of the communist bloc. Shortly after British broadcasting commenced in Germany, they also began transmitting in India and later expanded their broadcasts to many other places where British troops were stationed, including Malta, Kenya, Libya, Gibraltar, and Cyprus (Rudin 2004: 236). There are other examples, including contemporary ones, of army broadcasting stations. In some of them—in Thailand, for example—the army is the owner of a nationwide radio station; there, however, it is considered an agent of oppression. Galei Zahal, by contrast, is a station that addresses its broadcasts to the entire population. The station enjoys very high public ratings, is considered a national asset, and is sometimes even linked to democratization and avant garde cultural trends (Penslar 2003: 11; Soffer 2012). The existence of a military station that broadcasts like any civilian station and engages in news and political coverage—and thus also in criticism of the political echelon—undoubtedly gives rise to many problems in a democratic regime. Soldiers operate on its behalf as—for all intents and purposes—journalists while maintaining contact with and an affinity for the political space. Added to these are reservists who are recruited to the station to present and produce programs, and these often may be media personnel in their civilian profession—a fact that gives rise to both professional and ethical issues (N. Cohen 2003: 139). Over the years, in fact, the ongoing operation of Galei Zahal as a military station has figured on the public agenda. Thus, for example, chiefs of staff Moshe Levy and Ehud Barak advanced allegations concerning the incongruity between the station’s broadcasting attributes and the military framework, and during their terms of office, the possibility was raised of demilitarizing the station. These attempts, however, proved fruitless, especially in face of the might of the station’s political and public lobby (N. Cohen 2003: 141). Galei Zahal was founded in 1950. The then prime minister David Ben Gurion regarded the military station as a tool of security significance, meaning an efficient means of calling up reserve forces, while at the same time serving as an educational tool designed to assist in the absorption of the new immigrants and to promote the inculcation of the Hebrew language and Hebrew culture (S. Shaked 2006: 40). In the opinion of Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak (1990: 260), the setting up of a military radio station, similar to the founding of the IDF weekly (BaMahaneh [In the Camp]), reflects the functional expansion of the military to civilian spheres in general and to matters related to media activity in particular. The IDF radio station was supposed to help create a Hebrew broadcasting continuum and to dissuade listeners from tuning in to foreign stations, especially those of the Arab states, in those hours

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of the day when the Voice of Israel was not broadcasting. The commissioning of the military station was also part of the nation-in-arms mechanisms that were supposed to facilitate a rapid transition from a state of routine to a state of emergency (Ben-Eliezer 2003: 32–33). Also in this spirit, the station was meant to keep citizens (potential reservists) involved in military matters.2 The founding of a military radio station points to then prevailing assumptions about the effectiveness of radio broadcasts; it was believed that only a handful of individuals could educate and keep a large number of soldiers (and civilians) informed by means of the broadcast. It was argued that this high effectiveness of the station’s broadcasts was because it directly influenced each and every listener.3 However, a survey conducted in the various IDF units in 1950 found that the reception radius of the station was only thirty kilometers from its broadcasting studio in Ramat-Gan, which was not broad enough to allow most of the military forces to receive its broadcasts. Indeed, even many of the camps within the radius lacked radio sets or antennas through which to receive the station’s transmissions, so that the actual number of listeners among the troops in IDF camps was in fact very small.4 The great leap forward for Galei Zahal occurred in the late 1960s, when the station’s broadcasting hours were increased and it gained popularity among listeners. One of those responsible for the change was the commander of the station (director), Yitzhak Livni, who took over the station, which was in severe financial crisis and broadcasting only about four hours a day. Livni began to gradually expand broadcasting hours, even without being officially authorized to do so (Almog 2004: 175). The station recruited servicemen who had undergone strict screening, many of whom were inclined to take critical cultural positions. They were joined by senior media personnel. In that period, the station assigned greater weight to programs of a civilian and cultural cast. Toward the 1960s, and in line with trends prevailing in Western stations, the station began to dedicate more room to pop/rock music (Regev and Seroussi 2004: 35). Motti Regev (1997: 16) suggests that this style of music was experienced in those years “as a rebellious, subversive statement of refusal against what was perceived as ‘square’ and ‘old’ culture.” It is difficult to explain how the military radio station came to be the Israeli frontrunner of these global musical influences, as this rebellious and insubordinate music seemed to run counter to everything the army represented. Was Galei Zahal in fact a hotbed for radicalism and rebelliousness? Menachem Mautner (2000: 30–31) suggests that Galei Zahal managed to find a way to eliminate the rebellious potential of this music through the “sandwich method,” in which “serious” content (e.g., education of Zionist or IDF values and heritage) was interwoven into programs containing rock music and other entertainment programs. This method sent young people the message that they could be part of the rebellious pop culture and good soldiers at the same time.

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Along with the rising musical prominence of the pop style came a change in the style of presentation. A more spontaneous and informal radiophonic style gradually arose, antithetical to the serious and careful tone of the broadcasts of the Voice of Israel. Programs presented by Dori Ben-Zeev, for example, were youthful, chatty, informal, and sometimes even unruly in presentation style. Almog characterizes this style as “non-presentation”: it consisted of open dialogue and background noises, as if there were no microphone in the vicinity. This is quite distinct from the sterile studio broadcasting atmosphere of the Voice of Israel. The station also introduced the radio genre of the “call-in show”: Nathan Dunevitch began airing his program Let’s Talk in the late 1960s, with listeners calling in and participating live (Almog 2004). This program heralded the arrival of “dialogue broadcasting,” a genre in which the voices of ordinary listeners are heard over the air alongside those of the broadcasting professionals. Tamar Katriel attributes the rise of the call-in show, which gained increasing strength in the 1980s, to radio’s adaptation to the rising centrality of television. In any event, the importance of this genre lies in the blurring of the traditional boundaries between the professional producers and the media consumers (i.e., the listeners), as the conversations create the illusion of a two-way medium (Crisell 1996: 189). Prior to the Internet, this genre provided the forum for the highest level of public participation in mass communication (Katriel 2004: 234). During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the broadcasts of Galei Zahal were for the first time combined with those of the Voice of Israel, a practice that took root and continued during the first Iraq war (1991). The joint studio transmitted around the clock, with four daily newscasts. At the end of the war, the question of Galei Zahal’s future arose once more. It was expected that the station would revert to its prewar broadcasting format, but the commander of the station at that time, Yitzhak Livni, decided to continue broadcasting twenty-four hours a day. The Broadcasting Authority opposed the move, preferring to expand the broadcasting hours of the Voice of Israel and restrict the broadcasting hours of the army station. However, it quickly became clear that the expansion of broadcasts on the Voice of Israel would involve an increase in budget due to wage demands. An interim decision of the Broadcasting Authority, which eventually became permanent, determined the Galei Zahal would transmit twenty-four hours a day until the salary problems in the Voice of Israel were resolved.5 Galei Zahal thus became the first station in Israel to broadcast continuously around the clock. With the expansion of its broadcasting hours, the station decided to continue to transmit four independent daily newscasts. Recall that, in the beginning, Galei Zahal had refrained from broadcasting news on political affairs, confining itself to a brief newscast on military affairs. With the daily

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news broadcasts being left in place following the War, Galei Zahal’s news and current events presentation became an institutionalized and important axis of the station. In those years, the station’s self-perception of its place within Israel’s communications and cultural field underwent great changes. Its military character, one could say, began to be interpreted as a sort of public-national broadcast that was committed to the democratic value of freedom of expression—and hence committed to dealing with controversial political topics.6 In the early 1970s, the differences between Galei Zahal and the Voice of Israel became more acute. The military station became the flag-bearer of youthful, contemporaneous, and humorous broadcasting. The informality of its broadcasts also seeped into current affairs programs, such as Alex Ansky’s Seven-O-Seven, which offered a more personal and relaxed early morning presentation. These hallmarks of informality became even more pronounced in the 1980s in the program Mah Yesh? (What’s Up?), which was pervaded with hectic gaiety, wild abandon, and satire and in which youthful broadcasters awaiting demobilization took part (the most prominent being Erez Tal and Avri Gilad) (Almog 2004: 186–187). Galei Zahal faced new challenges in the 1980s, especially when the Lebanon War broke out in 1982. The Israeli media, in contrast to past practice, played an active role on the eve of the war in the debate over the necessity of the war; its prevailing attitude was one of opposition to a preventive strike in Lebanon. With the outbreak of the war, and during the first days of combat, the media fell silent, contenting itself with describing developments in the hostilities. But as time passed, media criticism of the ongoing campaign and the manner in which it was being conducted grew. Unlike its predecessors, this war had no unifying effect. Moreover, it revealed in stark relief the problematic nature of the nation-in-arm model that gave the state’s leadership the power to autonomously decide whether to take up arms (Ben-Eliezer 2003: 34). During the First Lebanon War, the predominance of the Galei Zahal was higher than ever before. Correspondingly higher, too, was the political echelon’s preoccupation with the mode of conduct of the Galei Zahal in time of war, especially since, as stated, current affairs programs had become the supporting pillar of the station, which entailed political probing of matters surrounding the war, as well as a critical stance towards the state and military leadership. The First Lebanon War thus put Galei Zahal in a very difficult situation: as a military station, financed by and subject to the orders of the army, it had to rally in favor of the army’s military objectives, but as a journalistic entity that had constructed its own self-perception of professional public broadcasting, it had to give expression to positions opposing the war and criticizing the army’s mode of proceeding. Zvi Shapira, the commander of the station at the

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start of the war, notes that in that period a great deal of political pressure was exerted on the station, with a view to restricting its freedom of action. In the First Intifada, which broke out at the end of 1987, the army was called upon to take part in political warfare through the policing of a civilian population (Levy 2003: 173). This highlighted even more emphatically the problematic nature of the operations of an army station that frequently criticizes the political echelon—and even military operations. On the one hand, these crises cast into stark relief the importance of the station for Israeli media pluralism in an age of monopoly by the Broadcasting Authority. On the other hand, they led to attempts to subject it to restrictions: in the 1980s came the demand to close its news department, and then in the early 1990s, during Ehud Barak’s term of office as Chief of General Staff, came the call to demilitarize or close down the station altogether. It is noteworthy that as the standing of the station on the radio broadcasting map strengthened, with its broadcasts addressing an ever-widening audience, so did the criticism against it for being a “nepotistic” station connected to north Tel Aviv and alien to the periphery and to Mediterranean music (see, for example, Hadas 1997). Galei Zahal continues to play an active and important role in the contemporary radio scene. Rafi Mann and Tzipi Gon-Gross (1991: 6) describe it as “the essence of Israeliness: lots of chutzpa and improvisation, initiative, and obstinacy.” It is precisely because the station is connected to the military establishment and financed out of the defense budget that its personnel could be partially freed from the institutional radiophonic pressure felt by Voice of Israel staff, and in this way develop into a stronghold of alternative broadcasting culture. Thus it came about that a military station—perhaps the most direct expression of national establishmentarianism—was perceived as rebelling against the establishment and at the same time clearly representing public broadcasting. Indeed, along with the development of humorous and informal programs, the station began to transmit programs addressing specialized groups of listeners, which were typical, on the whole, of public broadcasting. One example is University on the Air, a program that was first aired in 1977 and has since provided hundreds of courses with more than 300 books based on the program lectures published by the Ministry of Defense Publishing House. This program series addresses the broad educated public and presents knowledge and analysis of phenomena in a diverse range of fields, with detailed attention to professional language and academic standards (S. Shaked 2006: 155–156).

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The Voice of Peace Its anti-establishment image was, to a great extent, as I will show, the secret of the attraction of the Voice of Peace pirate broadcasting station. The broadcasts of this station, from a ship anchored in the Mediterranean Sea, commenced in 1973, and its founding is considered a milestone in the chronicles of Israel’s radio (Limor 1996: 46). As stated, the practice of transmitting radio inland from the sea was not unique to Israel, and the founding of the Voice of Peace reflects the spread of broadcasting patterns from Europe to the Israeli media, particularly Western influences on music and the style in which it was presented. But the station’s broadcasts, and the manner in which the Israeli establishment received them, had some unique characteristics. The end of the 1950s saw the commencement of radio broadcasting to Scandinavian countries from ships anchored at sea. During the 1960s, this phenomenon spread to other European countries (Chapman 1992: 27). In Britain, for example, numerous offshore pirate stations arose in those years, the main reasons cited being the BBC’s monopoly of radio broadcasting and the dearth of commercial radio broadcasting in Britain (as compared with commercial television, which had already been operating since the 1950s). Another explanation relates to the absence of any British law banning offshore radio broadcasting from international waters. The pirate stations were also part of the battles over the popularization of culture, primarily with regard to popular radio music broadcasts. In that period, American radio, breaking with the previous custom of broadcasting live music, started playing recorded music. This practice lowered production costs, enabled songs to be played to suit the public taste, and made it easier for radio to compete with the cultural and commercial dominance of television in that period (Crisell 2005:140). In Britain, record company personnel’s fears that broadcasting recorded music would have a detrimental effect on record sales delayed the penetration of recorded popular music into British radio programs. The piratical stations stepped into this void. In the era of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, these stations sensed listeners’ desire—primarily among the youth—for popular music and saw the potential to profit from the sale of time for advertising that would be integrated into such music broadcasts (Downing 2004: 237). The response of the European establishment to the offshore pirate stations was fairly hostile (Chapman 1992: 32). In Britain, the stations faced the opposition of politicians, public radio, the press, and the music industry. On the surface, this opposition was due to the pirate stations’ unlicensed and unsupervised use of broadcasting frequencies, which are a public resource, and other implications, such as lowered ethical standards of broadcasts in the absence of oversight and the dangers posed to maritime transport from the transmitting ships anchoring close to shore. But there were strong fears

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that the operation of these stations would damage sales of records and the advertising revenue of the newspapers. The pirate stations were ultimately outlawed in Britain and across Europe in general (see, for example, Britain’s Marine Broadcasting [Offences] Act of 1967). At the same time, they exerted considerable cultural influence. Their transmissions changed the format of radio broadcasting, giving prominence to recorded popular music. Thus, in 1967, the BBC set up Channel 1 to provide a substitute for the piratical music broadcasts (Crisell 2005: 238; Downing 2004: 140). The circumstances in the Israel media arena at the end of the 1960s were similar to those that engendered the offshore radio broadcasts in Britain. And in Israel, too, the establishment blocked the development of commercial channels, although it did not outlaw the operation of stations broadcasting from outside the territorial waters. Similar to the British public, Israeli listeners sought broadcasting alternatives and were thirsty for popular broadcasts, especially popular music. But these structural causes seem marginal when we compare them to the motivations of the individual agent of the Israeli offshore station—that is, the man who initiated the setup of the radio station and the ideology to which he dedicated the ship’s broadcasts. Abie Nathan, founder of the Voice of Peace, was born in Persia in 1927 and raised in India. He was an untiring social activist. His colorful, bohemian image was featured in the gossip columns of the time, mainly due to his being the owner the Tel Aviv restaurant California, which was a meeting place for the town’s bohemians. But Nathan was also perceived as a serious and respected peace activist. He first won Israeli and international recognition in 1966 when he flew his light plane to the Egyptian airport at Port Said in order to bring Egypt a message of peace. He flew to Egypt again in 1967 just before the Six Day War. On returning to Israel he was arrested for failing to comply with the law prohibiting Israeli citizens from visiting Arab states; he was convicted, refused to pay the fine (while donating an identical sum to a hospital), and chose instead to undertake the forty-day prison sentence. At the end of the 1960s, Nathan decided to transmit an Israeli message of peace by setting up an offshore pirate radio station. He purchased an old transport ship and began converting it into a radio station, which involved substantial financial costs. When the enterprise early on threatened to run aground, Nathan sold his property in Israel and went on a protracted hunger strike to raise donations. He was finally able to transform his ship into a radio station and began broadcasting opposite the shores of Tel Aviv in 1973 (Soffer 2010a). Unlike the European pirate stations, which operated for all intents and purposes as commercial enterprises, Nathan aspired to finance his radio station through donations in order to ensure its ideological independence. It quickly became clear that this was an impractical plan, and advertising became the station’s principal source of finance. The program format resembled

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that of the British precedent, focusing on popular music. Broadcasters were mostly British disc jockeys, who viewed their work on the ship as a good opportunity for gaining professional experience. The music was interspersed by very few words (these were mainly slogans in support of peace). It is worth noting that foreign pop/rock music was being broadcast on Galei Zahal before the Voice of Peace went on the air, but, as noted above, the military identity of the station meant it had to uphold the State’s hegemonic values, thereby removing the subversive component of the pop/rock music and the counter culture from which it sprang. Broadcasting from outside Israel’s territorial waters was not seen as illegal in the 1970s. Over the years, the Israeli authorities took a fairly cautious attitude towards the pirate radio stations, as they created a communicational pluralism that eased pressure on the political establishment to end the monopoly of public broadcasting (Limor and Naveh 2007). An examination of the public-journalistic discourse of that period reveals the differences between the Israeli and British establishments’ attitudes towards piratical stations: the Voice of Peace encountered no real opposition, and politicians who did oppose it focused primarily on the political message of the station and not on its media piracy. For example, the then prime minister Golda Meir was quoted by the press as saying: “I do not know Abie Nathan—and that’s my loss [ . . . ]—what Abie Nathan does is amusing, even lovely—but it’s pointless” (Maariv 1973a). On the other hand, Minister of Communications Shimon Peres perceived a danger in the broadcasting of Beatles refrains by the station, since they were not popular with Libyan leader Muammar al-Ghaddafi. “If the boat continues with these broadcasts,” Peres warned, “it could anger the Libyan ruler, and who knows whether that won’t lead to war” (Maariv 1973b). The Israeli printed press—which for years had consistently opposed the founding of commercial radio stations, fearing a decline in advertising income—lavishly praised Nathan, his humane and media vision, and especially the music being played on his station. Even his English-accented, somewhat faulty Hebrew was perceived as a welcome alternative to that of the Voice of Israel or of Galei Zahal (Benkler 1973). The music played by the station was perceived as an alternative both to the Voice of Israel’s discussion of political issues and the Israeli-Arab conflict and to Galei Zahal’s militaristic aspects. Pop/rock music and the British-style presentation went well with the social erosion and fatigue over the Arab-Israeli dispute. This music echoed a foreign otherness and a yearning for 1960s culture against the backdrop of the well-known appeal to “make love, not war” (Kaniuck 1973). The facts that the Voice of Peace was a maritime station—broadcasting, as it stated, “from somewhere in the Mediterranean”—and that it used English to address all radio listeners in the Middle East (“whoever they may be”)

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served to blur the national identity of the station and to create a sense that this was a collective, transnational community of listeners—all within a framework that did not rebel against Israel-hood. An example was the twilight ritual, when every day at the very moment of sunset the station would suspend its broadcasts for thirty seconds in memory of the victims of violence in the Middle East and the world, calling on listeners to join in a moment of prayer. This appeal, addressed as it was to everyone living in the Middle East, sought to distance itself from Israeli national boundaries. Here, the imagined collective became obscured. As a Maariv correspondent wrote, “Abie asked people in Beirut, Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Port Said to look out of their windows towards the sea. There, a fine spectacle might be seen, all of it quiet and peace: the sunset. Abie wished us tranquility and serenity. And that the world be quiet, a world at peace” (Lachish 1975). As we have shown, discussions of radio stations frequently stress their role in the creation and reinforcement of a sense of belonging to a certain territory and to a national collective by means of symbols, events, and ceremonies and by connecting the private space of individual listeners to the public sphere (Douglas 2004; Scannell and Cardiff 1991: 277–278). But the Voice of Peace in fact created a type of imagined “non-place”—whereas “place” connects people to a region and a territory, “non-place” imparts a sense of deterritorialization, or detachment from a specific locality (Buchanan 1999: 394). In the case of the Voice of Peace, the multinational tone of its broadcasts, its indefinite physical location, and the mixture of Hebrew, Arabic, English, and French languages all emphasized listeners’ sense of a “counterspace,” enhancing the alternative character of the station. With reference to Michel Foucault’s (1994) term, the Voice of Peace station could be called a “heterotopia”—a place where different game rules apply and which is differentiated and isolated from an “ordinary” place. Its ship was a floating place that was a non-place—being in a state of perpetuum mobile—in the infinitude of the sea. Given these attributes, ships (and especially if they are transmitting) spark the imagination and serve as a refuge from the grasp of national territory (Hever 2007: 40–41). In a period when the influences of globalization on Israeli society were increasing, the Voice of Peace was a symbol of the mounting Israeli tendency to gaze “outward” towards the West. The Zionist vision, on the other hand, was based on turning one’s back to the sea—that is, passing from the lands that lay “beyond the sea” to Eretz Yisrael, the goal for the realization of a new Hebrew way of life, and turning one’s back on vile exilic existence. As Hannan Hever argues, in the Zionist vision, the Mediterranean Sea was frequently perceived as transparent, or as an obstacle on the path to the self-realization of the new Jewish existence in Eretz Yisrael. Tel Aviv, too, was founded “with its back to the sea”: its first houses were built not on the coast but at a distance from it.

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The town only gradually approached the coast, and its streets run parallel and not tangential to the shore (Azaryahu 2005). The “outward” gaze toward the West was expressed in the very need to look toward the horizon in spotting Abie Nathan’s boat lying at anchor not far from the shore.7 Yet this “outward” gaze was also clearly expressed in the foreign Western music and style of presentation coming from the Voice of Peace (Soffer 2010a: 165–166). Thus the Voice of Peace in Israel, like the pirate stations in Europe, primarily provided both a response to the need for emotional and aesthetic enjoyment and, correspondingly, an escape from the local national radiophonic reality to a more cosmopolitan one. It would seem that this escapist need was particularly strong in Israel given the period in which the broadcasts took place: the 1973 War broke out only months after the Voice of Peace started transmitting. In the wake of that war, life in Israel saw a heightening of social fatigue with an ongoing security threat (Barzilai 1992: 236). The euphoria that followed the 1967 war gave way to a feeling that things had gone wrong, that the war had taken the army by surprise, and that an ageing Israeli leadership was disconnected from reality and tainted by corruption (Susser and Goldberg 2005: 639–640). Moreover, commencing from the 1970s, Israel faced an ever-worsening economic and social crisis (Peled and Shafir 2005: 272). Between the yearning for a stable and tranquil lifestyle and the turmoil of the Israeli public sphere, a radiophonic “voyage” on board the Voice of Peace became a kind of liminal temporary space: as long as no disaster occurred in the “real” geographical space, listeners could continue to “sojourn” on board the peace ship (Lachish 1975). Expressionist trends of this kind gained strength over the years, currently seen, for example, in the Tel Aviv “bubble” mind-set that reflects an aspiration for normal urban life coexisting with a disregard of the abnormality of life in regions only tens of kilometers distant from Tel Aviv. To a certain extent, the Voice of Peace station may be regarded as heralding this “Tel Avivian” culture and its distinction from “Jerusalemite” culture: the reception range of the Voice of Peace was primarily the coastal area, in particular the area of Tel Aviv, and Nathan himself was very much a part of the cultural and social life of that city (Alfasi and Fenster 2005). These aspects helped endow the Voice of Peace with a local character that conformed to the evolution of the image of Tel Aviv as a cosmopolitan city, open to global cultural influences, compared with the Jerusalemite conservatism the radio of the Broadcasting Authority was perceived as reflecting. Abie Nathan’s plans for conducting debates on board the peace ship between Israelis and Arabs failed. Yet it was this very failure and the fact that Nathan had no practical solution or any real platform that were the main reasons the Voice of Peace entered into mainstream Israeli society, becoming a practical alternative to the other radio stations and a refuge from their seemingly endless political verbiage. Nathan’s failure in the practical

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advancement of a solution or negotiation between warring parties led to a situation in which the notion of peace remained abstract, part of a general message of human brotherhood, with which everybody could identify. Thus, its anti-establishment, pro-peace message—in opposition to the axiom generally accepted in Israeli society that war was inevitable—could be received within the bounds of the mainstream political establishment, since all politicians could identify with this abstract yearning (Soffer 2010a: 168). In 1980, the dilapidated condition of Nathan’s boat led him to launch a campaign to gain approval from the authorities to broadcast from within Israel, which was prohibited under Israeli law. The negotiations he conducted with cabinet ministers and Members of Knesset reveal his close ties with politicians of the entire political spectrum, apparent through their general positive attitude towards him and his exceptional request. While the government debated the issue of who had the authority to approve Nathan’s application, a private member’s bill for legalizing the ship’s broadcasts passed its first reading in Knesset. The bill ultimately fell on its third reading because of opposition of the religious parties—which objected to the station’s practice of transmitting on the Sabbath. In 1987, another attempt was made to legalize the station and make it a regional radio station of Tel Aviv, as part of the Second Television and Radio Authority, but this initiative also failed. The station continued to broadcast intermittently from the sea until 1993, when Nathan scuttled his ship in the Mediterranean, not far off the Israeli coast. The sinking of the Voice of Peace in that year was perceived as a symbolic act: it was in that year that the Oslo Accords were signed and peace was considered within reach. In that atmosphere, it seemed that the Voice of Peace had achieved its ideological aim and was no longer necessary. But that same year was also a turning point in Israel in the field of commercial broadcasting, whose advent the Voice of Peace had been, to a certain extent, the first to herald. In 1993, television’s Channel 2—the most potent symbol of commercial broadcasting—inaugurated its regular transmissions. A few years later, and by virtue of the same law, privately owned local radio stations started broadcasting, financed—as the Voice of Peace had been—through advertising (Soffer 2010a: 170–171). To sum up the case of the Voice of Peace, it seems clear that the socio-political differences between Israel and Europe influenced the nature of their relationships with pirate radio stations. In Europe, the legislative changes designed to prevent broadcasting from such stations were swift and decisive, while in Israel, legislative efforts were made to legalize the station. The British establishment reacted with panic to the emerging pirate radio stations, mainly because they could not be supervised and could transmit any content they pleased. In Israel, on the other hand, this was seen as an advantage of the station, a fact that may be related to Israeli political culture (Sprinzak

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1986)—in which legality was perceived in terms of instrumentality and utilitarianism rather than as a basic democratic value. The fact that the Voice of Peace bore certain “British” features (which, in practical terms, reflected an American influence) expresses the general tendency gaining strength in Israel in the 1970s to reinforce Western global trends and civilian, post-nationalist concepts. Radiophonically speaking, the influences of the broadcasts of the Voice of Peace were fairly similar to those of the broadcasts of the offshore piratical stations in Britain. The prominence of pop/rock music on pirate radio led to the founding of a public broadcasting station that specialized in such music— in England this was Channel 1, and in Israel, Reshet Gimmel, which played Hebrew and light foreign music. Regev (1997: 123), a researcher of musical culture in Israel, maintains that the founding of Reshet Gimmel—as a channel that gave pop/rock music a central position—was instrumental in giving presence to this musical style in Israeli daily life. Both Galei Zahal and Reshet Gimmel largely determined the success of pop/rock singers through the hit parades they broadcast on those two stations, as well as by the very fact that they provided a public platform for them to be heard (Regev and Seroussi, 2004: 35). The Voice of Peace station also inspired the founding of Channel 7, another pirate radio station that, at least according to those operating it, also transmitted from the sea commencing from 1989. Channel 7 was perceived as expressing a hawkish, right-wing political voice, especially that of settlers. Its broadcasts were meant to be a response not only to the broadcasts of the Voice of Peace but also to the Israeli media in general, which right wing circles perceived as expressing leftist views. Along with the current affairs and political broadcasts, the station played a lot of Israeli music, a combination that helped to draw a large audience. It also played Hassidic music (Limor and Naveh 2007: 144). During the 1990s, many attempts were made to legalize Channel 7—similar to the attempts in the 1980s to legitimize the operation of the Voice of Peace. Success seemed to be near in 1999, when, through a legislative move under the Arrangements Law, authorization was given for the licensing of pirate radio stations that had been transmitting continuously for five years. But this led to petitions to the HCJ to have the law rescinded. The Court ruled that the relevant clause in the Arrangements Law was null and void, since it violated the principles of freedom of occupation (Limor and Naveh 2007: 171–175). In 2003, following a legal battle, the Channel 7 station ceased its piratical operations and has since continued to transmit over the Internet while also operating a current affairs and news portal. The rise of the new broadcasting genres—seen in Galei Zahal and the Voice of Peace, as well as other stations—should to be considered in the context of the changes in radio brought by the advent of television broadcasting in Israel

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in 1968. The radio turned to other, more intimate, broadcasting niches (Liebes 2000: 32). One of these, which I mentioned above, was the emerging callin program. The radio broadcasts, which already operated on a multichannel basis, offered listeners greater diversity than the single television channel, especially with regard to musical genres. Radio also transmitted a higher quality of music with the introduction of the FM channel (commencing from 1984, Reshet Gimmel also began transmitting on this frequency modulation).

The Multichannel Radio Age: Diversification and Decentralization? As we have seen, throughout the years of the State’s existence, the range and nature of radio channels has gradually evolved. But the most significant change in the outline of the broadcasts took place with the introduction of regional radio into Israel. These stations significantly boosted the volume of transmissions. There was also a change in the underlying concept of radio broadcasting: it was no longer a public service but a business whose aim was to maximize profits (Peri 2004: 6). The concept that radio content should be controlled as a means for forming a homogeneous society with unique and distinctive traits gave way to a far more economically oriented concept—one that sought to recognize and satisfy the multiplicity of listeners’ tastes. Israel thereby, albeit somewhat belatedly, joined the trend that prevailed in Western Europe in the 1970s and 1980s: the evolution of regional radio broadcasts (Browne 1991). According to Dov Shinar (2002), the founding of the Broadcasting Authority in the 1960s was the culmination of attempts to harness the media to the melting-pot approach to social policy. The Broadcasting Authority Law expressed the national aim to unify the broadcasted communication services for various sectors under a public umbrella. The law was seen as a sort of magic solution to the problem of political influences on the radio (192–193). However, this unity-stressing concept was replaced over the years by a concept that recognized the impossibility of silencing the multitude of voices in Israeli society. The need to cultivate a diversified discourse in the civil arena thus became ever more pressing. An early sign of this was seen in the frustration of ethnic, religious, political, and other groups, who complained that their media needs were not being met. In response, “cassette music” spread out from the stalls of Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station across the country, even to the piratical radio stations, which sometimes broadcast the music alongside broadcasts of a religious nature. This music, recorded on tapes and sold, was rarely heard on establishment radio and television, and its flourishing was a countercultural answer to national radio. The rise of the radio stations that did respond to this musical

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genre, along with broadcasting religious content, can be seen as a milestone in the development of radiophonic sectarianism. This challenges the concept of the hegemonic melting pot reflected in the more veteran radio stations (Shinar 2000: 192). Also influential was the general change in how the communication medium and its attributes were perceived. As I noted at the beginning of this chapter, radio had to redefine its role when television took central place on the broadcasting map. Radio began to reflect more polyphonic concepts, and it was seen to have an advantage in more intimate programs. Moreover, radio was now seen as being more modest, as almost primitive and unpolished: the voices heard on air were ostensibly no longer solely under the control of media professionals (Katriel 2004: 234). The relative ease with which radio programs could be put on the air fostered the view that radio was a system that gave audiences a voice and that it was a pivotal means of cultivating and strengthening cultural and political publics. Roeh (1992), commenting on radio broadcasting in Israel in the 1950s, notably diagnosed it as being too much of a monologue: a virtually untrammeled platform for politicians and experts. The 1990s, however, saw a strengthening of the dialogue element in Israel radio, reflecting the desire for a multiplicity of voices. Chiming in alongside the voices of the broadcasting experts were the voices of the “people in the street” in popular call-in programs. This genre was a sort of compensation for the unidirectional nature of traditional radio. Yossi Syass, for example, who in the early 1990s presented a program on the Voice of Israel that consisted primarily of chatting with listeners, perceived the opening of the radio to listeners voicing their troubles as the democratization of that medium—since the voices being heard over the radio were authentic human voices. This dialogue-oriented genre of programs became more dominant over the years, as the range of programs likewise expanded (today, alongside the “traditional” psychologists, we find tarot card readers, mediums, practical Kabala experts, etc.). As stated, during the 1990s, the fight to democratize and popularize the radio also connected to legitimizing the playing of Middle Eastern music, which was now gaining ever-broader acceptance. For years, this musical genre had been excluded for the principal radio channels or was played only on specific bandwidths (Katriel 2004: 280). Despite the numerous economic difficulties that beset the regional stations, listening rates gradually rose, and the stations became key players in the radiophonic arena, especially among young listeners. The diversification of the radio stations during the 1990s was seen not only in the addition of regional stations. In the early 1990s, the “Educational Radio” project began operating under the auspices of the Voice of Israel and in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Education. In the summer of 2007, some forty micro-stations started broadcasting

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in various educational institutions, such as institutions of higher learning, schools, and community centers. These stations operate on the 106 FM frequency. Their broadcasts are meant to be fairly local and are each directed towards a specific audience. The educational radio project was designed to bring students, especially on the periphery, closer to the media world, to promote education towards tolerance, democracy, and a wide range of opinions, and also to develop students’ media literacy and self-expressive and creative capabilities (Limor and Naveh 2007: 48). Joining these stations in 1991 was also a new radio station commissioned by the Voice of Israel in response to the large waves of immigration, especially from the former Soviet Union. The station, which was known as Reka (from the Hebrew initials of Reshet Klitat Aliya [Immigration Absorption Network]), unified the various broadcasts for immigrants under a single roof. At the outset, it broadcast mainly in Russian, with the aim of promoting the adaptation of the immigrants into Israeli society (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 109). Today, it addresses immigrants and broadcasts in several languages, including Amharic, English, French, and Spanish. The question of whether the dramatic increase of the number of radio channels during the 1990s attests to a trend of media pluralism is open to debate. Shinar (2000), commenting on this issue, argues that the multiplicity of channels indicates the cultivation of the principle of “more of the same” rather than pluralism and diversification. A similar concept is proposed by Motti Regev and Edwin Seroussi (2004: 37), commenting on the effect of the multitude of channels on popular music in Israel. According to them, changes in the radio toward a free market and an increase in the number of broadcasting stations actually had a paradoxically mainstreaming effect. Galei Zahal tried to cope with the new radiophonic reality by means of the sub-station, Galgalatz, which adopted a radiophonic formula seeking to broadcast well-loved and familiar Israeli and foreign pop music. The regional stations, which depended on the audience ratings as a condition for the sale of advertising, sometimes adopted the Galgalatz formula in one variation or another. Reshet Gimmel, many of whose listeners abandoned it in favor of the new stations, announced in 1997 that it would henceforth broadcast nothing but various kinds of Israeli music. Following these changes, there remained on Israeli radio only a few bandwidths that were dedicated to new and foreign musical genres. Another expression of the principle of “more of the same” on regional radio broadcasts are the syndication broadcasts, which have enabled transmission costs to be cut at the expense of diversity. The programs produced by the regional stations also frequently resemble one another, and the preference for specific radiophonic genres over others is quite perceptible. For example, stations usually broadcast programs featuring incoming calls from listeners;

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most stations feature daily sport programs; most play music on weekends and at night, and Israeli songs constitute a large part of that music. Allegations that the mainstreaming of radio broadcasts is due to the advent of commercial content are part of a wide-ranging debate over the effects of commercial broadcasting on media content in Europe. Commercial broadcasting, of course, entered Europe about twenty years before it reached Israel, and accordingly, the viewpoint on the effect of the shift in Europe has a longer range. The critics of commercial broadcasting allege that the commercial method actually narrowed the range of broadcasts, since commercial broadcasts depend on attention from as many listeners as possible—and this dependency creates a bias that counterbalances the aspiration for quality and variety and awards preference to majority over minority groups (Curran 1998: 190). In the market economy, purchasers are prepared to pay more for a product that they badly want; however, advertising does not look at the intensity of demand for a product, but only at the preparedness to consume it—to listen to and to watch it. This unique feature of advertising, which values exposures rates only, undermines the possibility of creating broadcasting products that address narrow, high-quality publics. It is based on gaining the attention of as many listeners or viewers as possible. Entry into the broadcasting market calls for high economic investment and economic soundness. Only relatively large commercial organizations can acquire broadcasting concessions to meet this economic entry threshold. This leads to a concentration of media ownership and is detrimental to the dissemination of information and to cultural diversity in broadcasting. Critics of commercial broadcasting argue that its negative influences are not confined to the commercial stations alone, but also touch on the public broadcasting that operates alongside the commercial stations. Public broadcasting, of course, has always received harsh criticism, mainly with regard to its having served for many years as a mouthpiece for the administration (Curran 2000), but with the advent of the commercial channels into the broadcasting market, it was argued that not only would this not lead to an improvement in the quality and diversity of broadcasts, it would actually be detrimental to them. According to these arguments, the advent of commercial broadcasting proved injurious to the legitimization of public broadcasting, adopting games rules and a success index from the commercial market. The concept that views public broadcasting as a means of improving society—often reflected through its elitist cultural broadcasts—made way for a concept that seeks to please the listener or the viewer—to give them what they want (Curran 1998). Thus the multiplicity of radio stations in the world does not necessarily translate into broadcasting diversity. For example, radio stations in Britain, with the intention of diversifying programming, passed from the

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“quasi-piratical” broadcasting format to the broadcasting of far more polished mainstream music in a short space of time (Hendy 2000: 8). This process, which prevailed in Europe and the United States, is largely paradoxical: on the one hand, we see an increasing number of stations that broadcast to ever smaller publics; on the other hand, we see a homogenization of content among the various stations (Hendy 2000: 194). Two explanations are proposed for the tendency of radio stations to resemble one another: the first is the fact that their ownership is concentrated in a small number of media firms, and the second is the acceptance of “winning formulas” for the maximization of the rating. However, these arguments must be examined in depth, since a possible reply could be that the ownership of many stations by a single entity creates motive for reaching out to different publics (i.e., markets)—and thus leads to the diversification of the broadcasts. As far as Israel is concerned, an examination of the reform proposed by the Second Television and Radio Broadcasting Authority in regional radio broadcasts may help us understand the problems that crop up in broadcasts in their current format and that prevent regional radio stations from offering the alternative of a multitude of voices on radio broadcasts. The first aspect is connected with the frequent decision to award a monopoly of regional broadcasting to one station in a particular geographical area. In the State of Israel— with its limited area and with social rifts that do not necessarily coincide with geographical sections—this is a problematic decision. First, it is not possible to control the “percolation” of the broadcasts of one broadcasting station to the broadcasting region of another station. And indeed, the broadcasts of the regional stations are received well beyond their concession areas, thus reducing the significance of their regionality. Second, the stations, operating on a competitive economic basis, seek to gain high listening ratings, and as a result reach out to the broadest possible population segment. Thus, instead of aiming at differentiated groups with differentiated needs, the broadcasts address the broadest common denominator. The smallest groups in the broadcasting regions, having special radiophonic demands, are left without a response. Accordingly, one of the proposals for reform envisions dividing the country into a smaller number of broadcasting regions, in each of which more stations will operate, broadcasting a diversity of content (such as religion and tradition programs) in a variety of languages. According to this concept, the country will be divided into five regions at most, making it possible to establish many small stations, which will broadcast on the level of the single town. Such subdivided broadcasting should be enabled in part through the operation of digital radio broadcasts. It is noteworthy that regional radio’s contribution to broadcasting pluralism can be seen most clearly in those geographical areas that coincide with some social divide. An example is the Arabic-language regional radio

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broadcasts. Before the commissioning of an Arabic speaking regional radio station, the Voice of Israel was the sole station broadcasting in that language. At that time, the diversification of radio broadcasts was reflected in the reception of broadcasts from the Arab states, and later, of the Palestinian Authority. With the commissioning of the regional radio, Radio 2000 began broadcasting to the region of Galilee and the Triangle, with excellent listening ratings (Jamal 2006: 156). Another example is “frequency splitting” in Radio Lev HaMedina, where from 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. its frequency broadcasts the Pervoye (First) radio station in the Russian language, responding to listeners’ needs. As noted above, the 1990s also saw significant increase in the number of pirate stations that were broadcasting everywhere in Israel alongside the stations operating lawfully—those operated by the Broadcasting Authority, those operating under Galei Zahal, regional broadcasts, and tutorial stations. Limor and Naveh argue that piratical radio is closely related to the rifts in Israeli society. Thus, one of the main focus groups for piratical radio stations was that of the religious ultra-orthodox sector. The demand for religious broadcasts was only partially responded to (through the heritage network of the Voice of Israel in 2000 and in the launching of a commercial regional station), and the broadcasts were not to the taste of all the ultra-orthodox groups—which range greatly. The simplicity of putting radio broadcasting on the air today conforms to the heterogeneity of the ultra-orthodox population. Piratical ultra-orthodox stations draw their legitimacy from the rabbinical authority and are perceived to bypass the national channels (Limor and Naveh 2007: 140). Another group that were under-represented in radio broadcasting for many years was, as stated above, Israel’s Arab citizens. As in the case of the religious ultra-orthodox sector, a single regional Arabic-language station was set up broadcasting to the Galilee and Triangle region only. Obviously, the geographical dispersal of the Arab population is far wider, and the Arab people are highly differentiated. In this case too, people could vent their frustration over the inaccessibility of radio broadcasting via the pirate radio stations—especially given the limited enforcement policy of the various authorities. Similarly, the rift between “hawks” and “doves” (Channel 7 and the Voice of Peace are mentioned above), as well as ethnic community rifts, provided fertile ground for the flourishing of numerous piratical stations (Limor and Naveh 2007).

Conclusion The tremendous social and political importance of radio during the Yishuv era and the first decades of Israeli statehood derived from the radio ability to

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bridge territorial distances, to reach all parts of the country, and to bind the population together. Simultaneously, the importance of the radio was boosted due to its being a medium under central control wielded by the ideological and political elements that mobilized the Zionist enterprise. In the absence of television broadcasts and given the fact that the audience was largely made up of immigrants who could not yet read Hebrew, radio was perceived as a crucial means of communication. These changes on the radio map may be seen as part of general social trends in Israeli society. In the 1970s, tension between statist and other neo-liberal, capitalist, and global forces mounted, seen, for example, in the Likud’s accession to power in 1977. The values of the Labor Movement that had predominated during the first decades of statehood—and which favored an interventionist, protective government economic policy by means of a highly developed bureaucracy—began losing strength in favor of post-nationalist and capitalist concepts that favored a free market (Peled and Shafir 2005: 272; Ram 2005; Murphy 1994: 68). These changes did not spare the media market, and in the 1990s the transition to a multichannel and commercial media market of radio and television broadcasting was complete (I will elaborate on the cultural and global effects of this transition with regard to television). It should, however, be borne in mind that the commercialization of radio, similar to the localization and demassification of radio broadcasts, were not unique to Israel. These trends were also seen in Europe and were influenced by the U.S. commercial broadcasting model, reflecting a new concept of radio as a more intimate, local, and dialogue-based means of mass communication. All this should be viewed in context of changes taking place on the media map and the relative, increasing marginality of radio broadcasts that have led to a redefinition of its functions. Some studies have recently shown that radio, both public (the Voice of Israel station) and regional-commercial, remains a central site for shaping the Israeli collective memory and for “engineering” national time through the content of its broadcasts. For example, a study of the playlists broadcast on nationwide and regional-commercial networks found that the radio symbolized national moods: the playlists being broadcast on Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Days, for example, were found to be low-key, quiet, serious, and melancholy in tone (Neiger, Zandberg, and Meyers 2009). Notably, this change in content on these memorial days is obligatory under the Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Day Law, which stipulates that radio broadcasts must express the unique character of the day. Indeed, Motti Neiger, Eyal Zandberg, and Oren Meyers (2009) claim that the change in the playlists reflects a change to “a lower gear,” expressing the rhythm of national life. But the fact that the radio is an agent marking the pace and motion of national-collective time can be seen not only on memorial days or at moments

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of national mourning but also in seemingly trivial weekly routines, such as the change in the broadcasting timetable on the Sabbath (Saturday). These routines are also visible in regional-commercial broadcasting stations: for example, in the nonstop radio network that broadcasts Hebrew songs on the Sabbath. Other stations, too, both regional and nationwide, broadcast similar Hebrew song programs on Friday nights. This change in the broadcasting timetable reflects, as Danny Kaplan (2009) claims, the national time transition from the profane to the sacred, and the choice to broadcast songs of Eretz Yisrael on the Sabbath provides a link between Jewish religious aspects and secular music. This plays a key role in the creation of a secular Israeli nation. And because the transition to Hebrew broadcasting is so natural and banal for the listeners is precisely why it is so powerful nationally.

Notes 1. See HCJ 8555/07: Gush Shalom v. the Minister of Communications. 2. Letter from Lt. Col. Yohanan Samuel to the Chief Education Officer, 29 April 1961. IDF Archives, 1967, Shipment 223, File 27. 3. Letter from Lt. Col. Mordechai Bar-On to the Chief of Personnel Branch, February 1963. IDF Archives, 1967, Shipment 223, File 27. 4. Letter from Lt. Col. A. Bar-On to the CGS, 31 December 1950. IDF Archives, 1960, Shipment 702, File 149. 5. Based on an interview with Mordechai Naor, conducted on 18 April 2010. 6. Based on an interview with Zvi Shapira, conducted on 10 February 2010. 7. It is noteworthy that the seashore itself became an escapist site, freed of the constant collective Israeli demands. See, for example, the movie Late Summer Blues (Hazan 1993).

chapter

3 Television in Israel

In previous chapters we saw that both the printed press and radio contributed substantially to the shaping of Jewish nationalism in its modern format. The Zionist leadership perceived these media as highly important tools en route to realizing the political and national ambitions of the Jewish people and, first and foremost, the establishment of the State of Israel. The same cannot be said of the attitude of the political leadership in Israel toward the founding of television broadcasting. Thus, while, throughout the rest of the world, television is the medium most identified with the emergence of new states in the wake of World War II, in Israel radio is the medium identified with this era of nation-building and its attendant social, cultural and political challenges. Television, on the other hand, was viewed with great suspicion, and its advent was delayed (Liebes 2006: 70).

Television in the National Arena Today, television functions as a leading global medium, but historically it is closely linked with national identity. In most countries, the state itself was involved in the setup and institutionalization of television broadcasting, and television was sometimes publicly owned, at least at the outset. Even in the United States, where television evolved in a commercial format, broadcasting was more highly regulated by the government than were other media. The nexus between nationalism and television history is also linked to attempts to restrict the integration of the products of mass-media culture from other countries, and especially from the United States, into the national broadcasting framework. From its genesis, television was geared towards enhancing the national concept—a process that the press and the radio were previously part of. By means of television, any home anywhere in a (Western) state could connect to what was taking place at that very moment in the living rooms of other

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citizens, because all were viewing the same television content emanating from the same source. Some liken this exposure to the television medium to our common exposure to the weather (Katz, Dayan, and Motyl 1981: 710). Television provided a frequent and intensive social bond. It gave visual expression to common experiences and to the identities woven around those experiences, of which it was itself a representative. The television’s integrative agency is illustrated through the paucity of channels in the West European democracies, which led viewers to unite around those broadcasts (Katz 1996: 23). Examples of media events cast into high relief the unifying national-political potential of the television medium, on both public and private commercial channels. The term “media event” refers to live broadcasts of key historical moments, such as the moon landing, the visit to Jerusalem by Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, sporting competitions that diverge from the routine, or dramatic political confrontations. These events call upon the citizens of a nation to converge as one, to sit and be counted as part of the mass viewing audience. People are called out of their houses to watch live broadcasts in the company of friends or family. These live broadcasts breach the planned broadcasting timetable and the routine, providing live broadcast drama rife with national symbols. The unifying power of media events lies in the public’s ability to identify with these symbols. As distinct from newscasts, for example, which deal mainly with conflicts, media events often highlight the ability to overcome conflicts and disputes. They reconnect individuals, instilling them with society’s key values and beliefs. Just as religious holidays are a focal point of unity in traditional society, suspending daily routine in favor of the festive event unique to a specific community, so do media events connect viewers in modern, secular, individualist society (Katz, Dayan, and Motyl 1981: 77). National broadcasting channels saw themselves as integrative agents liaising between different viewers and providing a basis for a common national identity, a common language, and a common culture (Volcic 2005: 289). The contents of the public channel broadcasts (or commercial channels under public control) were directly defined through legislation.

Public Broadcasting in Changing Times Like radio before it, television was seen in various countries as a national and educational tool rather than a profit-making tool. Great weight was ascribed not only to the consideration that broadcasting waves are a limited public resource but also to the assessment of television’s tremendous potential to influence the general public, which made it a means of facilitating direct access to the public and an instrument for social change (Atkinson 1997: 19–20).

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The most outstanding example of the evolution of public television is that of BBC. The founders of the British channel ascribed tremendous socio-cultural importance to the general public’s exposure to dramas, plays, and concerts. In the single-channel era, a classical Greek drama could be beamed to the public at 8:30 P.M., and thus, in a single evening, it would gain exposure to a larger audience than it had throughout history (Bourdon 2004: 300). And indeed, in the first years of television in Britain, Sunday evening broadcasts were dedicated to classical theatre plays, with the more popular plays being broadcast on Friday nights (Hilmes 2003: 69). Compared with the public broadcasting model, commercial television operates in an environment characterized by competition and free market initiative. Its underlying concept is that viewers should be allowed to watch whatever they please. Broadcasting network managements are committed first and foremost to their shareholders. The overriding consideration in producing television programs is economic: the wider the audience the programs reach, the greater the advertising revenue. The most conspicuous example of the commercial model is U.S. television. Radiophonic reality in the United States, originating in competition among manufacturers of radio sets, also influenced television broadcasts there. The nationwide commercial radio stations that began to emerge in the 1920s eventually came to broadcast on television too (Williams 1974: 29). As mentioned in the previous chapter, the commercialism of the private media does not conflict with the national character of their broadcasts. On the contrary: the economic dependence of the commercial media on the viewing audience sometimes requires them to take centralist positions addressing as wide a public as possible—all in order to boost their market share (Bennett 1996). In recent decades, technological changes have contributed to a blurring of the distinction between countries with a prevailing public broadcasting model to those characterized by private commercial broadcasting. The idea of television as a medium operating in the modern national format thus began to waver. Following technological changes and a global turning toward capitalist economic patterns, the emphasis shifted to private initiatives. This phenomenon dovetailed nicely with the general trend that saw a weakening of state power and authority in Western democracies, particularly regarding control of public behavior (Ezrahi 1994: 23). The perception of television as a medium meant for a specific public of a particular nation state was replaced by a perception of television broadcasting for consumers everywhere, regardless of national identity (Ashuri 2007: 185). One characteristic of this concept is that it undermines the importance of the specific physical-geographical locale. In the digital broadcasting era, in which we can watch a cable movie on demand or view a missed newscast an hour or so later, television frequently broadcasts to an audience of a single person. Interactive television, which

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enables programs on demand, allows the viewers to organize their timetables according to their preferences (Zuckerman 1999: 112). This trend joins the increasing tendency towards desynchronization in contemporary society (Ellis 2002: 170). Communication technology developments—from satellite and cable broadcasts to video on demand (VOD) services—largely bypass a state’s cultural mediation. In response, various countries have instituted a policy of broadcasting quotas, determining a certain percentage of broadcasts that must be original productions or in the national language—with the aim of telling the “national story.” But new broadcasting methods have largely rendered such broadcasting quotas irrelevant. Changes in the media market, including the proliferation of television channels, call into question the media’s ability to serve as a public forum that preserves national values and norms. Moreover, they threaten to split the media audience into small groups with differing tastes and to increase the acquisition of foreign television content for economic reasons (Cohen and Tukachinsky 2007: 242). However, not everyone shares the view that the proliferation of television channels and new digital technologies necessarily mean the end of the age of broadcasting in its “traditional” format. John Ellis (2002) suggests that traditional broadcasting will remain the dominant format of audio-visual consumption. In his opinion, the combination of viewers’ limited time and the multiplicity of channels will lead to choice fatigue and a longing for limited options. The concept of technological determinism—that changes in media technology have strong, absolute, and direct effects on modes of social organization—must be approached cautiously. Globalization is not related solely to the media. It penetrates many spheres, in particular the economic. Furthermore, globalization trends are not necessarily restricted to the erosion of the modern nation state. Globalization may give rise to local, ethnic, religious, or regional counteractions, which highlight participants’ cultural differences with regard to other nations or groups and affirm their local affiliation. The encounter with global content may also anchor national narratives firmly in feelings of nostalgia and, from a national point of view, tradition (Hogan 1999: 743–744). Research has shown that the public actually prefers watching local productions to imported ones (Ashuri 2007: 186). Language plays a key role in the preference for local rather than foreign content, and the translation of foreign programs does not negate the advantage of local productions (Cohen and Tukachinsky 2007: 244). Moreover, not everyone agrees with the thesis that argues the strong influence of the global market on the content of television broadcasts in specific countries (Ashuri 2007: 186). For example, audience reception studies such as that of Liebes and Katz (1990)—which analyzed the way audiences decoded the television series Dallas in various countries—stress national, local interpretation in the consumption of imported programs.

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Cohen and Tukachinsky (2007: 245) advance a similar argument. According to them, the way content is packaged in local media—even foreign content—influences the way it is received. As an example, they claim that the broadcast of an American show on an Israeli channel—accompanied by a Hebrew-language translation, the logo of the local channel, and Hebrew-speaking advertisements—gives the viewer a much different experience than the viewer who watches the same show on a global channel. As stated, Israel was born into an age of worldwide television broadcasting, when television was considered to be an important constitutive national resource. It would seem only natural that a young State of Israel would embrace television as a formative tool to build the nation and modernize its population. But, unlike the thirst for technological innovations in media evinced during the Yishuv era, this did not happen with television. The Israeli debate over television attests to just how fragile the new Hebrew culture was. It reveals a tendency to introversion and a fear of importing foreign cultural content into the youthful Israeli space. In effect, as I will show, the establishment of television was in the end driven by the wish to “export” content, as part of the advocacy (or propaganda) campaign vis-à-vis both the Palestinians in the occupied territories and the Arab states.

The “No-Go” Era: The Television Debate in the State of Israel As we have seen, the infrastructures for the Israeli press and radio were put in place as early as the Yishuv era, during the British Mandate, and, in the case of the printed press, as far back as Ottoman times; not so, however, in the case of television. Television was, in effect, the first mass medium that the state institutions were called upon to set up and establish ex nihilo. The debate over the founding of Israeli television commenced shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel. In 1950, a group of private entrepreneurs from Britain and Canada approached the Ministry of Communications with a proposal for setting up commercial television in Israel (Winkler 2005: 34). Jewish American NBC network founder David Sarnoff came up with a similar initiative, stressing the properties of television as a means to facilitate the ingathering of exiles in Israel (Winkler 2005: 34; Caspi and Limor 1992: 115). Other overseas organs such as CBS, the American Jewish Congress, and the Scottish Broadcasting Service also advanced proposals for founding Israeli television, as did domestic Israeli concerns. The Theatre Owners Organization, for example, proposed setting up a television channel that would make use of its production experience, thus attempting to minimize the damage the founding of television would cause its members. Menachem Aviv, a pioneer of Israel radio and a television enthusiast, proposed setting up educational

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television in Israel (Oren 2004: 24). However, these proposals were not implemented, nor were the recommendations of numerous commissions formed to examine the possible setup of television broadcasts in Israel during the 1950s and 1960s—all were stymied by the political echelons. Israel’s founders perceived television as a threat. Discussions over whether or not to permit the founding of a television service and its modus operandi were bitter and protracted. Some have alleged that if the infrastructure for Israeli radio had not been established in Mandatory times, radio would have encountered the same degree of opposition as television; that is, had the founders not already been accustomed to radio and its political and culture properties, they would likely have cast doubt on the need for any such medium, arguing that it was a luxury for a young nation in a state of crisis (Oren 2004: 19–20). During the two decades of debate over the founding of television in Israel, many arguments were made by various parties for the related benefits and harm of television for the State of Israel (Oren 2004: 26). Some of these claims—pertaining both to domestic media and to media outside the country—recurred frequently. In the following, I briefly look at the key arguments advanced by the opponents of Israeli television.

The Economy The State of Israel in its early years was mired in a deep economic crisis. The young state was struggling to absorb waves of immigration that frequently amounted to a monthly intake of twenty thousand people. In six years, Israel doubled its population (Oren 2004: 18). At the same time, the state was embroiled in a fierce ongoing military clash with the Arab states. In light of this situation, and due to the socialist ethos prevailing among the founding generation, many arguments were voiced against “luxuries” like television broadcasts, as well as the economic implications of the mass purchasing of television sets by Israeli citizens. Television was seen as a technology typifying wealthy, well-sated countries, and the argument was that the time for Israel to enjoy this luxury had not yet arrived (Winkler 2005: 38). It should be noted that in late 1961, Israel boasted a mere four hundred television sets, most of them unserviceable (Gil 1986: 20). Another economic objection came from newspaper publishers, cinema owners, and others who feared that the advent of television would erode their income by decreasing their advertising revenue.

Culture The Zionist culture sought to offer an alternative to the traditional Jewish culture that had evolved in the Diaspora, while at the same time trying to

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avoid absolute assimilation into Western culture (G. Shaked 1999: 76). Zionist proponents thus often expressed the fear that the penetration of television would result in damage to Hebrew culture and an addiction to Western culture. Television addiction, they argued, would come at the expense of reading, theatergoing, social interaction (such as nature walks), and participation in youth-movement activities. Misgivings were also voiced about the impact of foreign language broadcasts on the revival of Hebrew language and its assimilation among immigrant groups. Suspicion of the negative effects of television mounted in the 1960s in light of complaints in the United States that television encouraged delinquency and negative social behavior (Winkler 2005: 39). Fear of the harmful cultural effects of television also took hold among traditional religious circles, which regarded television as a threat to their traditional values and family life. Opponents did all they could to delay the entry of television into Israel. At a cabinet debate, Justice Minister Dov Yosef argued, I agree that we will be unable to prevent the introduction of television, just as the flow of the tide cannot be prevented, but we must take into account that television causes a great deal of damage . . . I know of a family in Jerusalem that had to leave Israel because it had a twelve-year-old boy who had become addicted to television and was missing it. So we might as well save ourselves the trouble . . . I am aware that it’s a lost case, but there’s no hurry. (Quoted in Gil 1986: 82)

Politics Television’s entry into the political arena was seen to change the game rules. It sparked fear among all political parties, which sought to take advance action to regulate television’s free play (Gil 1986: 33). Dana Winkler (2005) notes that the propaganda potential of television remained on the agenda for many years and the allotment of airtime to political-governmental concerns was among the proposals advanced by those with commercial interest in establishing a television station. It was obvious that the presence of television would give party politics a more personal overtone, a change that was highly significant given the importance of political parties in Israeli politics. Those advocating the founding of television in Israel put forward various counter-arguments to its opponents, as follows.

Education In the first decades of statehood, Israel was inundated by massive waves of immigration from around the world. The Israeli-Zionist vision was reflected in the melting-pot policy, which called for minimizing heterogeneity while

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cultivating a socially and culturally united society—a Hebrew society. Television, like radio, was perceived as a tool that could encourage this process through imparting common Israeli values to the public at large. Advocates of Israeli television argued that the medium itself did not carry any inherent cultural implications and that as a tool it would educate, teach, and absorb immigrants (Katz and Haas 1995: 80). They suggested that television would promote the teaching of the Hebrew language and democratic values and would popularize high culture, such as concerts and theatre. Moreover, in the first decades of statehood, a place of honor had been assigned to the agricultural settlement movement on the geographical periphery, and television was seen as a means to educate those populations (Winkler 2005: 39) by putting first-rate teachers in front of the cameras. Gil (1986) notes that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, who wielded tremendous influence over the life of the state in its early days, was initially one of the most strident opponents of television. He later modified his attitude after viewing a documentary during a visit to France—he was thrilled with the micro-photography of a beehive, the sight of the queen bee, and the educational potential of the medium in general.

Progress The advocates of television regarded its introduction to be a symbol of the progressive and modern character of the young State of Israel. Television at that time was gradually gaining a firm foothold in the Western world; in Third World countries as well, such as the Sudan, Congo, Nigeria, Zambia, Uganda, and Ghana, television stations had been in operation since the mid1960s (Berwanger 1998).

Security Security issues—such as Israel’s geographical proximity to its Arab neighbors and the possibility that the residents of Israel, and especially its Arab residents, could receive stations originating in those countries—were frequently cited in the debate over the founding of Israeli television. In Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria, television broadcasts commenced in the mid-1960s (Berwanger 1998: 189), and they were sporadically received in Israel (the broadcasts from Egypt were received mainly in southern Israel, those from Syria in the north of the country, and those from Lebanon in the north and along the coast). This “electronic encroachment” provoked misgivings among Israel’s political and military echelons, as they anticipated the alarming scenario of Israel’s Arabic-speaking citizens watching hostile broadcasts of the Arab states (Oren 2004). Israel’s newspapers reported that café owners in Arab population hubs

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purchased television sets in order to enable public viewing of broadcasts from Arab stations (Winkler 2005: 41). These fears were further fueled by the rising security tension surrounding the 1967 War. Advocates of television emphasized the importance of Israeli television broadcasting for the purpose of explaining Israeli policy to the Arab peoples (Winkler 2005: 63).

The Diaspora As we have seen in the case of radio, Israel considered the link with Jewish communities in the Diaspora to be an important object of the broadcasts of the Voice of Israel. The idea of “radio-with-a-picture” broadcasts—that is, television broadcasts—that would “export” the sights and sounds of the Holy Land to the Diaspora was compelling (Oren 2004: 36). To conclude this section, the main points of contention surrounding the introduction of television into Israel related to whether it would benefit or damage the nation and, more precisely, Israeli culture and society. As was to be expected in the socialist and collectivist ethos of that time, any advantage it would give individuals with regard to their needs and wishes was not a key consideration. But as the debate raged on, the number of television sets possessed by residents gradually increased, reflecting the incremental rise in the standard of living. The government, unhappy with this development—as at that time broadcasts could be received only from the Arab states—placed a high tax on televisions. Television owners were, in effect, being taxed for receiving broadcasts from the Arab states, as the government provided no service at all for the taxes paid. This state of affairs led to the emergence of a black-market trade of television sets and the importing of tax-free sets by new immigrants (Oren 2004: 34, 56).

Educational Television It was against this backdrop—and in view of the expanding use of television around the world and the Middle East in particular—that the Rothschild Foundation (Yad HaNadiv) in 1962 approached the Israeli government with an offer to establish educational television in Israel. Rothschild’s emissaries, aware of the sensitivity of the issue, proposed an ostensibly ideal model: one that would fulfill the educational and cultural promise of the medium, while at the same time fending off its negative social, cultural, and political implications. Educational television thus would carry no political news-type content or feature any entertainment for its own sake. Rothschild’s emissaries envisaged a television solely focused on the teaching of mathematics, languages, biology, and the social sciences (Oren 2004: 56).

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At the end of 1962, the government approved a proposal for setting up an “experimental educational television project.” Financing for the setup and operation of Tel Aviv was provided in full by the Rothschild Foundation (Caspi and Limor 1992: 116). However, even this decision to set up television in a minimalist and restricted format—one that would neutralize the political and socio-cultural fears attached to television’s generally accepted format— was not made without opposition and anxiety. The eventuality most feared was that the establishment of television technology in Israel, even in the limited and strictly controlled format of educational television, would pave the way for the reception of television broadcasts from the Arab states. The Davar newspaper, in its “Letters to the Editor” column, published a cartoon by one of its readers depicting a bisected television screen: the top featured a teacher facing a blackboard, and the bottom showed the lower half of a belly-dancer’s body alongside a hookah (Oren 2004: 71). Minister of Education Yigal Alon expressed the fear that belly-dancing programs on the Arab stations, which were accompanied by anti-Israel propaganda, would be much more attractive to viewers than philosophy studies (Oren 2004: 70). The educational television broadcasts were seen to reflect high culture, compared with the low and cheap culture ascribed to Arabic-language television broadcasts. March 1966 saw the inauguration of educational television broadcasts. Caspi and Limor (1992) note that Israel was the first country in the world to introduce educational television before general television. The first television broadcasts were transmitted to sixty classrooms in thirty-two different educational institutions, of which twelve were secondary schools. Television sets were purchased for the schools taking part in the project, and each televised lesson lasted twenty-five minutes and was integrated into the regular syllabus. As some people saw it, educational television was as a means of sneaking television into Israel though “the back door” (Oren 2004: 77). Following a three-year trial period, it was intended that educational television would switch to the management of general television, if the latter had been established in the meantime. Later, however, government policy makers preferred to transfer the responsibility for educational television to the Ministry of Education. This would leave them in possession of an alternative television tool in the event that the new television authority did not meet their expectations (N. Cohen 2003). It was not until Ben Gurion resigned from the premiership and a new government was formed under Levy Eshkol that the way opened for the founding of general television in Israel (Oren 2004: 85). Shortly after taking up his post, Eshkol took a position in favor of the establishment of television, stating that its advantages vastly outweighed its drawbacks (Gil 1986: 28). This position also gave practical effect to plans for educational television broadcasts, the decision regarding which had been made in Ben Gurion’s time (Winkler 2006:

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135). Eshkol instructed the Voice of Israel to prepare the ground for the commissioning of a general television channel, and in 1964, approval was given to speed up the advanced training courses in television broadcasts for radio employees (Gil 1986: 29). In 1965, the government announced that it viewed favorably the founding of a national television channel, and it earmarked 1967 as the target year to commence broadcasts. In 1966, Israel signed a consultancy contract with the American CBS network to secure assistance in laying the groundwork for general television broadcasts, but because of cuts in the 1967 state budget, the government delayed the founding of television once again (Winkler 2006: 135). On the eve of the outbreak of the 1967 War, Israel found itself in a dire economic position, with a recession and mounting unemployment, and politicians seized on this in support of their objections to the founding of television. The religious circles opposed the move most stringently, fearing the desecration of the Sabbath. But other political concerns opposed it due to their fear that television would become an arena for promoting political interests, especially in view of the upcoming elections.

The Founding of General Television The turning point that put an end to the arguments over television was the 1967 War, commencing from the prewar waiting period and ending with the outcome of that war. During the waiting period, once the Egyptian ground forces had crossed the Suez Canal and entered the Sinai region, there was an urgent security need to establish television in Israel—as an information channel for civilians and as a means of propaganda vis-à-vis Arab states whose broadcasts were received in Israel. In an attempt to respond to this problem, an expropriation order was issued against educational television, recruiting it to emergency television broadcasts. These broadcasts were government sponsored and were to take place in collaboration with the IDF. Voice of Israel personality Moshe Hovav was appointed to head the emergency broadcasting project. According to Hovav, the proposed broadcasts were almost ready to go on the air when the speedy conclusion of the war put an end to preparations (Winkler 2006: 135–137). Even after the 1967 War victory, the heads of the security establishment continued to have serious misgivings about the dearth of television broadcasting in Israel. The Palestinians in occupied areas had exposure to television stations of the Arab states, and this was perceived as a threat, albeit not an immediate one. In a post-war survey conducted in the territories beyond the pre-war frontier, around five thousand television receivers were counted, many of them belonging to elite families or cafes (Winkler 2006: 137). Once the hostilities were over and there was no longer any need to operate

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television in an emergency format, the ministerial committee of television affairs, headed by Minister Israel Galili, suggested making use of the educational television facilities to broadcast to the Arab population in the territories occupied in the war. The goal of the broadcasts would be on the one hand to explain the government’s position and on the other to prevent the reception of Arab television broadcasts (Gil 1986: 43). Following a protracted personal and political struggle, a representative from outside the political system was appointed to head the founding team of television, namely, media researcher Elihu Katz, then head of the Hebrew University’s Communications Institute. Katz considered the idea of establishing television to influence Arab positions in the short term to be unrealistic. He was of the opinion that television would not be equal to the task of making the Arabs love the Israelis. In his opinion, television, if properly deployed, could expand and enrich the image of the Israeli nation beyond its political and military dimensions (Oren 2004: 128). In Gil’s (1986: 45) opinion, “[Katz] regarded Israeli television that was to be established as a kind of laboratory for imparting a certain profile to the branch in which he was engaged academically, as if he was seeking to complete a lesson with an exercise.” Katz was assigned a virtually impossible mission. He had neither the necessary tools nor the personnel: the number of individuals on loan from Kol Yisrael was limited. Great efforts were therefore directed at recruiting foreign experts or Israeli television and cinema students abroad. These were joined by dozens of Israelis of various professions, including carpenters, technicians, make-up artists, etc. The Diamond House in Romema, Jerusalem, previously a diamond polishing plant, was to become the home of Israeli television, and the neglected building was gradually renovated and adapted to its new purpose. Meanwhile a public call for proposals was issued for bids to be tendered by Hebrew- and Arabic-language production companies, with preference being awarded to programs in Arabic. Orders were also placed for special programs for religious and national holidays and events (Winkler 2005: 89). The launching broadcast of television was scheduled for Independence Day, on 2 May 1968. The object was that the live broadcasting of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) March in Jerusalem would mark the first anniversary of the “unification” of the city and the twentieth anniversary of the State of Israel. Rehearsals for the television project commenced on 22 April and employed about one hundred individuals. In anticipation of the broadcasting of the event, a special second-hand mobile broadcasting unit was purchased from London, England (Winkler 2005: 89). The principal camera was positioned at the top of a crane with the help of building contractors. Th ree more cameras transmitted from the area of the platform of honor. The excitement was palpable. Television sets were positioned in public places, and private homes were so crowded that there was standing room only

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for watching the show. A group of marchers could be seen onscreen, against a backdrop of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Shots of the crowd’s response were also shown on the platform as well as along the route (Gil 1986: 13–14). The background music was military marches, and radio announcer Yoram Ronen launched the broadcast with the following words: The twentieth anniversary of the State is perhaps, more than all else, the festival of reunited Jerusalem [. . . . ] One year ago, the forward position of the IDF was on the roof of Notre Dame, commanding a view of the Old City and the positions of the Arab Legion. Today, a television camera is perched on the roof of Notre Dame, in lieu of the rifles and machine guns. Today, Israeli television is transmitting a first trial broadcast. (quoted in Almog 2004: 193)

Thus, a year after the Six Day War, following what was perceived as a tremendous Israeli victory, Israeli citizens watched their TV screens and saw IDF soldiers marching past the walls of the Old City. The words that had described the victory of the Six Day War now took on tangible and visual form, and the two most prominent symbols of the victory were featured in the first broadcast: the IDF, in the role of savior from a second Holocaust that had threatened Israeli-Jews, and the Old City of Jerusalem, including its Jewish quarter, which had remained under Jordanian sovereignty since 1948 and whose occupation by Israel’s armed forces was seen as a return to the holy places and the acme of Israel’s modern renascence. The television broadcast itself became part of the victory, reflecting another aspect of the nation’s strength: a new era in the chronicles of the nation in which television cameras replaced the rifles of the Arab Legion that had threatened the western (Jewish) part of the divided city. The parade expressed the national imagining along with the key attributes of newly invented national tradition, which linked the Israeli present (Independence Day, the IDF Parade) with the history of the Jewish people and their hold on the land of Israel since time immemorial (symbolized by the Old City of Jerusalem). The national content of this first broadcast was an indication of television’s future role in Israel’s socio-political framework.

Television in Israel: Institutional Aspects Television’s founding team, headed by Katz, was in favor of the separation of television and radio, with each maintaining its own independence, in order to prevent the concentration of power, to save money, and to encourage creativity. But the ministerial committee on television supported Broadcasting Authority’s position, which favored full integration of television and radio

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broadcasts. In December 1968, an amendment was made to the Broadcasting Authority Law that had been enacted three years before, and television was placed under the auspices of the authority. Soon after this, the founding team ceased to exist as an independent entity. In the end, a single television channel was launched, which functioned as a public national channel. In discussing radio, we saw that the British broadcasting model influenced the emergence and institutionalization of the Israeli broadcast model, although the Broadcasting Authority never attained the economic and professional autonomy of the BBC. The American model, on the other hand, was from the beginning rejected in Israel, as it was based on private ownership of the means of broadcasting and on revenues from advertisements (Caspi and Limor 1992: 119). There were fears of television becoming subject to commercial pressures, which would distort its image as a national broadcasting medium. In the socialist-minded State of Israel, putting such a significant national asset into the hands of private concerns seemed unreasonable. As in Britain, public broadcasting in Israel was based on broadcasting fees that were collected from the members of the public who owned TV sets. In both countries, the amount of the fee and the budgets of the public broadcasting entities were subject to the approval of the government and the legislature (N. Cohen 2003: 298). The decision not to permit broadcasting advertisements (other than public service announcements) undercut any substantial source of financing, since, for many years, fee collection was not fully enforced in Israel. During the 1970s, less than ten years after television broadcasting in Israel began, voices were raised calling for diversification of the broadcasts. In the run-up to the 1977 elections, the three major parties—the Maarakh (Labor and Mapam), the Likud, and Dash—expressed support for a second television channel. This demand sprang from public and political pressure for diversification of television broadcasts, especially the newscasts. In 1978, the Kubersky Commission was set up to examine the matter and recommended the founding of a second television channel, to be financed through advertising and to operate under the auspices of a separate public authority. Yet for many years, various political concerns prevented any progress on this. The Broadcasting Authority feared the impact of commercial broadcasting on public broadcasting, and the printed press feared they would lose advertising to the new commercial television channel. These concerns spared no effort to dissuade political circles from supporting legislation that would promote the setup of an additional channel (Caspi and Limor 1992: 124). Ultimately, in October 1986, a bill for the formation of a second television and radio authority was tabled before the Knesset. The underlying intention of the founding of the Second Authority was to enable the operation of a commercial television channel under public supervision. Test broadcasting of the

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Second Channel commenced even before the bill became law, to the chagrin of the Broadcasting Authority. Officially, these were meant to “catch” and safeguard broadcasting frequencies for the future channel. The broadcasts were at first fairly restricted: just three hours of transmission in the evenings. But the Israeli public greeted them joyously, and they gradually evolved. In 1990 the Second Television and Radio Authority Law was finally ratified, paving the way for commercial television broadcasting in Israel. The Second Authority is, as stated in an earlier chapter, a regulatory statutory body (operating by virtue of the law) designed to represent the public interest in commercial broadcasting channels in Israel and to regulate their activity. Among other things, the Authority issues and publishes invitations to tender for the operation of commercial television channels, to oversee the ratio of original productions in the total programs broadcast on the channel, to monitor the time slots allocated to advertising as stipulated by law, and to oversee advertising content. The Authority sets rules for television genres that concessionaires are required to broadcast and supervises adherence to the rules of the Authority and the Law (for example, pre-approving broadcasting schedules and following up on actual broadcasts). In February 1993, the Second Authority, as required by law, published invitations to tender for three concessionaires, each of which would operate the new channel’s broadcasts in the time allotted to it. Seven groups tendered bids, and the winners were the firms Reshet (Network), Keshet (Rainbow), and Tel-Ad. On 4 November 1993, the three concessionaires commenced broadcasting on Channel 2 (Second Authority 1994; Tokatly 2000: 89–90). Under the terms of the invitation to tender, the concessionaires established a joint news company, to be financed entirely out of their own resources, while 40 percent of the shares of the news company, conferring voting rights in general meetings, were held by the Second Authority (as stipulated by the Second Television and Radio Authority Law 1990, Article 3). Educational Television received, in accordance with Section 55 of the Law, and without bids being tendered, an allocation of one-seventh of the broadcasting time on the channel, net of time allotted to newscasts. The time dedicated to the Second Authority itself came to 2 percent of total broadcasting time, in order to enable it to transmit content of public value (Section 48 of the Law)—for example, the documentary series Retzuat Haim (A Strip of Life) or student movies, whose budgets for production were supported by the Authority. The Second Authority institutionalized a key aspect of the commercial broadcasting environment: ratings. The Second Authority was obligated by law to conduct surveys of viewing ratings on the various channels. The Israeli Rating Committee was founded in 1995, whose job was to examine and measure public viewing of the programs of the various channels. The committee publishes the list of the twenty most viewed programs on a daily basis,

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and advertising tariffs are fi xed on the basis of the data of this measurement. The method it uses is the “people meter,” in which a group of television sets in a group of homes purportedly representative of Israel’s viewing population (468 families, altogether some 1,400 individuals, from all parts of Israel and among all population sectors) are connected to devices documenting the choice of program being watched at any given moment in real time. The committee’s operations are financed by its members: the commercial channels, the Broadcasting Authority, Educational Television, the special purpose cable channels (Channel 9 and Channel 24, the Music Channel), the Association of Advertising Companies, and the Advertisers’ Union (as an observer).1 The concessions granted to Reshet, Keshet, and Tel-Ad were due to expire in the year 2002, but the government resolved to grant the concessionaires two more years of broadcasting without invitation to tender. Th is drew a great deal of criticism. In September 2004, the new invitation to tender for the operation of the Second Channel was published, and four fi rms tendered bids: the three original concessionaires and a new company by the name of Kan (Here). In the end, two of the original fi rms, Keshet and Reshet, were awarded concessions to continue operating the channel over the next ten years. In parallel with the attempts to set up the legal infrastructure for the operation of the Second Channel, the Knesset in 1986 enacted Amendment No 4 to the Bezeq Law, regulating cable television broadcasting in Israel. The amendment laid the legal foundation for introducing television broadcasting for paying subscribers. However, the commissioning of cable TV was delayed, only getting off the ground in the early 1990s (Weimann 1996: 397). Just as the launch of general television broadcasting in Israel was accompanied by dire misgivings, the arrangements dictated by context and political circumstances, so, too, was cable broadcasting. Cable television was also seen as a tool for advancing national and educational goals, requiring that its content and the character of its services were monitored and supervised. The legislation of Amendment No. 4 to the 1986 Bezeq Law, through which cable broadcasts were to operate, was itself justified by the need to root out pirate television stations—over which the government had no control. Cable TV was meant to regulate the broadcasts and ensure appropriate standards of educational, regional, and entertainment programs (Schejter 1999: 184). To this end, the government established a Cable Broadcasting Council, appointing its thirteen members. This is the regulatory body for subscription television broadcasting, and is in charge of, among other things, determining broadcasting policy (content, topics, volume, and times) and promoting communitarian and local productions. The council is also empowered to publish invitations to tender for the award of concessions for cable broadcasting, to serve as a tenders committee, and to advise the incumbent

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minister on standards and technical specifications for the broadcast stations (N. Cohen 2003: 132). During the years 1987–1991, the Cable Council published invitations to tender for the setup of a nationwide cable infrastructure divided into thirty-one different regions (this was reduced to twenty-six following consolidation of a few fields). Seven winning cable companies were awarded licenses until the year 2002 (with the option of seeking an extension of the concessions for a further four years, provided they fulfilled their undertakings). Some of the concessionaires merged, and the cable market was shared between three concessionaires. In 2001, the cable companies applied to merge, and the application was granted in 2002. An amendment to the Bezeq Regulations was also ratified in that year, whereby the concessions were to be replaced by fifteen-year licenses (The Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Council 2002). Within a short space of time once they had cable television, Israeli viewers went from being single-channel viewers to being multi-channel viewers, with more than forty channels to surf, many of them foreign, from countries including Britain, Turkey, France, Russia, and some of the Arab states. There were also specialist channels, such as children’s channels, movies and sports channels, MTV, and CNN. Thus, whereas in the United States and Western Europe the number of channels increased incrementally, in Israel the switch to a multi-channel era was abrupt. This may account for the intensely rapid increase of the number of viewers hooking up to cable in Israel, far in excess of anything found in any other Western society. Within a year, 40 percent of households in regions in which the cable infrastructure had been put in place had cable, and by 1994, 67 percent of households were connected, representing some 800,000 households (Weimann 1996: 394–397). By 1998, more than a million households, representing some 70 percent of total households in Israel, were hooked up to cable (N. Cohen 2003: 130). At the end of 2005, the merger between the cable companies was on the verge of completion, and they began operating jointly under the HOT brand, with a subscription list of around 900,000. Amendment No. 4 to the Bezeq Law of 1986, which regulated cable broadcasting, stipulated that in the first five broadcasting years, no advertising would be broadcast on cable. The most vociferous opponents of advertising broadcasts were, naturally, the commercial channels, which feared that they would lose some of their advertising revenue. In 1997, Knesset passed the Bezeq Law amendment permitting the setup of special purpose channels financed by advertising. These channels were meant to serve speakers of other various languages or a public of a specific cultural or traditional character. That year, approval was given for the operation of five such specialty channels: for the Arab sector, for Russian-speaking immigrants, a Jewish tradition channel, a music channel, and a news channel. According to Amit Schejter

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(1999: 184), this amendment to the Bezeq Law reflected a shift away from the original concept of the cable channels as a unifying social and cultural tool, towards an approach that is far more tolerant of multiculturalism and accepting of the cultural and linguistic preservation of minorities in Israel. This change was clearly part of the attempt to gain and preserve political power in an atmosphere of sectarianism (especially in view of the election protocol at the time, which involved direct election of a prime minister). The next stage in the diversification of television content took place at the beginning of the year 1998, with the amendment to the Bezeq Law that would allow the Cable and Satellite Council to grant a license for multichannel satellite broadcasting. At the beginning of the year 1999, the first broadcasting license was issued to a firm operating under the commercial name of Yes. The company commenced broadcasting in 2000. In its first operating year, Yes connected around 80,000 subscribers, reaching a subscription list of some 175,000 in its second year. The grant of the concession for satellite broadcasting opened up the multichannel television market to competition. At the outset, the satellite company faced a number of difficulties and was on the verge of collapse (Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Council 2000: 13), due in part to the obstacles put up by the cable companies against the advent of this new rival. The competition between the cable and the satellite firms was reflected in the increased diversity of channels and broadcast programs, reaching a state of affairs that only a few years earlier would have been unimaginable (Almog 2004: 241). The last player to enter this multichannel arena was Israel’s third television channel—Channel 10. In the year 2000, the Second Television and Radio Authority Law was amended, making way for the commissioning of an additional TV channel in the State of Israel. This channel, like Channel 2, is a commercial channel that is subordinate to the Second Television and Radio Authority. Following long-drawn-out legal hearings that were attendant on the results of the invitation to tender for the operation of the channel, two concessionaires were chosen—Israel 10 and Eden Broadcasts—which were to share broadcasting time between them by alternating days. Ultimately, the two concessionaires merged into a single company that commenced broadcasting in January 2002. The channel ran into numerous economic problems almost immediately, finding it difficult, given the multichannel market, to attract viewers. Economically strapped, the channel failed to meet its commitments and faced closure (Second Authority 2002: 87–88). In a move that drew not a little criticism, the Second Television and Radio Authority Law was amended to allow the channel’s ongoing operation on the basis of the erasure of past debts. Creditor arrangements and new investors allowed the channel to remain functioning, but in 2009, it once more faced closure. An arrangement was ultimately finalized to alleviate the channel’s debts, and

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the Second Authority Law was amended to extend Channel 10’s concession to 2012. However, in August 2012, the Second Television and Radio Authority resolved to impound the channel’s guarantees in respect of the nonpayment of royalties and concession fees (Toker 2012b), a decision that threatened to ruin the channel economically. Once more, the fate of the channel was decided by the very politicians it so frequently criticized. For several months, the channel and its employees battled for survival, during which time, the employees were sent letters of dismissal. Finally, in December 2012, an agreement was approved postponing payment of the channel’s debts and extending its concession for a further two years. As part of this legislative amendment, various benefits were also approved for Channel 2’s concessions (Toker 2012b). Similar to the public model adopted in the early days of television, recent trends in Israel resemble those that prevailed in Britain. As noted by Caspi and Limor (1992: 158), Israel saw a shift away from a monopolist public concept toward dual broadcasting, in which publicly supervised private channels operated alongside the public channel, although currently its future is uncertain. Cable channel broadcasts were added to the map later under similar supervision. A similarity to the British model is also reflected in financing sources: the first public channel is financed mainly out of fees, the commercial channels through advertising, and the cables through subscriptions.

Chronicles of Channel 1: Socio-cultural Aspects In the era of monopolistic television broadcasting by Channel 1, broadcasting time was split among various concerns: educational television, Arabic-language broadcasts, and general broadcasts. The morning and afternoon hours were dedicated to educational television broadcasts and general television broadcasting commenced at 5:30 P.M. (Caspi and Limor 1992: 121).

Educational Television The range of programs broadcast on Channel 1 under the umbrella of Educational Television was constantly being expanded. Broadcasts included educational series as well as many programs for young viewers. One of the most outstanding long-running programs on educational/ instructional television was Zehu Zeh (This Is It). The program first went on the air in late 1977 as a youth magazine, presenting various disciplines in a diverse range of art fields—cinema, dance and theatre—and including amusing continuity announcements. Over the course of time, however, these continuity announcements became the cornerstone of the program, and it became the

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most popular satire program in Israel (Almog 2004: 227). The broadcasting of Erev Hadash (A New Evening), a current affairs/news program on educational television, commenced during the First Lebanese War (1982).

Arab-Language Television As stated, beyond the instructional and educational programs, the remaining broadcasting hours were divided between Arabic- and general (often Hebrew-language) programs. The Arabic-language programs consisted almost entirely of current affairs and didactic content (Abu Al-Hija 2006: 9–14). It is noteworthy that there was no specific definition in the Broadcasting Authority Law for the scope of broadcasts to the Arab population (although Section 3[3] of the Law, setting forth the functions of the Authority, stipulates that it must “hold broadcasts in the Arabic-language to meet the needs of the Arabic-speaking population, and broadcasts for promoting understanding and peace with the neighboring countries in accordance with the State’s basic trends”). Moreover, Arabs were underrepresented at the plenum of the Broadcasting Authority and its other institutions for many years. Caspi (2005) notes that Arabic-language broadcasts were addressed to the Arab minority within the jurisdiction of the State of Israel, but that this declared aim camouflaged the propaganda intent, which was directed at Palestinians on the other side of the pre-1967 frontier, and also at the populations of the Arab states. Arabic-language broadcasting waived in advance all independent norms, and matters reached the point where security officials became involved in the process of recruiting correspondents and anchors. The content of the Arabic-language programs presented positive aspects of Israeli society and Jewish–Arab coexistence (98). Arabic-language television was a kind of ghetto, both in organizational terms, since the production of broadcasts in Arabic was concentrated under a separate department, and in terms of its broadcasting hours, which were distinct and predetermined. The Arabic-language television broadcasting departments were separate from the general Hebrew ones (99), and there was little movement of personnel between them. Hebrew-language journalists viewed the Arabic-language staff as sponsored journalists and did not rely on their media coverage (100).

Hebrew-Language Television Most of the original Hebrew-language broadcasts of Channel 1 were recorded in the studio, with current affairs programs being highly predominant: Amnon Rubinstein’s program Boomerang, for example, which discussed social issues central to the public agenda. Another program that first aired in 1972 was Yaron London’s discourse, Tandu, which was characterized by London’s

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scathing style (Almog 2004: 204). Another current affairs program, Moked (Focus or Bonfire) was a kind of news supplement. Eitan Almog (2004) notes that this program, like many other current affairs programs at that time, had a statist overtone and demanded attentive listening. In those days, it was natural that interviewees should reply at length and in detail for several minutes, and that interviewers would not interrupt or butt into their soliloquies. Friday evenings broke the daily broadcasting routine by interspersing traditional content into the broadcasts (though the very act of broadcasting on television at that time transgressed the commandments of the Halakha [Jewish Religious Law]), alongside entertainment content that was appropriate for the weekend holiday. Television thereby contributed to the secularization trends of the traditional Jewish value of the Sabbath while emphasizing its related national or familial aspects. Thus, for example, Rabbi Avidor HaCohen’s program Ba’ah Shabbat (Sabbath Comes) was broadcast every Friday night. The rabbi’s remarks, given as a Torah book lay open before him and Sabbath candles flickered at his side, formed an appropriate background atmosphere to that night’s dinner in many homes (Almog 2004).

Music, Imported Series, and Satire The entertainment programs broadcast on Friday nights became a central platform for showcasing artists and singers, who frequently regarded participation in such programs as a significant professional achievement (Regev and Seroussi 2004: 26). Music broadcasts on Channel 1 were strictly limited. Regev (1997: 123) notes that, until the 1980s, the national channel’s approach to popular pop/rock music was marked by a lack of understanding and by arrogance. Television’s dealings in music were expressed through the Song Festival and pre-Eurovision contests, which themselves became national events. It was only later, during the 1980s, that the channel started broadcasting programs in Western style and that were exclusively dedicated to music, such as Od Lahit (Another Hit), and Ad Pop (As Far as Pop). As I will show below, the watershed in domestic musical creativity and the broadcasting of non-local music was the transition to multichannel broadcasting in Israel, during the 1990s. As the broadcasting schedule lengthened during the 1970s, it came to include numerous, mainly American and British, imported programs, such as British historical dramas (The Forsythe Saga), Western action series (Hawaii Five-O, Starsky and Hutch) and youth series (Lassie Come Home). There were also adventure movies from international cinema (Almog 2004: 195). Conspicuous in the 1980s was the U.S. series Dallas—a soap opera chronicling a family of Texas oil millionaires. Other American programs that gained predominance in the broadcasting schedule were the romantic comedy series

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Love Boat and the children’s program Little House on the Prairie. The dependence of Israeli television on such imported content was at cross-purposes with its national goals (Cohen and Tukachinsky 2007: 246). Another popular entertainment genre was Israeli television quiz shows, which were inspired by the American model. Relatively few resources were channeled into the production of original drama series. First broadcast in 1971 was the series Hedva and Shmulik, based on Aharon Meged’s classic, Hedva and I and which dealt with the experience of leaving the kibbutz and moving to town. The year 1983 saw the airing of the popular series Krovim Krovim (Close Relatives) (produced by Educational/Instructional Television), which followed the life stories of an extended family living in a building in Tel Aviv. Satires were a genre that aroused both interest and controversy over the years. The program cluster Lul (Chicken Coop), which was produced by a private company extraneous to the Broadcasting Authority and broadcast from 1970 to 1973, marked the advent of a run of programs of non-conformist and critical content. But the first program to deviate seriously from television’s national line was Nikui Rosh (Head Cleaning), produced by Moti Kirschenbaum. The program first went on the air in 1974 following the 1973 War, at a time when public confidence in the Israeli political establishment was beginning to wane. Nikui Rosh poked fun at Israel’s national clichés and at the television that gave expression to them. The program castigated the government, describing it as impervious and arrogant. Not unexpectedly, it came under a barrage of criticism, especially from right-leaning politicians, who regarded it as a “knife plunged into the nation’s back.” Even the Knesset debated the program. Nikui Rosh ended after thirty-two programs were broadcast (Almog 2004: 214–215).

Documentaries and News Programs Over the years, Channel 1 contributed to the documentation of the visual history of Zionism through two comprehensive series. The first, Amud HaEsh (Pillar of Fire), was broadcast in 1981, and consisted of nineteen episodes dealing with the history of Zionism, from the Dreyfus case to the founding of the State of Israel. The second series, titled Tekuma (Revival), broadcast in 1998, began at the point at which Amud HaEsh ended. In twenty-two episodes it discussed happenings and conflicts in the life of the State of Israel. The broadcasting of these series often exposed political and social rifts and tensions (Liebes 2003: 40). One of these conflicts, more specifically the Jewish-ethnic one, reached the Supreme Court. The petitioners wanted the High Court of Justice to issue an injunction preventing the broadcasting of the series, since it emphasized the history of European Jewry and excluded any reference to Mizrahi Jewry and their contribution to preserving Judaism

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through the generations and building up the State of Israel. The court rejected the petition on the grounds that the actions of the Broadcasting Authority— because they were not unreasonable in the extreme—did not warrant the imposition of censorship on the broadcasts.2 The crowning glory of Channel 1 broadcasts over the years was undoubtedly the daily newscast Mabat (A Glance). This edition, in the monopolist era of Channel 1, reached an amazing watching rating of around 70 percent (Liebes 2000: 321). Viewing the Mabat newscast became a precondition for taking part in the next day’s conversation. “The 9 P.M. newscast could be said to have become a kind of regular civil ceremony, consisting essentially of society’s discourse with itself. There existed an unofficial norm whereby participation was ‘obligatory’ and there must be no interruption during the news— one must not make any phone calls, for example” (Katz and Haas 1995: 83). Likewise, a survey conducted in September 1990, when the cable TV stations were in their infancy and Channel 2 was still broadcasting in limited scope, found that 52.4 percent of the population watched general television every evening during the 9:00 to 10:00 P.M. slot of the newscast. The daily newscast broadcast on Friday night got even higher ratings, levels that were not seen in other countries (Caspi and Limor 1992: 120). Israeli viewers could therefore assume that their friends and family were watching the same TV programs at the same time. This was especially true of the newscasts, whose viewing became a sort of unifying civil-political ritual (Katz 1996: 27). Every evening, the ticking of a “musical clock” preceded the newscast. That simple analog-like clock, each forward motion of the second hand accompanied by a different musical note, was the signal for the start of the nation’s one-and-only daily televised news show. Sometimes, the clock would appear against the backdrop of some national site, such as the Israel Museum plaza, an obvious expression of the nexus between the time and the place. The clock tangibly expressed what Anderson terms “the steady onward clocking of homogeneous, empty time,” on which the imagining of the nation is based (Anderson 1991: 33). The musical clock illustrated that at that very moment, the newscast was being watched by people in the same geographic space who were in most cases strangers to each another, but who had much in common. Like a clock in the town square, whose bell echoed from a distance, tolling the daily rituals of the community surrounding it, the television clock symbolized viewers’ simultaneous daily routine. Because it addressed such broad segments of the public, the content of the television newscast conformed to a general consensus and endeavored to preserve the collective Israeli identity on controversial matters. Neta HaIlan (1999: 232), who researched how the Mabat newscast reported on the Occupied Territories, argues that the preservation of identity came about through creating daily routines in the shadow of the controversies and by

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institutionalizing the domestic controversies that gained momentum following the 1967 War. The news was therefore a key factor in forming the Israeli collective identity and outlining its social boundaries. Thus, whereas national ceremonies contributed to the shaping of the collective identity and national unity by suspending private routines and social differences of opinion, television offered a daily and more routine alternative to this identity building. The newscasts of Channel 1 in the monopolist era transformed the notion of the Israeli collective into something visually available and tangible. The programs were an important source of social knowledge and representations of that knowledge and thereby created a sort of “gallery of images whereby there is outlined the visual profile of the ‘we’” (Ha-Ilan 1999: 235). The knowledge that every day at a particular hour a single newscast will be broadcast and watched almost universally contributed to the creation of a cyclical routine of social life, so that one could move from the private to the public domain without leaving home (Ha-Ilan 1999: 35). Along with shaping the identity of the imagined community—that of the “we”—news-based discourse also contributed to structuring the perception of the “other”—the social groups that were not only excluded from the collective, but perceived as threatening it (see First and Avraham 2004: 10–13). As various studies have proposed, the attitude to the “other” finds expression in the other’s “symbolic annihilation”: on the one hand, through the other’s non-representation in news content, and on the other hand, through stereotypical treatment of the “other,” including linking the other to crimes of public order. Anat First and Eli Avraham (2004: 54–60), who researched the coverage and representation of “Earth Day”3 in 1976 in the discourse of television news, argue that it was in fact marked both by the paucity of news items relating to the events and the Jewish perspective of what coverage there was. The context of the events was concealed, and they were described as a disruption of law and order. The victims remained, by and large, unnamed. Ha-Ilan (2001: 210–211), too, who analyzed television news content dealing with the fires on Mt. Carmel in the year 1989, points to the structuring of the categories of “us” and “them.” The representation of “us” (the Israeli Jews) was of well-intentioned victims with an affinity for nature and historic rootedness in the Land of Israel, hailing back to the biblical era. By contrast, “they” (the Arabs), were described as destructive and menacing, mere transients in the historic landscape.

Television Broadcasting in the Single Channel Era: Summary In the opinion of Elihu Katz and Hadassah Haas (1995: 83), the fact that the citizens of Israel assembled in a single public space dedicated, according to

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their definition, to “the reception of credible reports on topical issues and the discussion thereof,” not only failed to suppress participatory democracy, but, on the contrary, actually promoted it. However, not all researchers and media critics viewed the ongoing monopoly of Channel 1 over news broadcasts and television with a similarly sympathetic eye. Some regard this continuing monopoly as an expression of cultural dictatorship and political indoctrination (Weimann 1999: 98). As already mentioned, one other type of television broadcast brought collectivist-nationalist feelings to a peak—televised media events such as the visit of President Anwar El-Sadat to Jerusalem in November 1977 and also the victories in important sporting events or in the Eurovision Song Contest, when Israeli television viewers became participants witnessing key events in the history of the State of Israel (Liebes 1999: 94). Victory in the Eurovision, such as a win by Maccabi Tel Aviv in the European Basketball Cup final, became a national ceremony in which viewers sought to “beat” the gentiles. Such victories were a source of national pride and were naturally accorded substantial coverage in all the media (Almog 2004: 207). The Channel 1 broadcasts stressed content related to the Pentateuch, according to the Zionist national concept that linked the State of Israel to the era of Jewish political independence in the biblical era. This was part of the collective-nationalist trend expressed and nourished by television: for example, every Independence Day features a live broadcast of the “Bible Quiz” (in the current multichannel era, this is far less popular). The predominance of attention to biblical content on that day is, of course, not coincidental—as I pointed out above, it was part of the inventing tradition that connected modern Jewish life in Eretz Israel to ancient times. Similarly, every evening at the end of broadcasting, and before the national anthem is played against the backdrop of the Israeli flag, viewers are regaled with Pesuko Shel Yom (The Daily Passage), a reading of verses from the Pentateuch or other traditional Jewish sources. Here, too, there is a connection made between traditional Jewish symbols and Israel’s most important symbols of sovereignty as a modern, independent political entity: the national flag and the national anthem. Channel 1 also broadcasts imported series, ostensibly reflecting foreign cultures (especially that of the United States), and these have dovetailed, according to Liebes (2004: 40), with both local and specific socio-cultural issues in Israel. Liebes notes that, because Israeli viewers watched the same episode of an American series at the same time, a site was created that was significant in defining the Israeli identity. The foreign programs in general and the American ones in particular enabled the emphasis to be placed on the distinctiveness and difference of the Israeli identity vis-à-vis the foreign identity. But at the same time, these programs carried preconceived Western cultural ideas and belief. Their encounter with the foreign content of the programs (Dallas, for example)

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encouraged people to unite around a specific, local, ethnic, and group identity. This reaction illustrates the complex process of cultural negotiation between the local culture (even its subcultures) and the foreign culture, in this case, the American one (I will elaborate in the context of multichannel television). In this process, the response to the encounter with global content may reinforce a sense of cultural difference and local affiliation, and not necessarily erode the national culture or the sense of ethnic community.

Israel’s Battle over Color TV: The Case of the “Eraser” and the “Anti-Eraser” A case that clearly highlights just how suspicious Israeli leaders were of television and its socio-cultural influences—even several years after its founding— is that of color television. This case also perfectly illustrates the social changes that took place during the 1970s and 1980s, as Israel shifted from a socialist ethic, requiring in-depth government regulation of the media market and the consumption of its content, towards a more neo-liberal concept, increasingly nourished by capitalist ethos and global trends. A shade of grey pervaded Israeli television broadcasts in the 1970s. Not only were most sets in Israel geared to receiving nothing but black-and-white broadcasts, but the Broadcasting Authority itself transmitted in only black and white. Until the beginning of the 1980s, if owners of color TVs wanted to enjoy color on the small screen, they had perforce to receive Jordan’s television broadcasts. In the second half of the 1970s, the discussion on color broadcasting in Israel became quite passionate. The issue of color broadcasting figured again and again on the public agenda, in daily newspaper discussions, in the Knesset, and in the Supreme Court. The controversy surrounding color broadcasting was highly reminiscent of the debates that preceded the introduction of television into Israel (Soffer 2008). Color broadcasting was in place in various parts of the world well before Israeli television was even founded. The United States began broadcasting programs in color in the mid-1950s. At first, these figured as special events within general black-and-white broadcasting. A decade later, by the mid1960s, most broadcasts were in color—in 1966, some television stations were broadcasting solely in color (Nielsen 1968: 11). Twenty thousand color TV sets were sold in the United States in 1955, and in 1966 more than five million such sets were sold (Coleman 1968: appendix C). In most other countries, color TV broadcasting commenced somewhat later: in 1960 in Japan, and not until 1967 in Europe and the Soviet Union. In Israel, once television was established, the whole notion of color was at the beginning undoubtedly perceived as fairly unimportant, given the battle

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that had just been fought over TV broadcasting at all. But once TV broadcasts in Israel had become a matter of routine and a fait accompli, and color broadcasting had become a daily fact of life in other countries—and indeed among Israel’s Arab neighbors—the color battle took on more significance. Moreover, this battle took place against a backdrop of marked changes in Israeli society and culture occurring at the same time (Soffer 2008). From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, Israel was undergoing an economic and social crisis. The hegemonic institutions of the Labor movement, especially the Histadrut, began losing strength. Liberalization was on the increase, and a business community began to emerge that was less committed to the Zionist pioneering values, seeking rather to be part of the growing world economy (Peled and Shafir 2005: 272). Efforts were made in the mid1970s to integrate Israel into the global economy when partial agreements were signed with the European Union. Ten years later, in 1985, Israel signed similar agreements with the United States. The Likud’s accession to power in 1977 brought about a gradual liberalization of the economy, leading, among other things, to the impoverishment of the Histadrut. The defense budget, which following the 1973 War amounted to more than 30 percent of the state budget, shrank to about 10 percent in the years 1986–1988. This cut in the defense budget was facilitated in part by the peace agreement signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979 (Peled and Shafir 2005: 276). According to Uri Ram (2005: 196), the end of the reign of the labor movement in 1977 not only signified a shift in the direction of national religious positions, but also heralded a challenge to the collectivist bureaucratic model and hinted at a preference for a capitalist market economy. Commencing from the 1970s, the influence of the nation-state began to decline, offset by a rise of alternative countercultures and identities that were affected by trends of globalization. At the same time, there was a reinforcement of identity that combined nationalism and religiosity (Ram 2005: 193). Ram suggests that the history of Israel can be divided into two periods. The first, from the founding of the state until the early 1970s, was the period of modernization, whose principal agent was the nation-state. In the spirit of the melting-pot concept, this process of modernization was supposed to lead to a transformation from a plethora of identities from traditional, religious, and ethnic communities to a secular, national, and statist society with an affinity for territory, agriculture, and industry. But beginning in the late 1970s, global influences strengthened in Israel, and centralism lost strength in favor of a post-national civilian concept. According to this concept, local national identity would be replaced by a global one, and industry and agriculture by the information industry (Ram 2005: 29). The color television broadcasting affair, which came to predominate the second half of the 1970s, reflects a conjunction between the collectivist spirit

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and the rise of individualist and global trends. The controversy surrounding color in television assumed extra importance and aroused great interest due to the technological aspect and the policy that was followed. Israeli television, it transpired, actually had the capability of broadcasting in color from the very outset. Why, then, was the general public receiving only in black and white? The answer lies in the collectivist notions and the desire to maintain centralist control of the media market. A petition heard by the HCJ in 1977 (HCJ 112/77) reinforced and highlighted the arguments concerning the policy of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority, which took active measures to erase the color from its broadcasts. The very fact of a petition on this issue being filed with the Supreme Court, and of the Court’s preparedness to entertain it, reflect the beginnings of a liberal civilian approach in the public domain—trends that strengthened over the years (Ben-Eliezer 1999). The petition stated that the policy of erasing color was applied to two types of broadcasts: to programs received from the satellite station in Emeq HaElah and to programs purchased from abroad by the Broadcasting Authority. The color was erased by means of a special tool operated by the Broadcasting Authority and the Ministry of Communications—the “eraser.” The parties petitioning the HCJ—two citizens who had purchased color TV sets and had paid the applicable tax, a TV set manufacturer, and a company marketing electronic products—alleged that they were being injured by the color-erasing policy. The former claimed that their ability to derive the maximum enjoyment from the use of the sets they had purchased at full price was being eroded, and the latter that the development of their businesses was being damaged. In response to the petition, the Broadcasting Authority argued that color broadcasts required budgets that would facilitate the switch to full-color broadcasting, including of television programs produced in Israel, but that the Ministry of Finance was refusing to transfer funds for this purpose. If there was no possibility of broadcasting all transmissions in color, the Authority argued, the “pallor” of local broadcasts could become so conspicuous in comparison to the material from abroad that viewers would tire of watching local productions. This would render the Authority incapable of fulfilling its mission as defined in the Broadcasting Authority Law: “To reflect the life of the State, its struggles, its creative works, and its achievements; to foster good citizenship.” In point of fact, the economic argument concerning the investment required for converting production equipment in Israel was vastly overstated. The cost of acquiring equipment for color productions was relatively modest since color-broadcasting capability was already in place. The real fear was of the economic impact of the purchase of color television sets by citizens. The petitioners pleaded that color was being erased to discourage the purchase

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of color TV sets out of a fear of the rise of the living standard and the depletion of Israel’s foreign currency reserves. Ultimately, the court rejected the petition, ruling that the Broadcasting Authority was not obliged to provide broadcasts in color or to refrain from removing the color. Even the absence of any express authorization in law for the erasure of color was not upheld as sufficient grounds for preventing the action. The court compared the erasure of color to the abridgement of broadcasts imported from abroad.

The Public Debate over Color Broadcasting The public debate over color broadcasting highlighted the fear that such broadcasts would lead to economic catastrophe. It was in this spirit that the minister of finance Simcha Erlich argued that the introduction of color broadcasts would lead the public to purchase color television sets, a trend that would end in spiraling inflation. Some of the warnings against replacing black-and-white TV sets for color ones were more poignant: “If Israel Broadcasting Authority passes entirely to color, and the ‘nobility’ will require everyone to abandon their ordinary sets and purchase color TVs, an economic disaster will occur: it’s easy to imagine what amounts of money will be spent on this in our poor country” (Faradis 1975). An editorial in HaAretz warned against an attack of “showy consumption of an unnecessary item according to any reasonable scale,” which would mean the expenditure of hundreds of millions of liras (Israel pounds) (some from savings) just to keep up with “the latest fashion edict” (Haaretz 1978). Warnings were also voiced about electricity consumption in Israel. The then deputy minister of finance Yehezkel Flumin argued that “the operation of color television will increase electricity consumption to the sum of 420 million liras per annum. A color picture tube consumes five times the amount of electricity than does an ordinary (black-and-white) one” (Maariv 1978). The purchase of a color television was also linked to a comprehensive change in the home: “The purchase of the ‘second generation’ of television sets is usually accompanied by a rise in general living standards. Most purchasers retain the black-and-white set as a second receiver—for the bedroom or the children’s room. The color TV mainly serves the living room. Its introduction is usually accompanied by additional changes and home renovations, either redecoration or at least the installation of a suitable fi xture and so forth” (Dish 1979a). Accusations such as these—implying hedonistic prodigality and the materialism inherent in the consumption of luxury goods— were particularly severe in light of Zionist concepts stressing the subjugation of private to public interests: that is, the call for personal sacrifice, altruism, and frugality in view of the shortage of resources and productive forces (Almog 2004: 26–27).

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Another issue frequently on the agenda focused on the inequality between viewers who could afford to buy a color television and those who could not. On the whole, investing in a color television was described as being entirely at cross-purposes with the “belt-tightening” that the public was called upon to undertake. In the name of equality, for example, Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Yadin decided to prevent the color broadcasting of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the president of Egypt so that those who did not own color televisions would not suffer adverse discrimination. (A few months later, however, the Eurovision song contest and also President Sadat’s visit to Israel were broadcast in color.) Just one hour prior to broadcasting, Yadin decided to remove the color—despite the fact that the broadcast had been advertised as being in color, raising public expectations (HaAretz, 10 December 1978: “Today—Nobel Peace Prize in Natural Colors on the Color Screens of Silura Sets”). Yadin, who served as chair of the Ministerial Committee for Society and Welfare, was of the opinion that given Israel’s economic and social distress, the commissioning of color TV was beyond the nation’s capability. He also warned that the first to be injured by color broadcasts would be poor families: “I have no doubt that many families, who do not have even the means to purchase basic necessities, will sell their properties, will take loans and will become entangled in order to buy a color TV and not lag behind those who have the ability to purchase such a set” (quoted in Hadad 1978). The economic situation thus did not permit wasteful spending on such luxuries such as color television. The question of color broadcasting was linked to the character of Israel as a welfare state on the one hand and to the assimilation of new broadcasting technologies and deepening class differences on the other (Har-Even 1978). In a similar spirit, the Social Workers Union warned that color TV broadcasting would create psychological pressure as well as envy, frustration, and a sense of deprivation among the weaker classes—for whom television was “almost the sole source of entertainment, culture and information” (Maariv 1979a). And a Maariv columnist asked, Who will guarantee us that the pursuit of color sets—as a status symbol—will not bring greater expansion of violent crime? Those who cannot afford to spend from their salary—or out of their welfare income—10,000 liras, some of them might take part in looting and robbery or mere stealing. Do the chair of the governing council and chief officer of the Broadcasting Authority take into account this terrible threat? And if this threat is realized, Heaven forbid—will they be considered innocent? (Levi Yitzhak HaYerushalmi 1978)

In another article, the same writer notes the disastrous impact of the switch to color broadcasting on the weaker classes:

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Hundreds of thousands of families—most of them not well established economically and tens of thousands of them poor and with many children—will gather their last pennies, will mortgage their last assets they have, will sink in an ocean of debts and will pounce immediately on the stores and buy new color sets that each cost twelve to fifteen thousand liras. (Levi Yitzhak HaYerushalmi 1975)

Between the lines in these references to the link between the consumption of color televisions and the lower classes there echoed references to the Mizrahi-Ashkenazi divide. This rift was further exacerbated in the early 1970s and was reflected in the founding of the Black Panthers protest movement and later, in 1977, by the protest vote for the Likud by the Mizrahic Jews. These references to people in a low socio-economic stratum were rife with stereotypes of the Mizrahi Jews, stressing the size of their families, their tendency to think irrationally, their inclination to violence, and the Levantine culture characterizing their behavior (Soffer 2008: 768). But there were others who, against these allegations, especially over the passage of time, maintained that this debate was superfluous, given that color broadcasts were already in existence. They suggested that the government should refrain from intervening in technology and leave the broadcasting waves alone, since “they will naturally flow from the transmitter to the receiver, in exiting and in entering” (Avner 1979). The argument was made that Israel was a member of a club of backward countries that had not yet shifted to color broadcasting, such as Yemen, and that most of the Western world had already switched to color broadcasts. The then director-general of the Broadcasting Authority, Yosef Lapid, noted that the switch to color broadcasts would contribute to the State of Israel’s advocacy drive, because television could then export articles to foreign television stations—which, he said, was not possible with black-and-white products because of the lack of demand. This would resolve the imbalance between the filmed materials being shown in Europe and originating in the Arab states and those from Israel (Soffer 2008). With regard to the argument that color television would result in inequality, one writer asserted that this was an argument that could be used in all consumer domains: for example, it could justify banning the sale of luxury automobiles since part of the population drove popular car models (Papo 1979). Another writer denounced the government’s hypocrisy over color broadcasting policy—if it were truly concerned for the poor, the writer alleged, the government ought to reduce the tax rate on television sets, which amounted to as much as 200 percent. The government’s policy was described as patronizing: “This government serves some affluent people, who see themselves as guardians of the poor. These guardians have decided that it is forbidden to oppress the little the poor have. It is forbidden to seduce the poor with goods that cost a lot of money. Since he is poor, he doesn’t have the

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to be entertained—he must sit at home, watch television and think the world is as grey as a sackcloth” (Tishler 1981).

The Anti-Eraser Toward the late 1970s, there was growing recognition that transition to color broadcasting was inevitable. For example, the Knesset Education and Culture Committee, which addressed the matter over several of its meetings, determined that “there is no possibility of stopping the natural process of transition to color television broadcasting, but the amount of public spending on purchases on new sets should be moderated, by a gradual transition to full color broadcasting” (Protocols of the 9th Knesset 1979). By the end of 1980, about one-third of television broadcasts were in color. The Broadcasting Authority submitted, on a monthly basis, a list of programs to the minister of education for approval—which is revealing of the extent to which the political echelons were involved in broadcasting. The government regulated the quantity of programs to be broadcast in color in order to counterbalance and control the number of new color TV sets that the public consumed, while at the same time preventing any mass public demand to view the color broadcasts of the Jordanian channel (Protocols 1979). To oppose the eraser, which dictated the color of the broadcasts, the “anti-eraser” was invented at the end of the 1970s. This original “Israeli invention” was designed to restore the color to the screen. This electronic device was assembled in Israel as an add-on to color TV sets, and it “revived” the color of the broadcasts. Those who could afford to spend the 50,000 liras for color TV could add another 4,000 for the “anti-eraser.” This state of affairs became symbolic of typical Israeli “efficiency,” as described by Ofri (1979): “Israeli television buys color films at full price. The technicians erase the color and this probably also costs something. The Israeli consumer buys a color set along with an ‘Anti-Eraser’ [ . . . ] and receives the broadcasts in color. It costs MORE both to the State and to the consumer—only the companies earn easy money” (emphasis in the original). Ephraim Kishon (1978) suggested, tongue in cheek, that the development of the “anti-eraser” would force the Israeli television authority to develop yet another electronic device, an “anti-antieraser” (he deliberately distorted the Hebrew word Mechicon (eraser) to Mochicon (moach in Hebrew means brain). Kishon further argued that the establishment of a special commando force of color police would make sudden forays into people’s homes inevitable. Israeli television was at last presented in full color in 1983. It is estimated that Israelis had spent more than 400 million liras on purchasing “anti-erasers”—which all immediately became redundant (Dish 1979b). This

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waste of money attests to the folly of the state’s attempt to control the media consumption of its residents and to a great extent also to its failure in the face of the strengthening of market forces. The government’s policy did prevent color broadcast viewing, but the restriction merely served to extract more cash from the pockets of resolute Israeli viewers, who were not about to be stopped by any the state’s removal of color; as the Maariv (1979b) reported, “He wants to see color broadcasts and see them he will.” The act of erasing color—an attempt to intentionally lower the quality of broadcasts— continued the line of thinking that for two decades had driven the prevention of television broadcasts in Israel. This was an act reflecting fear of the impact of television on society and the economy. A certain measure of symbolism is also attached to it, since it reflected the state’s attempt to paint the viewer’s world in black and white. But the new trends in Israel at the end of the 1970s of liberalization and a market economy gradually eroded the government’s capability of retaining centralist control over citizens’ media consumption. The end of the anti-eraser era can be seen as the sign of the most significant material change taking place in the 1990s, the transition to multichannel television broadcasting. As I will show below, in the multichannel era, the ability of the state or its authorities to control television content was sharply reduced.

The Multichannel Era in Israel As stated, for close to twenty-five years, Israel had only one operational TV channel. During that time, Israeli society underwent significant processes that precluded the option of isolating and assessing the influence of television on society and culture in Israel at that time. However, one tool hints at the social effects of television: a comparative study was conducted in 1970, shortly after the commencement of broadcasting, and then again in 1990, shortly before the start of the multichannel era. This study focused on leisure time, culture, and media consumption in Israel. The researchers concluded that there are no unequivocal answers to the question of the long-term effects of television. But, as they put it, If a choice is to be made—on the basis of these comparative data—whether Israeli television was more supportive, between the years 1970 and 1990, of a trend of individuation or of the norms of collectivism, then there are stronger arguments in favor of the second option. The collectivism to which we refer finds expression in common and simultaneous occupations, which are ruled by a norm of self-sacrifice and mutual obligation out of the knowledge that everyone else is engaged in the same things. (Katz and Haas 1995: 91)

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The researchers maintain that television can create a common agenda for society as a whole by making use of a technology that facilitates electronic simultaneity. This may have partly blocked the trends of private hedonism and weakening of collective unity that the founders feared. But as the years passed, political oversight of the means of transmission and attempts to restrict media development in general and television in particular became increasingly complicated and problematic. Similar to the chain of events in the matter of the color television, in the matter of the supply of broadcasting, pressure came from below—from a public that wanted greater diversity in its viewing alternatives. Videos, along with the television broadcasts received from neighboring Arab states, provided such an alternative. During the 1980s, video libraries sprang up everywhere in Israel, enabling subscribers to rent movies they had no prospect of seeing on the single television channel and to view them at home. The price of a videocassette recorder at that time was very high. In the 1980s, a simple VCR cost the equivalent of $1,200, including tax. A more sophisticated model cost as much as $2,000. The average monthly income at that time was a mere $500 (A. Cohen 1987: 496). As stated, however, the need for greater diversity in television broadcasts was not reflected merely in the significant penetration rates of videocassette recorders (35–40 percent in 1988), but also in the blossoming of piratical cable broadcasting stations. In 1981, a ship by the name of Odelya attempted to transmit television broadcasts to the Israeli public—in a format similar to that of the piratical radio broadcasts transmitted from ships on the high seas. Abie Nathan also announced his intention of broadcasting (in color) television programs from his peace vessel. But these initiatives were halted through a quick change of legislation and the imposition of a ban on piratical broadcasts from ships (Tokatly 2000: 162). Even so, by the mid-1980s, Israel was the host of many illegal cable TV networks, operated by the same private entrepreneurs in violation of the law. These microstations broadcast mainly movies to around 150,000 subscribers (Almog 2004: 240). The desire for a greater diversity of broadcasts was also reflected in the growing number of private satellite dishes in Israel in the late 1980s (Caspi and Limor 1992: 127; Tokatly 2000: 163). The development of closed circuit private television broadcasts also emerged in some kibbutzim. In 1985, fift y-two kibbutzim were transmitting recordings of Israeli television programs, action movies, and also community broadcasts to members’ homes (Shinar 1997: 79–80). As the single channel era drew to a close, few people seemed to be challenging the operation of these additional lawful channels. There was a widespread perception that democracy calls for competition and that private ownership of the broadcasting channels would improve their content. It was thought that as satellite broadcasts flourished throughout the country, peripheral groups’ access to the media would increase due to the proliferation of

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channels, and this proliferation would make more room for a diverse content (Katz 1996: 30). Sure enough, as a result of this pressure, within a decade, television was transformed to become both multichannel and competitive: in the early 1990s cable began transmitting regularly; in 1993 these channels were joined by the commercial channel (Channel 2); 2000 saw the commencement of the Yes satellite broadcasts, and in 2002, another commercial channel, Channel 10, joined in. Weimann (1996: 399–406), examining the impact of the transition from a single channel to a multichannel culture, found a change in the leisure-time culture in Israel as well as in the public’s attitudes towards television. His interviews with residents with cable TV revealed both a sense of wellbeing and one of discomfort. On the one hand, respondents reported a sense of liberation in view of the wide diversity and higher quality of programs. On the other hand, they had a sense of an “embarrassment of riches” in view of the excess of television offerings. The research moreover found that connecting to cable TV brought about a steep rise in the time spent watching television, although this curve flattened out somewhat over time. In the multichannel reality, viewers became more active: they “zapped” channels, preplanned their viewing schedule, and sometimes watched two programs at once. The period of the switch to multichannel and commercial television was also characterized by a movement of Israel’s secular population in more individualist directions—toward the partial abandonment of Israel’s collectivist ethos in the first decades of statehood. This change of values was reflected in the increasing legitimacy of hedonism, the mounting concern for the individual over the community, and engagement with the present rather than the future. At the same time, minority groups (religious groups, immigrants, Arab citizens, etc.) increasingly challenged the hegemonic Israeli Zionist perception, either advocating an alternative or withdrawing into a differentiated community. As I show below, commercial multichannel television fit in well with these social trends, presumably contributing to their consolidation and possibly even accelerating them (Liebes 2003: 35). Furthermore, the negotiations and signing of the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, just as the commercial channels were becoming established, also contributed to the advent of Israel’s commercial media. In the opinion of Liebes, both these events— the ushering in of commercial broadcasting and the signing of the Oslo Accords—were founded on the assumption that Israelis could live a normal life, just like citizens in other nations. Coming out of a period of intense war fatigue, it seemed that for the first time Israelis could lean back in their armchairs and simply relax in front of the television, even neglecting the evening newscast in favor of their favorite soap opera (Liebes 2003: 191). This new era of multichannel broadcasting was characterized by two interconnected trends. First, there was the shift from the concept of broadcasts as

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a public service to their being perceived as an economic venture. This shift reflects the strong influence of the American broadcasting model, where commercial television channels are operated by private concessionaires whose primary commitment is to profit—and not necessarily to the best interests of the public (Liebes 2003: 189). Secondly, the switch to a technologically advanced media environment meant that television viewers now had access to global, accessible, and cross-border content. This global content was more likely to influence the content and genres being broadcast on the Israeli channels. Television’s transition from a public monopoly to a multichannel arena driven by economic market forces was accompanied by aggressive competition for the viewer’s attention: from an economic point of view, commercial channels depended on the “sale” of as many viewers as possible to the advertisers. This concept directly influenced the management of the commercial channels, which, like any other economic business venture, are motivated by considerations of profit and loss. As a result, the content of the channels changed as more room was given to popular entertainment (Zuckerman 2004: 36). The profound influence of the commercialization of broadcasting can be illustrated through the changes that overtook newscasts. On the face of it, because newscasts are broadcast both on Channel 1 and on Channels 2 and 10, this genre of broadcasts seemed to represent some continuity between the single channel era and the commercial channels era. Moreover, newscasts are related to journalistic norms that are ostensibly independent of their medium. In practice, however, as various research has indicated, not only did the newscasts undergo significant changes, but, at least at the beginning of the commercial broadcasting era, the fulcrum of the political news-based debate shifted from the format of newscasts to that of talk shows. In the commercial TV era, the news became a more entertaining product, tending towards the sensationalist, the visual, and the emotional. News broadcasting became more aesthetic: the studios were colorful and glamorous, the graphic and musical signals were festive, and the news editions featured the cinematographic and sound techniques of action movies and homemade video photography (Witzthum 2006: 196; Almog 2004: 242). The news editions on the commercial channels took on a much faster rhythm, with briefer and more condensed news items. The soundtrack played faster than before. Whereas in the public broadcasting era the newscast reflected a “filmed radio” concept or a journalistic narrative read out loud, in the 1990s, pictures and visual images were more important than the text being read. Words provided the continuity and the narrative behind the picture, but the latter were the focus of viewers’ attention (Peri 2004: 40). In lieu of a single, authoritative news anchor, the newscast was now moderated by an attractive young man and/or woman, with a lighter, more conversational style. News anchors were perceived as

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playing a far more significant role (Peri 2004: 42): their personality became part of the newscast content, and they were allotted more screen time. The respect and courtesy with which interviewers treated political leaders in the early days of television was replaced by an approach that regarded them as interviewees and nothing more (Almog 2004: 243), an approach that turned the interview into a tool for journalistic drama. The news became more personalized—stories seeking out a hero to cast in a central role. This change had a profound influence also on the personalization of Israeli politics: the power of the political parties and their ideologies eroded while the personality of the political candidates and their ability to use television for their ends came to play a more central role (Peri 2004: 42). The attitude of television toward the public also changed: in the era of party journalism, or monopolistic electronic broadcasting, reporters perceived politicians to be their reference group, while in the commercial television era, which depended on the sale of advertising time, viewers became the principal reference group. It should be stressed that these changes were not confined to commercial broadcasting: they gradually came to influence the newscasts of the public channel as well. Thus, for example, when Haim Yavin retired from presenting the Mabat edition of the news in 2008, he was replaced by youthful newsreaders, following the practice of the commercial channels. The news studio, too, underwent a facelift in an effort to more closely resemble the commercial channels. There are those who contend that the fact that Israelis in the multichannel era have many sources for the latest word on current affairs has affected the character of news coverage, diminishing Israeli channels’ willingness to serve as a mouthpiece for the positions of the political establishment. This change is plainly seen in the difference in coverage of the first intifada in the late 1980s, when only the public channel was broadcasting, and the coverage of the second intifada in 2000, in the multichannel TV environment. Tamar Liebes notes, Channel 1 was faithful to the policy of the Israeli government in its coverage of the first intifada, and its description of reality left no doubt which party had right on its side. The lack of equipment hindered live broadcasting from the field, and the army did everything in its power to keep correspondents out of the battlefields. Representation of the Palestinians, Liebes claims, was de-personalized: Palestinians were described in negative terms, as an anonymous, unruly, masked crowd of stone-throwers. The voices heard over the newscasts were mainly those of Israeli office-holders, especially army officers (Liebes 2003: 192). The coverage made little attempt to examine the roots of the uprising. In the year 2000, by contrast, the second intifada was given a very different type of coverage. Through cable broadcasts, Israelis could watch the foreign news channels and get updates on what was happening in the field. Moreover, the commercial Israeli channels, which were far better

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equipped than the public channel of the 1980s, could transmit reports from different places. They were less committed to the government’s official position and aware that viewers could shift among different channels if they felt the reportage they were getting was not up to standards. The attitude towards the Palestinians also changed: their voices were now heard on newscasts and Israeli talk shows. However, as in the time of the first intifada, no meaningful ideological—or even political—debate took place about the foundations of the conflict with the Palestinians. Attention was directed mainly to those injured and to their personal narratives and those of their families (Liebes 2003: 193). Liebes thus points to the change that took place between the first and the second intifadas. Daniel Dor (2003), who examined the Israeli media (Channels 1 and 2) during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, argues, by contrast, that the media in Israel, including television, still do not dare to touch on matters that challenge Israel’s consciousness. According to him, the two stations he examined “are mired deep, very deep, within the consensus. They promulgate a restrained, official, state-centered outlook” (54). The dominant voice on both channels was that of military personnel. Channel 2, however, allocated a more prominent place to the opposition’s views of the military operation; yet the Channel 1 correspondents were those who often presented more skeptical positions, questioning the effectiveness of the Israeli operation, while Channel 2 generally stuck to the official military rhetoric. Dor suggests that this may have been due to the attitudes of the reporters covering the events (57). The proliferation of channels did not, therefore, create a more critical approach or result in a multitude of radically divergent voices. In practice, one of the most outstanding features of the coverage of military conflicts in the multichannel era, which also prevailed during the Second Lebanese War, was the open wave of live and “chatty” broadcasting (Committee for Setting Rules of Ethics in Wartime 2007: 27) which allocates a great deal of space to valueless commentary, most by retired military personnel. Liebes (1999) notes that in the shift from the public monopoly to commercial broadcasting, the news was edged out to the margins of prime time and newscasts were replaced by various talk shows. In the earlier era, television news was broadcast at 9:00 P.M. in a newscast of thirty to forty-five minutes. The news broadcast was generally followed by another current affairs program, such as Moked, a thirty-minute show generally consisting of an interview covering the key political matters of the newscast. Once a week, there was a broadcast of Mabat Sheni (A Second Glance), a program of the documentary reportage genre. The commercial channels, by contrast, moved their newscasts to 8:00 P.M. and the broadcasting slot that had previously been assigned to the news was often taken by talk shows. While in other countries

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talk shows mainly dealt with exposés on personal matters—a sort of “reality” soap opera—a new genre evolved in Israel focusing on public-political content. This genre evolved in part as a result of statutory requirements for broadcasting original Israeli programs, as well as inter-channel competition and the lack of resources or experience for producing dramatic programs. The considerable political involvement of the Israeli public also contributed to the popularity of this genre (117–118). These programs sometimes featured extremist, vitriolic arguments in a disjointed, vociferous panel discussion, with shouting and even verbal violence. According to Adoni (1994: 141), these characteristics were an accurate reflection of the society in which they took place. These talk shows formed part of the entertainment trend of the news discourse, in which the mere fact of appearing on TV was more important than the messages being conveyed (Almog 2004: 248). The “old-time” Israeli elite—politicians and senior army officers—was quickly replaced by a new élite—that of the “ratings,” as Weimann (1999: 100) put it. This elite consisted of television personalities and celebrities who would play host to one another. They succeeded in bringing to heel the members of the old élite, who had perforce to accept the new game rules in order to be given screen time. The most outstanding talk show—which, to a great extent, heralded the begetting of its genre—was Live with Dan Shilon. This program, which was aired as part of the experimental broadcasts of Channel 2 in 1991, was broadcast continuously for nine years, winning especially high viewing ratings. The topics discussed there quite often became the talk of the town (Hamo 2006: 429). Another program that began appearing on Channel 1 and later switched to Channel 2 was Popolikita. According to Liebes (1999), news broadcasts give professional journalists the authority to decide what constitutes a newsworthy story after they have examined its sources, and journalists also decide how the item is to be edited and framed. The live talk shows, however, did away with the mediation of the professionals and undermined their exclusive authority on news matters— an authority that ostensibly guaranteed the accuracy and authenticity of the information. Talk shows also enabled exchanges of views on social and normative issues, presenting a diverse range of positions. All this was achieved within the economic limits of those channels—whereby a drama must be produced that would attract an audience without alienating viewers or the political establishment. Public Channel 1, too, which was fighting the ratings battle to avoid being edged out of the television world, had perforce to adopt this type of program (117). The disaster marathon is another new news genre prevalent in the multichannel era. In the single channel era, the television channel would not stop its regular broadcasts unless there was a real state of emergency, such as war (Liebes 2003: 192). Over time, radio became to a great extent the immediate

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source for real-time information on disasters and extreme states of emergency. But in the multichannel age, in which the viewer could switch between Israeli and foreign stations, the custom of interrupting a broadcast to announce some dramatic disaster (for example, terrorist attacks by suicide bombers) became an integral part of the ritual of the event and its development. In a similar manner to media events, live marathon broadcasts of disasters and large military operations would interrupt the ordinary sequence of broadcasting and take over the screen for several hours. This would often include a series of shots “of the first moments” alongside commentary and cumulative bits of information. Like media events, disaster marathon broadcasts also draw a diverse public audience whose eyes are glued to the screen. In contrast with media events broadcasts, however, disaster marathon broadcasts are not preplanned, and their control lies in the hands of non-establishment concerns (the terrorists, for example) that in practice are staging the dramatic moment (Blondheim and Liebes 2006: 52–55). As stated, the shift to multichannel and commercial television was accompanied by exposure to broadcasts of many foreign channels and the mounting influence of foreign television genres on Israeli programs. According to Arnon Zuckerman (2004: 34), the speed with which cable TV penetrated Israel indicates how badly Israelis wanted to “emerge into the global space.” Channel 2 also brought a “taste of elsewhere” with it, which contributed to its high rating. As we have seen, in its original format, television was perceived as a substantial contributor in the shaping of the nation-state. But in the multichannel era, there is no essential nexus between broadcasting reception and the boundaries of a specific territory, and in practice a satellite broadcast can be received anywhere, regardless of the country from which it was transmitted. In such a scenario, the national role of television faces a challenge. With television broadcasts opening up to non-Israeli television channels and trends, the question arises: To what extent has the national character of the Israeli broadcast been undermined and to what extent has television become a tool reflecting global cultural influences? An examination of the broadcasts of the Israeli commercial channels (I will later examine the implications of the accessibility of foreign cable and satellite channels.) reveals that this influence has to some extent penetrated all channels. Channel 2 adopted successful formats of foreign programs as a model, creating programs such as Wheel of Fortune and later the programs American Idol and Big Brother. Channel 10 also picked up on this trend, for example in its program Survivor. Of course, the influence of global formats was felt even in the era of public broadcasting: for example, in the adoption of quiz shows inspired by those broadcast in other countries. But there can be no doubt that in the commercial broadcasting era this influence was far clearer and more aggressive. In addition to the various quiz shows and later the reality shows, multichannel

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era broadcasts responded to Israelis’ love for the soap opera, and original Hebrew-language products of such programs started to be aired. First to be broadcast on Channel 2 in 1995 was Ramat Aviv Gimel, which ran for several years with high ratings (Almog 2004: 256). The series, portraying the life of a family dealing in fashion and living in a well-known upscale Tel Aviv neighborhood, to a great extent expressed the hedonist and capitalist values and the mounting trends of Americanization in Israeli society. Ayelet Bargur (2011), in her examination of Israeli soap operas and telenovellas broadcast in the years 1996 to 2006, maintains that they are differentiated by their connection to Israeli experience and localism. Bargur suggests that the Israeli localism that stood out when programs of this genre were first aired gradually dissipated. She describes this process as one of transition from “somewhere” to “nowhere,” which is to say, to a point where the series does not reflect the Israeli experience in the conflicts that characterize its discourse. For example, the series Love around the Corner (aired 2003–2005) had no geographic identification in either public or private spaces. Yet in series that were produced a few years later, such as Our Song 3 or The Championess (produced in 2007), the local Israeli aspect is once more clearly represented (100–101, 172). This process highlights the complexity of combining external influences—inherent in the genre itself—with local influences. Furthermore, in other genres in which global trends are seen to undermine the uniqueness of the national-local culture of the television content, one can find various combinations of the global and the local. A careful examination of global formats can show to what extent they are sensitive to and correspond with local culture. For example, one study compared the contents of the successful program Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in seven different countries, and found that despite the trends of cultural homogenization— assumed to be a blind adoption of Anglo-American culture—program producers adapt their content to the countries in which they are broadcast, and similarities can be found between countries identified by cultural proximity (Hetsroni 2004). An examination of the content of questions posed in Israel showed them to be similar to questions posed in the United States, and different from the questions posed in Western or Eastern European countries (Hetsroni 2004: 150). A survey conducted by Adoni and Nossek in 2001 also indicates the complex nature of the influence of television broadcasts in the multichannel era. They found that 60 percent of respondents perceived that television contributed to the structuring of Israeli social identity, and about 50 percent of interviewees believed television viewing contributed to the development of civic skills, such as participation in the democratic process and oversight and criticism of acts made by authorities (Adoni and Nossek 2007a: 140), but around 52 percent of respondents stated at the same time that television contributes to

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their global identity and 32 percent believed that television contributed to the structuring of their ethnic identity (Adoni and Nossek 2007b: 105). A study conducted among focus groups indicated that three key genres contribute to the strengthening of the Israeli identity: first, Israeli series or movies, which connect the viewer to experiences that are Israeli by nature; second, sporting events (in which Israeli teams confront foreign teams) and programs about excursions within Israel; and third, news on both Israeli and foreign channels. The national dimension in television viewing of foreign news content is reinforced through an understanding, mainly in times of emergency, of how Israel is being presented to the world, or through receiving additional information from external sources about events that Israel is involved in (Adoni and Nossek 2007b: 106). It should be remembered that the desire to ensure the “Israeliness” of broadcasting is reflected in legislation of the regulatory entities. The Second Television and Radio Authority Law requires that commercial channels broadcast original Israeli productions, and various restrictions are imposed on cable broadcasting. For example, cable concessionaires are prohibited from broadcasting independently on the Day of Atonement. Broadcasts on Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, the Day of Remembrance for Israeli Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, as well as on traditional Jewish holidays, are all highly regulated, and companies are required to broadcast quotas of their designated programs on those days (Schejter 1999: 189–190). The cable companies as well are required to invest in original productions and to broadcast local newscasts and community programs on various topics. Thus, despite their commercial features, the functioning of Israeli television channels is fairly national-centered. These channels stress their Israeliness—their being the standard bearers of the collective identity (Witzthum 2006: 114). For mainly economic reasons—the wish to target the widest possible viewing public—they exert a great deal of economic effort to relate the “national narrative”. As Noam Yuran (2001) points out, the commercial Channel 2 has come to represent Israeli state centrism. In his opinion, however, this is centrism of a new type, based rather on the weakening of the state’s power. The founding of the channel was in fact connected with liberation from the control of the state’s media monopoly, the independence of broadcasting, and openness and multiple channels. These processes took place at the same time that multicultural rhetoric was on the rise in Israel. But the secret of the strength of the new state centrism, which the commercial channel reflects, lies in the challenge that multicultural trends pose to the old form of state centrism. While the old state centrism was ceremonial and projected militant unity, the new sort focuses on anxiety in face of the disintegration of the state (Yuran 2001: 48–49).

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In any event, the concept of “Israeli” that the commercial channels represent is fairly narrow and includes mainly the secular Jewish majority. Laor and colleagues in 2004 conducted a study for the Second Television and Radio Authority to examine the characteristic features of the social representation of various social groups in Israel on commercial television broadcasts. The researchers posed the following questions: Are the minority groups to be found on the screen, or are they being symbolically annihilated—meaning are they absent from the television world that symbolizes social reality? When a group appears onscreen, how is it represented? (What is the behavioral context? are they depicted as persons or as objects?) And what type of social interaction takes place between minority groups being represented and the majority group? The researchers noted that this study was important given the central position of the media in general and of television in particular in overt public discourse, and also given the very substantial contribution of the media to the structuring of collective perceptions and representations of “us” versus “them.” According to this concept, the television broadcast is not just a space for interaction between different social groups, but is also a symbolic battlefield, that is to say, an arena in which a struggle takes place over imparting social value to certain social identities and meanings rather than to certain others (Bailey and Harindranath 2006: 305). These identities and representations form part of the conventional hegemonic values and culture in a given society, and the members of that society perceive them as natural (Williams 1999). Various international studies have shown that the media tend to ignore minority groups or, alternatively, present them in a negative light, for example, in crimes against public order (Laor et al. 2004: 8–10). The conclusion that we can draw from the study of the Second Authority is that despite the image of the commercial broadcasting channels, their broadcasts reflect a lack of social diversity. For example, an analysis of 2,222 news items that were broadcast on the commercial channels revealed that huge differences exist in the representation of different groups. Predominant in the news narrative are men, Jews, the secular, Ashkenazis, and old-timers (as distinct from new immigrants). Other groups received only scant coverage (Laor et al. 2004: 26). Thus, for example, although the Arab population accounted for some 19 percent of the Israeli population, Arab citizens appeared in 4 percent of the news items; women, who constitute 51 percent of Israel’s population, figured in 7 percent of the items; and while about a million immigrants have arrived in Israel since 1990, they appeared in a mere 1 percent of the news items examined (Laor et al. 2004: 26). It will be noted that 69 percent of the figures belonging to the Jewish group appeared in news items in connection with public safety issues, compared to 95 percent of the Arab figures. Similarly, 70 percent of the old-timers surveyed were involved in issues of public safety, compared to 83 percent of the immigrants (Laor et

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al. 2004: 35). An examination of the scope of participation of figures from various groups or social sectors in talk shows reveals a similar picture: of 485 figures, 98 percent were Jewish, 97 percent were secular, and 99 percent were old timers (Laor et al. 2004: 58). In the television quiz shows that were examined, 100 percent of the participants were Jewish, 98 percent were old timers, and 61 percent were men (Laor et al. 2004: 63). A qualitative analysis of dramas and soap operas conducted by First and Avraham also attests to the problematic nature of representation of various groups on the TV screen and the adoption of fairly stereotypical representations. For example, the soap opera Ugly Esti, broadcast on Channel 2, deals with two families in Israeli society: one Sephardic and the other Ashkenazi. While the Sephardic family is portrayed as warm and honest, two of the main characters are a policeman and a female offender (the latter lacking formal education), and the family is identified with crowded living conditions, inelegant clothing, and a preoccupation with food. The Ashkenazi family, on the other hand, is identified with two-timing and intrigue, but at the same time, they manage a successful advertising agency, are well educated, live in a splendid private home, and are elegantly dressed (First and Avraham 2007: 151–152). The Esti character, however, projects a certain degree of social mobility since, despite her Middle Eastern extraction, she fits into and succeeds at the advertising agency. But it is not only the Sephardis and Ashkenazis who are stereotypes: most of the women in the series as well are depicted as sexual predators, making use of their sexuality to get ahead (First and Avraham 2007: 152–153). It should be kept in mind that the failure to give expression to the voices of minority groups could foster their sense of alienation vis-à-vis the national media, prompting them to create parallel, quasi-autonomous alternative public spaces, whose viewers possess a distinctive identity (Bailey and Harinaranath 2006: 305; Peri 2004: 293). Research on minority groups outside of Israel indicates that one of these alternative public arenas is likely to be satellite television broadcasts from the migrants’ countries of origin or in their mother tongue. When we look at the viewing patterns in Israel we see significant differences between the viewing patterns of the members of the majority group and those of the minority group members. Cohen and Tukachinsky note that 80 percent of the channels viewed by the majority group in Israel are local and window channels (channels under Israeli control that are adapted to viewing in Israel), but among the Arab minority and those hailing from the Former Soviet Union (FSU), these Israeli channels are less dominant. A similar picture emerges when we look at the choice of the best-loved television figure: amongst the majority group, some 87 percent named a figure from an Israeli program, compared to only one half of those from the FSU and some 10 percent of Arab Israeli citizens (Cohen and Tukachinsky 2007: 258–259).

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Television Broadcasts to Former Soviet Union Immigrants When immigrants from the former Soviet Union arrived in Israel in the 1990s, it was already possible to record television directly from the immigrants’ countries of origin. Throughout the state’s first forty years, the electronic media (and especially the radio during the major waves of immigration of the 1950s) was used to socialize the immigrants to Israel as part of the melting-pot concept mentioned above. In the 1990s, however, television was no longer solely in the hands of the national élite. Immigrants felt they were underrepresented, stereotyped, or negatively represented on the Israeli channels. As a result, widespread Russian-language journalism and Russian-language cable and satellite channels replaced the Israeli channels. This was linked to a socio-cultural behavior pattern that was different from previous waves of immigration, leading to the creation of a relatively autonomous social and cultural space. One expression of this was a demonstration of aloofness, and at times even a sense of cultural superiority, vis-à-vis Israeli society. Another venue was to set up independent political apparatuses (for example, the Yisrael beAliya party, which in the elections to the Fourteenth Knesset won seven mandates) (Peri 2004: 268). The cable company provided the immigrants with the ORT and RTR channels, broadcasting in Israel content that was identical to that being broadcast in Russia. A third channel joining them was NTV, a private network broadcasting from the United States and transmitting content adapted to various geographical locations. Shortly after that, a Russian-language movie channel (Nasha Kino) began broadcasting, likewise transmitted from the United States. A survey conducted in 1999 found that about two-thirds (2.2 hours viewing on average) of television viewing time of immigrants from the FSU were dedicated to Russian-language-speaking channels and only about one third (1.1 hours on average) to Hebrew content (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 128). In 2001, following a resolution by the Knesset to permit the broadcasting of designated cable channels to be financed by advertising, the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Council published an invitation to tender for the operation of a designated Russian-language channel up to the year 2018. Known as Channel 9, it went on the air in 2002 and provides mainly entertainment (soap operas or movies produced for the Russian market, Russian-language-dubbed westerns, original productions, talk shows, quiz shows, and current affairs). It also broadcasts a newscast produced jointly with the Channel 2 news company. The channel broadcasts advertising in Russian or in Hebrew with Russian translation. It serves as a sort of bridge between the Russian and the Israeli culture—although broadcasting in Russian or Russian translation; it frequently deals with Israeli issues (Cohen and Tukachinsky 2007: 254). The average exposure rate among the Russian speaking

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population in prime time (7:00–11:00 P.M.) in December 2002 stood at 11.8 percent. At that time, 40.8 percent of this population was exposed to other (non-Israeli) Russian-language broadcasting channels. In December 2004, the rate of exposure to Channel 9 rose to 22.4 percent, and the ratio of other Russian-speaking viewers dipped slightly, to 39.5 percent (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 157).

Television Broadcasts for Arab Citizens in Israel Another minority group whose television consumption patterns changed materially with the transition to the multichannel era is Israel’s Arab citizens. Arabic-language broadcasts on the public channel included a broadcasting bandwidth of ninety minutes in the evening, before prime time. In 2002, Arabic-language broadcasts were moved to Channel 33 of the Broadcasting Authority, intended primarily for broadcasts to the Arab population. The broadcasting time freed up on Channel 1 was taken over by Hebrew-language programs (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 158). The public channel broadcast majority-group-sponsored programs in Arabic for the minority group. Usually these broadcasts were meant to serve the needs of the majority rather than the minority group. The minority had little influence on the content of the broadcast and the quantity of local original productions (Jamal 2006: 154). The commercial channels are of course obliged to broadcast to the Arab population, but they often merely add subtitles in Arabic to the programs they transmit. In 2002, the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Council issued an invitation to tender for a channel broadcasting in Arabic, but only one group tendered a bid, and it failed to produce the requisite financial guarantees; the channel therefore never got onto the air (Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen 2006: 78). In 2010, the council published another invitation to tender for a designated channel in the Arabic language. In 2011, the council approved the bid of the one and only group that tendered an offer for operating the channel, consisting of eight shareholders, including the concessionary of Channel 2’s Reshet (Averbach and Barak 2011). In a 2005 survey of a representative sampling of the Arab public, a majority (62.5 percent) of respondents stated that Hebrew movies and series were unattractive to them. This figure appears to reflect the aloofness and alienation of the Arab minority group from the culture of the majority group (Jamal 2006: 161). It is thus hardly surprising that in the multichannel reality, many of Israel’s Arab citizens switched to watching broadcasts originating outside Israel, through the Arab satellite channels that connect Palestinian society in Israel to the Arab world (Jamal 2006: 184). Television consumption patterns in the multichannel era among the Arab public in Israel reflect the hybrid identity of that public. This is an identity

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that is nourished, among others, by two different cultural spaces: the Israeli media space and the Arab. It would seem that these patterns of television consumption from these two sources meet different social needs. Thus, for news on matters related to the Israeli-Arab conflict, Arab viewers tend to consume the content of the channels broadcasting in the Arabic language, since they regard themselves as part of the Arab political and cultural space, while for all things related to daily life (education, economy, health) they are more likely to view Israeli channels, since their lives in those areas are conducted within the Israeli space (Jamal 2006). However, a survey conducted by Adoni, Caspi, and Cohen (2006: 78) in 1999 showed that the average time dedicated to the consumption of media content in Hebrew (1.4 hours per day) is considerably less than the amount of time dedicated to Arabic-language content (2.1 hours per day on average).

Digital and Interactive Technology Certain current trends seem set to gain strength in the short term and to affect the future of broadcasting in the world in general and in Israel in particular. One is the expansion of television broadcasts by means of the Internet. Another trend (also to some extent connected with Internet television broadcasting) is the expansion of digital broadcasts and, consequently, an increase in the interactivity in television broadcasts. One concept of television interactivity is that of the “ordinary” television broadcasts: that is, those that do not make use of advanced broadcasting technologies, but invite viewers’ response to the broadcast. In most cases, however, contemporary reference to interactivity in television studies pertains to the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies in television broadcasting, with a gradual transition to digital broadcasting in other countries and in Israel. The advent of digital television is the most significant change in television broadcasting technology since the advent of color broadcasting during the 1960s (Kim and Sawhney 2002: 222). In Israel, the Second Television and Radio Authority assumed responsibility for implementing the transition from analog to land-based digital broadcasts. By means of a home converter (“Idan+”) that the consumer has to purchase, it is possible to receive the open Israeli channels (1, 2, 10, 33, and 99). Reception of digital broadcasting in this manner enables exposure to a high-quality picture (including HD technology), access to an electronic broadcasting timetable, etc. In many senses, digital technology has the potential to modify the assumptions underlying television broadcasting. Thus, following the works of Raymond Williams, in television research emphasis is placed on the flow of television broadcasts: that is, the manner in which single, non-interconnected

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television segments are presented, in a supposedly linear fashion, by connecting them in a single continuum by means of advertising, announcing the next broadcast, etc. The object of this continuum is to keep viewers watching (Wood 2007: 490). But the broadcasting continuum also creates a normative daily routine: it determines what should be broadcast in the morning, noon, and evening. This concept of broadcasting operates in a format of propulsion from the sole broadcasting concern to the many viewers (Maras 2000). The very way we say we are “watching television” in general, rather that this or that program, exposes the inferior position of the specific program and the passivity of the viewers, who will watch whatever is presented on the screen— whatever is determined for them and provided in the style of “wait and see what we’ve got for you this evening.” But if the viewers can tailor their own broadcasting schedule by using interactive broadcasting technologies, then the flow of the broadcast pre-dictated by the television channels becomes meaningless. All of the above is in contrast to unilateral television broadcasting. These qualities enable the viewers to interrupt television time, undercutting the ability of public broadcasting to ensure quality broadcasting content. For example, will the viewer continue to watch the preplanned broadcasting continuum and see the documentary movie after the soap opera solely because those two programs are on the air one after the other on the same channel? (Wood 2007: 490). With the advent of digital broadcasting technologies, such as Video-on-Demand (known to us as VOD), the audience becomes unpredictable. The viewing of a continuum of programs could be replaced by hyperviewing, in a format similar to hypertext (Internet text which enables toggling between links), where it is the viewer who determines viewing development. To what extent will the interactive technology inherent in digital broadcasting influence society or fit into the trends that are taking place there? On the one hand, interactive technology is already in Israel, on offer in cable and satellite broadcasts to Israeli viewers. A report of the HOT cable company reveals that in 2007 some 120 million viewing orders in programs were offered as part of the VOD service (Ziv 2008). When in July 2008 HOT offered its subscribers the option of placing orders for children’s VOD programs free of charge, some six million such programs were downloaded in the space of one month (as compared with eight million orders in two months (July and August) the preceding year (Bar Zohar 2008). Whereas in 2008 HOT had 380,000 VOD service subscribers, by the beginning of the year 2011 the number had risen to about half a million, and estimated revenues from the service stood at around NIS 101 million (Ziv 2011). The Yes satellite company similarly reported more than 100,000 customers using a recording converter, and in 2010 started offering VOD services (Ziv 2008; Levy 2010).

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These figures point to the assimilation of the technology and the changes taking place in viewing culture in Israel, trends compatible with social trends of individualism and sectarianism. In effect, interactive digital television merely continues to point up the social phenomena that accompanied the transition to the multichannel era. But the question arises: To what extent— and at what speed—will this technology gain a firm hold and come to serve as a substitute for viewing on the popular channels? This is especially pertinent with regard to the Israeli commercial channels, whose viewing rates today are far higher than any satellite alternative being broadcast from a source outside the jurisdiction. We should remember that many viewers have no desire to choose or structure the broadcasting continuum themselves. Given the many difficult choices that viewers have to make in their daily lives, they “flee” to television viewing where the content is determined for them and plays a soothing role (Lee and Lee 1995). Moreover, people enjoy the social “togetherness” of shared television experiences. John Ellis argues in a similar spirit that the excess of alternatives is a burden to the viewer and can lead to choice fatigue (Ellis 2002: 171). It would seem that the changes connected with television broadcasting technology as well as the rise of the Internet are related to a change in the public’s perception of television in general and the need for a more “dialogical” use of it. Interactive broadcasting genres are gaining momentum as part of this and are based on the viewing public’s “making its voice heard”—by email, by phone calls, and, of course, by short message service (texting). The broadcasting genre that evolved to become the most outstanding example of this type of feedback is that of reality shows, in which viewers can influence the fate of the contestant (Palmer 2006: 110). Reality shows came to dominate television broadcasts worldwide starting from the mid-1980s and in Israel from the early 2000s (Neiger and Josman 2005: 8). They are based on the filming of activities with ostensibly no scenario by which they are predefined. These programs, including Big Brother and Survivor, are based on global formats to which are added local elements (for example, the identity of the contestants reflects local considerations of multiculturalism, social rifts, etc., which transforms these programs into a “social experiment”) (Elephant-Lefler 2003: 3). Reality shows, of course, do not necessarily depend on feedback from viewers (and in some there is no such mechanism), but this motif has over the course of time become an outstanding feature of the genre, forming part of its illusion of a non-predicated plot and of the viewer’s ability to influence how the story develops. Reality shows make the viewers committed to the fate of certain characters, thus ensuring their ongoing exposure to the program (and especially to the advertisements embedded in it). Since this is a television genre that works towards resolution at the end of each chapter, the influence of the viewers takes on a more palpable value (Neiger and Josman 2005: 28).

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Conclusion Until the advent of the Internet, television was the medium with the most outstanding potential for expressing content of a global nature (even before the age of cable and satellite TV broadcasting). This was one of the reasons why the entry of television into Israel was postponed for as long as possible. In practice, though, as we have seen, television became a prime factor of national importance. In the one-channel era, television viewing contributed greatly to Israeli social solidarity. The viewing of the daily news, for example, was a unifying secular ceremony through the very fact of shared viewing and the knowledge that “everybody” was watching the same content at the same time. But the newscast content was also a repetitive source for defining the boundaries of the collective and assigning visual images to that collective (in the spirit of Billig’s [1995] banal nationality). As we have seen, global content too (the Dallas series, for example) was important in delineating Israeli national boundaries. The following question now arises: In an age of multiple channels and almost unlimited access to foreign stations, and with the future of public broadcasting so uncertain, to what extent does television remain a unifying factor from a national point of view? Theoretically, at least, it would seem that television has very little influence left in this direction. Katz (2009: 7) argues in this spirit that television in its widespread format of the 1960s and 1970s— which exposed the general public to the same content and contributed to nation building and social solidarity—is dead. It gave way to hundreds of niche channels and to various combinations with the new media and the Internet. There is no doubt that processes in this spirit are in fact taking place. However, the debate in the case of Israel proves that it is still premature to eulogize television’s political national influence. Broadcasts on the commercial channels—especially Channel 2—still draw large public audiences (in comparison with other countries). Their commercialism often translates into an appeal to the broad national consensus and is routinely and repetitively characterized by the reinforcement of national assumptions. Global formats are localized to fit local purposes, and at least in some instances are connected to the Israeli public sphere and to the conflicts within it. Viewers prefer original Israeli products to imported content. Moreover, even imported programs are translated into Hebrew and thus are given a local seal. Reality shows, which gain the highest viewing percentages, are frequently based on public participation in events that are taking place simultaneously during the broadcast, and thus become a kind of “banal ceremony”—ostensibly tinted with a global, non-local color, but in practice, emphasizing the common domestic movement on the time axis. These reality shows are definitely directed at a common family experience, similar to that which characterized the early days of

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television. Finally, in times of war or national disaster, television still functions as a central unifying platform for getting information, and thus fosters national identity values.

Notes 1. See http://www.midrgu-tv.org.il, the Internet site of the Israeli Rating Committee. 2. HCJ 1/81: Vicki Shiran v. the Broadcasting Authority. 3. On 30 March 1976, security forces intervened in a protest strike against the expropriation of Arab lands in Galilee. In the course of that intervention, disproportionate force was wielded against the threat of disorderly conduct, and six Arab citizens of Israel were killed. The Palestinian citizens of Israel mark this day annually with assemblies and parades (see Hattis-Rolf 1988: 103).

chapter

4 The Internet’s Debut in Israel

In the preceding chapter, we saw that television was perceived as a medium with the potential to undermine the national hegemonic culture. As the Internet became available across broad social strata, its increasing popularization and access were likewise seen to threaten the link between national integration and territory—a link in which the national media, including the printed press and radio, play a key role (Carey 1998: 34). The Internet is a global medium, seen as equally accessible to all and free of limitations of place or time (Shwartz-Altschuler 2007: 20). It thus seemed, at least at the outset, that the Internet was the realization of Marshall McLuhan’s (2003) “global village” in that it subverted and removed the boundaries between different nations. The Internet is accepted as being part of a new global era, expressed in social, cultural, and economic fields.

Is the National Media Age Over? On the surface, the Internet differs from radio and television in terms of the position the national community reserves for it. Radio and television, like printing before them, have been described as key players in the imagining of national communities (Chan 2005), whereas the Internet’s impact is described in quite different terms. Being a global rather than a national medium, the Internet is perceived as allowing users to identify with a universal community: its non-territorial character is seen to lead to social fragmentation, obstructing the possibility of preserving the homogeneity of the national cultural identity, based as it is on shared images, myths, etc. (Eriksen 2007: 1). Many have predicted that the Internet would weaken the national center, diminishing the ratio of shared political content on the national media channels. As the Internet enables cross-border and cross-national communication, the importance of “place” in this type of medium declines (Dahan and Sheffer 2001: 88).

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There were those who thought the Internet’s new technologies would replace the shared transmission of content by “tailoring” a personal news edition for each and every consumer, in accordance to their spheres of interest as documented on the Internet (DiMaggio, Neuman, and Robinson 2001: 321). In this view, the new media era would overtake the role of traditional media, particularly television, in determining and expressing society’s defining symbols and connection with social reality. It seemed that specially designated channels conforming to the tastes of small communities would usurp the place of the traditional mass media and the products of the homogeneous mass culture. The Internet promised to liberate individuals from the bonds of place, language, and national culture (Eriksen 2007: 6). Its interactive and diff use character, which allows users to distribute content that they themselves have created, gave rise to expectations of a public space that would cross borders (Naveh 2008: 11). The decentralized aspect of the Internet is seen as a catalyst in the development of fluid, mutating, and multi-aspected identities. The rising popularity of the Internet, alongside the diminishing of the sovereign power of nation states,1 has led to unprecedented research and public preoccupation with national frontiers and the possibility of their collapsing in the new media era. The view of the current social era as an Internet society assumes that individuals, groups, organizations, and states are more flexible in terms of crossing borders and transmitting information (Mesch and Talmud 2010: 2). This collapse of national boundaries is reflected in such phrases as the “death of distance,” the “end of geography,” the “borderless world,” and the “flattening of the earth” (Antonsich 2009; Friedman 2005; Graham 1998). This can be contrasted to the spatial metaphors used to describe the abstract flow of electronic signals, codes, and information on the Internet: web pages are designated “sites,” the computerized communication infrastructure is frequently dubbed “the information highway,” and those using the Internet are “surfers” (Graham 1998: 166). In other words, cybernetic “space” is imagined as an alternative place, endowed with familiar patterns but nonetheless differing from those characterizing “real” space. Distinct from the traditional mass media, the Internet has been described as devoid of any dominant voice or the grand-narrative of the nation-state. While the national community is fundamentally linked to a centralist authority, the Internet has enabled new social associations that frequently are not based on geographical proximity. These social trends are compatible with contemporary social processes, including the fragmentation of post-modern tribalism. The new media have created information-transmission networks that have altered the way people create shared realities (Slevin 2001: 97). Users are, in an unprecedented way, exposed to remote events taking place at a far remove from their location, and all with absolute immediacy and free of

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the mediation of local national agents. In light of this, it was feared that the local would become merely a way station on the path to a universal flow of communication, or that a state of affairs would arise in which we would live in two parallel universes (Slevin 2001: 199). Moreover, as concepts of a unique nation ostensibly crumble, the global character of the Internet is sometimes perceived as reflecting cultural imperialism. According to this idea, the Internet is a tool reflecting Western (primarily American) identity and operating to erode local culture. A conspicuous arena of struggle of this kind—between the local and the global—is that of the Internet language. As we saw in preceding chapters, language plays a dominant role in creating national communities and forming national identity. Territorial contiguity enabled the nation-states to take part in the planning and development of language, to establish linguistic standards, and to control pedagogic curricula, among other things. But in Internet communication, the users’ physical location is of no importance, at least on the face of it. Network users can be members of a particular language community even if the language they use in the virtual arena is not the language of the country in which they live, and even if it is not their primary language. Thus, participants in Russian-speaking virtual communities may actually be living in Russia, or they may be part of migrant communities living in the United States, in Germany, or in Israel (Dor 2004: 112). In the early days of the Internet, most network users were English speakers, but this changed over the years as the Internet penetrated other, non-English-speaking countries and became an important component in the lives of their inhabitants. Over time, the Internet became a far more multilingual arena, with the number of languages featuring in it rapidly increasing (Dor 2004: 99). Consequently, in November 2009, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the allocation of suffixes in national languages, and not only in Latin characters as they had been previously. This decision highlights the rise of national languages on the Web, acknowledging that the use of Latin characters excludes broad populations (for whom Latin script is foreign) from the Internet (Vaisman 2000: 39–40).2 Moreover, beyond the conversion of the Internet into a multilingual medium, there was growing awareness that even English, as it is used around the world, is not uniform—it varies depending on local context. To treat Indian, Singaporean, or Nigerian English as a single universal language is to overlook the complex relations between the local-national and the global (Hawkins 2008: 370). That being the case, a belief in the vitality of national languages has displaced the belief that English, as a global language, would inevitably come to predominate the Internet. Over the course of time, people began to doubt that the power of the Internet as a means of communication would necessarily erode national identity. It is true that, given the short time that the

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Internet has been a mass medium, drawing conclusions about its long-term effects may be premature. Yet contemporary studies show that nationalism is present on the Internet, and sentiments of national identity can actually be reinforced through the Internet, particularly among populations from common national origins who are scattered around the world (Eriksen 2007: 7). This process of recognizing the Internet’s national potential alongside its potential to erode and socially fragment the nation calls to mind the subversion of the determinist concept we saw attributed to the advent of multichannel television and the accusation that it would inevitably erode national solidarity (see preceding chapter). Arguments relating to the national power inherent in the Internet refer especially to exilic groups or groups that have lost their national independence and are using the Internet as a political means in their struggle for national independence. The Internet media may contribute to a new pattern of nationalism, with two mutually contradictory components: on the one hand linking users to the nation state, and on the other, the de-territorialization of the nationalist medium. It will be noted that ethnic groups scattered across geographical expanses have always made use of various media (letters, the telegraph, telephones, movies, etc.); however, the Internet provides cheap and interactive communication with a far greater number of participants than the modes of the past (Dahan and Sheffer 2001: 87). Over and above the Internet’s contribution to national struggles, there is an increasing awareness of the Internet’s deep investment in the nation’s daily life. As John Postil argues, the Internet is becoming more local, serving, among other things, local activism (Postill 2011). The architecture of the Internet, which was supposed to encourage trends of globalization, has in practice taken on increasingly national overtones as the Internet matures. Research evidence suggests that most links on any given Internet site are to sites related to the state of the originating site. This fact leads to the conclusion that national boundaries have their own importance, even in the network structure (Halavais 2000). Likewise, the Domain Name System, which at the outset did not take national boundaries into account (Mihelj 2011), has become over time a conspicuous marker of the national affi liation of the sites and a source of identification with or alienation from them (Shkolvski and Struthers 2010). The development of local search engines, attesting to the importance of place and national languages, likewise are an important component in the banal nationalism that is becoming increasingly predominant on the Internet (Soffer 2013). Moreover, many users never overstep the bounds of national-local sites on the Internet to visit sites identified with other countries. In practice, it seems that the very mode of users’ self-presentation on the Internet highlights national identity—for example, how they introduce themselves on Facebook—while in daily life they downplay these national components (Bouvier 2012).

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Researchers who challenge the erosion of nationality in the Internet era remind us that in the ostensibly borderless world, there are more than three hundred international land borders—far outnumbering the states making up the international system (Newman 2006: 145). It would actually seem that at present, and especially following the events of 9/11, people are increasingly calling for preserving and reinforcing, rather than jumping over, border controls. In the opinion of these researchers, predictions of the demise of distance or geography are far from fulfilled: physical location still plays a key role. Geography has symbolic, political, and social aspects (Khiabany 2003: 150). Moreover, globalization, which the Internet undoubtedly promotes, must be assessed in the context of the reinforcement of ethnic trends of recent decades. And whereas globalization is supposed to promote the standardization and integration of culture, ethnicity expresses cultural differentiation and social fragmentation (Dahan and Sheffer 2001: 100). The Internet accordingly has the ability to connect individuals with their community of origin or the nation-state they left. In other words, the Internet is a medium enabling a connection to a national-local place in the course of a cross-border global experience. Thus, even though more and more people are currently moving among different countries, the Internet allows them to preserve uninterrupted connection with a geographical location where they are no longer present. Yael Enoch and Ronit Grossman have shown, for example, that Danish and Israeli backpackers visiting India write blogs in Danish or Hebrew, respectively, as they journey, and thus transform their global experience into one that is embedded in their source culture (Enoch and Grossman 2010: 534). Various studies have also tried to determine the relationship between global and local values as they are reflected in sites originating in different countries. Some studies point to the homogenization and standardization of the design of the various sites and also of their content, as well as the echo of design patterns originating in the United States in the sites of other countries. Other studies, however, have found a considerable difference in the content of the sites (for example, the place of social values and of values such as family and masculinity) and also in the design of the sites (for example, sites originating in Brazil tend to be highly colorful). Studies suggest that users prefer content possessing local rather than universal standard attributes (Segev, Ahituv, and Barzilai-Nahon 2007: 1, 272). Similarly, the choices with regard to how Internet technology is used is to a great extent culture dependent. For example, we see a vast predominance of the talkback phenomenon on Israeli news sites. While sites worldwide utilize talkbacks, there is no doubt that Israeli surfers realizes this option to its furthest extent. This may be ascribed to the Israeli culture of discourse, whose roots researchers trace to the Jewish Talmudic culture, characterized by a

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tendency towards argumentativeness and a circuitous monologue (Hamo 2009; Blondheim and Blum-Kulka 2001). The framing of the various aspects related to the use of the Internet is itself influenced and mediated by the local culture. For example, the United States discussion on state-of-the-art Internet technologies emphasizes matters of principle related to privacy and the risks inherent in any breach of it. In Israel, on the other hand, Rivka Ribak (2007: 18–20), examining the discourse in the Israeli magazine Captain Internet on the issue of safeguarding privacy, notes that any Israeli reference to breach of privacy risks is presented as an obsession and paranoia characteristic of the United States. Captain Internet, by contrast, stressed the technology specially designated to safeguard the privacy of the responsible users—who protect themselves against hackers of various kinds and not against the risks inhering in the lawful tracking of surfers. It should be remembered that in times of war and national crisis the Internet becomes an important tool to express nationalism. In such periods of “hot” nationalism—when the security crises lead to an outburst of strong national emotions (Billig 1995)—the discourse on the Internet is part of a general shift in national media. Covert expressions of nationalism are becoming far more overt and defiant, and the narratives expressed through the media sharply distinguish between “us” and “them” (Naveh 2008: 15). The Internet is often a tool for—and a target of—virtual terrorist attacks that injure computer networks, steal information, etc. These “Netwars” undermine the Internet’s image of “a place” devoid of national boundaries (Ortis and Evans 2003). As we will see, the Internet arena reflects security struggles in Israel, too.

The Evolution of Internet Accessibility in Israel Very little has been written about the advent of the Internet in Israel. In his pioneering study, Nicholas John (2008) suggests that the arrival of the Internet in Israel was linked to the relocation of a small number of players from overseas—more specifically, from the United States, the birthplace of the Internet—to Israel. Despite their cosmopolitan attributes, these individuals moved for ethnic reasons: all of them were Jewish and were, to varying degrees, “returning” to their homeland. In other words, the advent of Internet technology into Israel interconnected with ethnic-national relations between the Jewish Diaspora and the State of Israel. As we will show, the state itself was also involved in the entry of the global network into the framework of the national communications system. Efforts to connect Israel to the Internet network were being made as early as the beginning of the 1980s. Shmuel Peleg, a computer scientist who, at that time, was a doctoral student at Maryland University, sought to remain

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connected to the email network he had used during his stay in the United States. He was able to persuade the authorities at the Hebrew University to hook up to the Internet by ensuring that he would bear the costs of the telephone line. This connection, however, was a local one only, restricted to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and it was also temporary—after a short time, the email was disconnected due to the high costs of maintaining the telephone line linking the university to the Internet (John 2008: 80). Hank Nussbacher, another immigrant from the United States who had been in charge of hooking up the City University of New York colleges to an internal network in the beginning of the 1980s, likewise tried to connect Israel to the European network. Using the advanced technological knowledge that he brought with him, he was able to connect the Weizmann Institute to the European network, and through that to the American network. In John’s opinion, the advanced technological knowhow that Nussbacher brought with him from the United States accelerated the connecting of Israel’s academic institutions to the Internet. In fact (and primarily due to another individual, Doron Shikmoni), Israel was the third country in the world, after the United States and the U.K., to obtain a state code (the “.il” suffi x) on the Internet in 1985. This fact points to the awareness of technological development and the importance the Israeli authorities ascribed to it (John 2008: 80). Once connected to the Internet, the Israeli network grew rapidly. In 1992 the first Israeli site was posted (of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem). In that year too, the Internet was opened up for the use of non-academic organizations, but these users were required to obtain a license from a committee at the Ministry of Communications (John 2008: 86–88). In this matter, as in the application for a state code, state institutions were at first highly involved in introducing the Internet in Israel and consolidating its status. The criterion for obtaining a license was the applicant’s experience in research and development. Private users could not, in those years, get connected to the network. The turning point came in 1994, when three commercial firms obtained a license to provide Internet access to the general public. In those years, the connection was made through local telephone lines, which meant that Internet providers were initially local businesses, in view of the need to provide a link to the Internet at the cost of a local call (John 2008). The Israel Internet Association was set up in 1994 as an independent body for the promotion and assimilation of Internet technologies in Israel. The association is responsible, among other things, for the allocation of domain names. By July 2010, it had registered 170,641 such names. The association also represents Israel in international forums related to the Internet and to the social issues surrounding it, such as the narrowing of the digital divide or public education on sensible use of the network.3

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The number of households with the Internet in Israel from the years 2000 to 2010 increased by 314.4 percent.4 According to data from the Internet World Site,5 in May 2013 at least 70 percent of the public in Israel was connected to the Internet (5,313,530 users). This is high compared to the worldwide average, which stands at 34.3 percent, or the rate in the Middle East of 40.2 percent. However, it is low compared to the reported 78.6 percent rate in North America. In Europe, where overall Internet penetration stands at 63.2 percent, figures differ greatly from one country to another. Thus the U.K. has a penetration rate of 83.6 percent, while Romania has only 44.1 percent. The following discussion of the digital divides between various population groups and unequal Internet penetration rates will show that the figure indicating Israel’s high penetration rate is deceptive.

Israelis Surfing the Internet: Between the Local and the Global Mapping surfing patterns in Israel is no simple matter. In the traditional distribution or broadcasting patterns to which we have become accustomed in the traditional media (printed press, radio, and television), one institutional sender sends messages to numerous addressees. By contrast, Internet surfi ng is, at least on the face of it, highly individual—the individual surfer has a far wider choice than audiences of traditional media. Any discussion relating to surfing patterns is further complicated by the blurring of the traditional distinctions between interpersonal communication and mass communication. In the past, a sharp distinction was maintained between means of interpersonal communication (such as letters or phone calls) and mass media (newspapers, radio, and television), but digital technologies enable people to use the same tools for both interpersonal and mass communication (Lüders 2008: 685). E-mail, for example, can serve as a substitute for a letter or a phone call; but e-mail can also be used for sending a digital news leaflet or a commercial message, distributing them to a larger user public. Blogs can also serve for communication of a personal-individual nature, as a sort of substitute for writing a personal diary; alternatively, it can be used for commercial, academic, or other purposes. The multiple uses of the Internet hinder its mapping and definition, as well as the measurement of patterns indicating media use of it. Since this is a fairly primordial field of research, it is not rare to find diverse operationalization and different definitions of the Internet; and these lead to ostensibly contradictory data. We also must take into account the very rapid change in usage patterns on the Internet and in the technologies it enables. All these create a highly dynamic arena, behind which research is constantly lagging.

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While not denying the importance of these problems, ultimately, despite the inexhaustible quantity of sites on the Internet, most surfers over time turn to the same limited pool of popular sites. In an attempt to characterize surfing patterns in Israel, I present a map of sites that are popular among Israeli surfers below. As in previous chapters of the book, in discussion of traditional mass media, I will examine Internet surfing patterns while tracing their affinity for the local-national space and global space. Certain problems and difficulties must be addressed. Firstly, in the absence of academic studies of Israeli surfi ng patterns, I will refer to data published by TNS Teleseker (2010) for commercial purposes. These figures relate exclusively to sites selling advertising. However, we can reasonably assume that the data would not change substantially with regard to private sites that do not sell advertising. Another problematic issue relates to the research population of this survey, which includes surfers (aged 13 and upward) of the Jewish population only. The survey thus leaves out the Arab population, which is a large minority possessing distinctive sociological and media patterns. I will partially respond to this omission by relating separately the surfi ng patterns among the Arab population in Israel. I must also note that the reliability of the TNS survey data has been challenged by some in the media industry (Pereg 2009). At the same time, there is no doubt that this data offers a general indication of the popularity of the sites—and that is what is important for this study. An examination of a list of the twenty-five most popular sites in Israel points to four predominant groups of sites: • Sites related to firms based elsewhere than in Israel • Sites serving as auxiliary tools for local daily doings (digital substitutes for printed accessories) • Sites related to other institutionalized media, such as a printed newspaper or a television channel • Independent media sites

Heading the list of sites that received the most exposure in January 2010 is the Google search engine (weekly exposure of 93 percent of total surfers aged 13 and up). This site belongs to the first of the above categories: sites related to firms based elsewhere than in Israel. As in many other instances, this site originates with an American firm. In fourth and fift h places in terms of exposure are other sites linked to American-global firms: Facebook (with a weekly exposure of 59.8 percent); and YouTube (59.1 percent). On the surface, the rating of these top sites attests to globalization trends. As usual, however, the picture is far more complicated. First, the main use of the Google site is as a search engine rather than a content provider. Furthermore, it is not

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clear in what “space” the site serves Israeli surfers: Are they seeking information in the Hebrew language? Do they seek information in another language? Do they look for sites related to the Israeli local space or to those outside Israel? Moreover, Google itself has developed designated “national” search engines—that is, those whose Internet address bears the identifying suffi x of the specific nation-state (“il” for Israel, “uk” for Britain, “in” for India, etc.), which make use of the national language. Thus, users in Israel who use the Google search engine are “bounced” straight to the local site. This may be viewed as an expression of “glocalism”—a combination of the global and the local. Similar to the glocalization of Google’s search sites, YouTube also “identifies” the location of the server connecting the users and presents them with “local” movies from the nation state of the users. In the case of YouTube, too, there is no predicting the search or viewing themes—or, indeed, the language in which users may respond to the films they have viewed. The use of social networks such as Facebook (which, as stated, places third in the exposure ratings), likewise holds potential global communication— users can make the acquaintance of other users who share similar interests or professions regardless of place or national identity. However, a study conducted among Israeli Internet users shows that the principal application of this social network is in fact to strengthen existing ties rather than create new ones (Mesch and Elgali 2009). A similar finding was made by a study conducted among American students (Sheldon 2008: 50). This being the case, we must distinguish between the border-crossing potential of social networks and their actual use and realization of that potential. From among the international sites, Yahoo! (placing 22 in the exposure rating, with a 12.1 weekly exposure percentage) was found to possess different attributes from those discussed above. A key distinguishing feature is the site’s “non-conversion.” As distinct from the Google search engine or the MSN site (discussed below), Yahoo! does not offer a Hebrew portal; however, there are countries in which it offers a local version. Israeli users using this site enter into an English-language portal and are exposed to foreign (primarily American) content and a design format that surfers from other countries are exposed to. Even if the question arises as to what extent Israeli surfers pause to study the contents of the site “en route” to their e-mail on the site or when they use the Yahoo! search engine, there is no doubt that this site would be considered a model for network globalism by those who prophesied the Internet’s destruction of local national content. Also included in the category of sites based outside Israel is the MSN portal. Anyone trying to enter the “global” (i.e., the American) MSN site (having the .com suffi x) via the “Israeli” server encounters a banner inquiring:

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Accessing MSN.com while visiting Israel? This is followed immediately by two links to the two relevant sites: the Israeli site under the Israeli flag with the caption “Stay at MSN Israel” and the American one, which is linked to the Stars and Stripes and the caption, “Go to MSN US.” The wording changes from time to time. In the past, Israeli surfers wishing to reach the “global” site were greeted with a window showing the Israeli and American flags, and asking, “Are you from Israel? Switch to Israeli MSN now!” There is a conspicuous presence here of banal nationalism. Michael Billig mentions the power of the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building. Just as few pause to wonder at the national power of the hanging flag, few surfers would stop to muse on the power of the digital flags that direct them to “national” sites. This is precisely where their power lies: the naturalness and the banality with which we treat them, even within the Internet framework and architecture (Soffer 2013). It would seem that localism is conspicuous in the example presented here. The question, however, is to what extent the Israeli site itself reflects the content and the design patterns of the American mother-site. Is this a matter of the diff usion of the features of the American site to the Hebrew-language arena and the local news environment? A study comparing the various local sites of MSN, including the Israeli and American MSN sites, found considerable differences, both in terms of the content of the sites and in terms of design. The home sites of MSN lean towards local trends and are not homogeneous in their attributes. In practice, the Israeli MSN site was found to diverge greatly from other MSN sites. The difference arose, for one thing, from the different design of the site, which includes more pictures at the expense of written content. The Canadian site, by contrast, was found to closely resemble the American one. The study also found similarities within various groups of local sites in countries with a linguistic or cultural proximity (see Segev, Ahituv, and Barzilai-Nahon 2007: 1, 284). This finding is compatible with the notion of cultural proximity, which originally related to the consumption of television content (Straubhaar 1991: 56). Shared cultural attributes, which are often consistent with geographical proximity, make the flow of media content from nearby countries both preferable and more convenient from the point of view of the public (even though the primary preference is awarded to the consumption of content derived within the nation state). Outstanding among the most popular sites is the category of sites that help people cope with daily and local life. The conspicuousness of these sites attests to the maturation of the Internet network: that is, its becoming an accessible and quotidian tool serving the general public. The Yad2 billboard (affi liated with Walla! and which ranks in eighth place in terms of rate of exposure, with 27.8 percent) and the WinWin billboard (affi liated with the Yediot Ahronot group and which ranks in twenty-fift h place, with 10.6 percent exposure)

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satisfy, at least in part, needs that in the past were met by the small ad columns of the printed press (enabling searches for apartments, motor vehicles, furniture, etc.). Similarly, the sites b144 (ranking in eleventh place, with 21.6 percent exposure) and Golden Pages (ranking in fifteenth place with 17.4 percent exposure) trace telephone numbers and professionals in users’ local areas. The most outstanding example of the local orientation of this type of site is the Ymap (ranking in sixteenth place, with an exposure rating of 17.2 percent), which defines the services it provides as follows: Maps and More—Ymap, Israel’s maps site, is the only site of its kind that offers maps, snapshots of houses, travel routes, photographic mapping, integrated mapping, aerial photography and a combination of tools for finding your way to any destination on the map of Israel, tools for simple orientation: not just “how to get there” but also visual identification of the place or the area we wish to reach. Bon voyage.

The identification of this site with Yediot Ahronot connects it in the user’s mind to the very national message of that newspaper’s slogan: “[the newspaper] of the State.” These services are much more deeply invested in the visual appearance of the local arena than “traditional” maps used in the pre-Internet era, whose universal dimension was very strong. Modern cartography, as distinct from the old-style maps, excludes most pictorial-iconic representations (ships or outstanding edifices, for example). As cartography has ostensibly become more scientific and objective, paralleling the scientific revolution, the mapmaker has been further excluded from the process (Jakels 1947). The map purports to represent a certain geographical reality with objectivity and in accordance with universal rules. Of course, the way things are presented in a map—how its center is indicated, the naming of certain population hubs, and the omission of others—always depends on subjective and frequently national concepts. These still exist in the Internet age, but the interactivity of maps reduces the power of the mapmaker. The new level of the map, with minute details such as houses, local landscapes, and vegetation (and thus somewhat reminiscent of the earlier maps), embeds the map more surely within the local-national layers, compared to maps that display only “scientific” marking. The third category—sites connected with traditional media, such as the press and the television—actually derives from the recognition by these media that mounting exposure to online media comes at the expense of the traditional media themselves (Schejter 2007: 51). In chapter two of this book, we saw that the printed press is suffering a severe economic crisis due in part to new consumer habits: the abandonment of consuming news in rigid time slots in favor of up-to-the-minute updating of the news over the course of the day. In view

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of the relatively high immediacy offered by radio and television, the updating function of the press has progressively eroded. The Internet enables immediate updating. Online newspapers, moreover, are capable of offering a combination of written information and audio and visual content. Compared to the other mass media, the Internet offers unprecedented interactive response options by means of talkbacks, e-mailing the writer or the editorial board, or taking part in discussions about articles in chats or forums (Caspi 2007: 32–34). In trying to adapt to the new media age, the printed media in Israel and in the rest of the world have adopted various business strategies focused on the connection between the printed and the online newspaper. Thus, the site of the HaAretz newspaper (ranking in twenty-third place, with 11.3 percent weekly exposure) was based from the outset on the printed newspaper and its contents. Until 2009, the entire printed newspaper could be read on the site; however, that option was cancelled and the news items were scattered throughout the site. The Globes Internet site (ranking twenty-first with 12.4 percent weekly exposure) adopted a similar strategy. Yediot Ahronot adopted a different strategy and established the Ynet site (ranked in fift h position, with 58.2 percent exposure), whose editorial board was completely divorced from that of the printed edition of the newspaper. In 2013 HaAretz restricted some of its content to paying subscribers as part of a search for a new economic model. The investment made in a large independent editorial board, and also in opening the content of the site to talkback from surfers (a practice that spread to other online newspapers), contributed to the great popularity of Ynet among surfers (Caspi 2007: 40–41). Over the course of time, the clear separation between the printed newspaper and the Internet site became blurred, and today the boundaries between them are more permeable than ever. The online editions of Maariv went through various metamorphoses in their connection with the printed newspaper. The NRGMaariv site was launched on the Internet in 2004. Yuval Dror characterizes the modus operandi of this site, in all matters connected with the printed newspaper, as a hybrid model: it had independent correspondents and editors, yet at the same time, close collaboration was planned between the site and the printed newspaper. The site, of course, had its own editor-in-chief; but this individual was subordinate to the editor of the printed newspaper. As the years passed, NRGMaariv came to more closely resemble the model characterizing HaAretz, making use of the contents of the printed newspaper on the site (Dror 2011). Over time, the broadcasting media also started to feel the threat posed by the Internet, as the latter began taking bites out of the advertising budgets that were allocated to them (Caspi 2007: 33). Initially, radio and television stations used the Internet as a tool for disseminating information from their own broadcasts. Over time, however, the Internet site transformed into a content provider that relied, for the most part if not entirely, on the broadcasted

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content (for example, the Galei Zahal radio station set up an Internet site with content based on the broadcasted content, while at the same time offering the option of listening on the Internet to a live broadcast and recorded programs). All this was done in an effort to give the sites an interactive dimension and thereby to compensate for the weakness of the traditional media in bonding with their listeners and their viewers. Among the twenty-five sites ranked as leaders in weekly exposure rates in Israel are the Mako site of the Channel 2 concessionary, Keshet (ranked in sixth place, with 40.8 percent exposure), and the Nana10 site (ranked seventh, with 29.2 percent exposure). The latter started out as an independent portal, but Channel 10 later acquired part ownership of the site, at which time television content was integrated into it. The commercial television companies’ sites include links to programs that were broadcast on television (with the option of viewing them in whole or in part), behind the scenes information, user comments or ratings of content, downloads of content, etc. The sites also include a great deal of advertising. Noteworthy among the independent Israeli sites that have sprung up on the Internet are the Walla! portal (which merged with the Schocken network, was later sold to Bezeq, and is ranked in second place, with 67.7 percent weekly exposure), the Tapuz site (ranked in twelft h place, with 19.9 percent exposure), and the (Israeli) sport site One¸ (ranked in seventeenth place, with 15.7 percent exposure). Walla! offers a diverse range of content and applications, including e-mail and chat. The site includes news flashes and also a great deal of commercial content. It also offers VOD services together with the satellite company Yes. On the Tapuz site, along with topics related to entertainment and lifestyle, emphasis is given to user-generated content, such as blogs, short movies, and forums. In contrast to these general portals, the One site appeals to a far more specific public—sports fans. The site offers reports, opinions, and commentaries on various sports in Israel and elsewhere in the world. The surfing patterns in the above-mentioned sites thus to a great extent disprove deterministic arguments that the Internet is undermining local and national concepts in favor of global values. The Israeli sites are conspicuously embedded in the local experience, not only in terms of their content but also in their language, which distinguishes between users who speak the language (and are thus able to make use of them) and those who do not (and are thus not part of the public being addressed by the sites). This trend is consistent with the process of localization of the Internet (Postill 2011). In discussing surfing patterns in Israel, another matter that arises implicitly has to do with cross-ownerships. These reflect both the integration of ownership of different types of media and also the concentration of ownership in the hands of a small number of tycoons.

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Internet Use among Children and Adolescents Young people are generally considered to be pioneers in testing and adopting new technologies (Formäs 1995: 1; Oksman and Turtiainen 2004: 321). In computer-mediated communication, this can be seen, among others, in the influence of youth culture on the language used on the Internet—more specifically, the linguistic and graphic creativity in the use of, for example, abbreviations, deliberate distortion of words, and emoticons (Soffer 2010b). In the past, studies pointed to the predominance of television in the lives of children and adolescents; today, this predominance is being eroded through Internet use (Lemish, Ribak, and Aloni 2009: 146). Once connected to the Internet, the children’s room has become a sort of “personal communication room.” The Internet enables children and adolescents to fulfi ll their aspiration for greater autonomy and to expand their circle of contacts to beyond that of the school or the neighborhood—thereby diminishing the parents’ control over their social relationships (Mesch and Talmud 2010: 13). In most cases, however, the principal social use children make of the Internet is to contact friends, and this contact frequently supplements their face-to-face communication. In view of the inclination shown by young people to adopt new technologies, it is hardly surprising that the rate of Internet use among the youth stood, in January 2009, at 86 percent, compare to the adult rate of 68 percent. The ratio of Internet users among children (under the age of 14) is even higher. There is a material gap between the technological mastery of the Internet by children and that of their parents. No significant divides are recorded between adolescent boys and girls in Internet usage rates. However, boys “spend” on average 18.3 hours per week on the Internet compared to 15.7 hours for girls. Of the young people using the Internet, 73 percent do so with daily frequency, often several times a day. Young surfers make relatively heavy use of the cellular phone as a means of surfing the Net: 33 percent compared to 23 percent among adults (Rafaeli, Ariel, and Katzman 2010: 6–12). The surfing patterns of young people were found to be distinct from those of adults: the three principal uses were viewing video clips (80 percent), expanding general knowledge (79 percent), and downloading soft ware and files (53 percent). Among adults, on the other hand, the most popular uses were email (85 percent), reading the news (84 percent), and expanding general knowledge (83 percent) (Rafaeli, Ariel, and Katzman 2010: 13). The Internet has become, among children and youth, the most important source for getting help doing their homework: only 21 percent of high school pupils reported books to be the most useful resource for doing homework, compared with 70 percent who reported that the Internet was the most efficient means (Lemish, Ribak, and Aloni 2009: 153).

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The Internet and Sectorial Communication The almost unmediated approach to the Internet has led some to identify the tremendous potential of the Internet to empower minority groups (Mehra, Merkel, and Peterson Bishop 2004: 781). The Internet is seen as an agent of change because it facilitates the rapid flow of information, reduces the costs of channeling that information, and enables socially marginal groups to acquire human capital (Mesch and Talmud 2010: 100). One of the key issues in any discussion of the Internet and minority groups is that of the digital divide: that is, the difference in Internet accessibility between the minority group and the general population. It should however be remembered that a discussion of minority groups, including in the context of Israel, is more complicated than a mere matter of Internet access. So is the issue of the empowerment required by different minority groups (for example, the goals and the characteristics of an ethnic minority may be very different from those of a minority based on gender) (Mehra, Merkel, and Peterson Bishop 2004: 781). The discussion that follows will focus on the minorities I have considered thus far: Arab citizens of Israel, ultra-orthodox Jews, and immigrants from the states of the former Soviet Union (FSU). The differences among these groups are considerable and can be seen in their attitudes to the Internet, their use of it, and the relevance of the Internet in modifying their relationship with the majority group.

Internet Use among Arab Citizens of Israel There is a digital divide between the Arab and the Jewish populations in terms of access to the Internet. This divide is consistent with the view that economically and socially stronger groups will be the first to adopt advanced technologies. Indeed, among Jewish youth, 92 percent use the Internet, while only 67 percent of Arab youth do (Rafaeli, Ariel, and Katzman 2010: 9). Also, within Arab society itself, digital divides are related to educational level, age, income, religion, and residential area. The higher the education and income levels and the lower the age, the higher is the number of Internet users. Internet usage rate among Arabs in the south of Israel is the lowest, either due to infrastructure problems or the relatively low educational and income levels. In comparing Internet use among different religions in Arab society, we find that it is higher among the Christian population, followed by the Druze, and is lowest among Muslims (Ganayem, Rafaeli, and Faisal 2009: 188–189). A survey conducted among Israeli Internet surfers in 2007 showed that surfing patterns of the Arabs differ from those of the Jews (Avidar 2009). These findings are similar to those from the United States concerning differences in Internet use between marginal groups and the majority. According to the

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survey, the Jewish majority group’s (similar to the white population in the United States) use of the Internet for practical transactions is higher than that of the Arab minority group. This would include, for example, banking transactions (55.4 percent among Jews compared to 24.3 percent among Arabs), information searching on vacations (52.8 percent compared to 42.8 percent), or e-mail use (82.5 percent compared to 65.8 percent). The Arab minority group, on the other hand (similar to the African-American minority in the United States) made greater use of applications relating to self and collective expression. Such use is evidently to compensate for the exclusion of the members of the group from the public media space and as means of creating an ethnic-national discourse. Thus, 27.6 percent of the Arabs surveyed declared that they use chat rooms (compared to 11.7 percent of Jews), 13.2 percent that they used blogs (compared to 2.5 percent), and 69.5 percent that they download music from the Internet (compared to 43.6 percent) (Avidar 2009: 4). According to Mustafa Kabha (2007), Internet use should be viewed as the second revolution in media consumption among the Arab population in Israel. The first, discussed in the preceding chapter, involved satellite Arabic television broadcasts. As part of that revolution, many Arab viewers abandoned Israeli channels in favor of the Arab channels that they received via the satellite. The Internet expanded modes of media consumption: it not only enabled the reception of different content, it also increased freedom of expression for both writers and surfers. As Kabha points out, the Internet boosted the freedom of the press among the Arab population and its involvement in the Arab sphere, reflected in both the work of journalists and surfers’ patterns of consumerism and response (2007: 178). Most printed Arab-language newspapers also appear in an online version, with various news sites operating beside them. Arabic-language users take part in forums and discussion groups, some specifically designated for the Palestinian population in Israel and some operating as all-Arab sites. Additional types of Arabic-language sites include various associations and non-profit organizations dealing with the civil rights of the Arabs in Israel and personal blog-type sites of Arab intellectuals discussing a diverse range of issues (Kabha 2007). Most Arab Internet users prefer sites written in Arabic. However, due to the widespread use of Israeli sites among the Arab population in Israel as part of their daily activity (banks, administration), extensive use is also made of sites written in Hebrew (Ganayem, Rafaeli, and Faisal 2009: 191).

The Internet and the Ultra-orthodox Communities During the 1980s, before the popularization of the Internet, use of the personal computer began to penetrate the ultra-orthodox sector, primarily due

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to the advantages that experience with computer applications provided in the work market (Horowitz 2000: 16). In those years, rabbinical leaders were mainly focused on opposing television viewing. Computers, by contrast, were considered work tools used mainly to write text, and so were suitable for dealing with Halachic issues (Tsarfati and Blais 2002). Computer access to a large extent replaced the need for large libraries and lessened dependence on memory and the expertise of a small minority. For example, by means of the Bar-Ilan University’s Responsa Project database, using only a CD and a computer, a person can quickly and easily search the tremendous corpus of rabbinical rulings (Gerstenfeld and Weiler 2002: 136). However, the popularization of the Internet led to the recognition that this was not a neutral sort of technology; use of this medium was liable to radically affect the relatively closed nature of the ultra-orthodox community. The ultra-orthodox try to remain segregated, setting up ideological and symbolic partitions, as well as physical ones, between themselves and the secular space, which they regard as largely defiled and dangerous (Lev-On and Ben-Shahar 2009: 70). As we saw in previous chapters, especially in discussions of the printed press, ultra-orthodox segregation is also reflected in the domain of the mass media. The Internet is perceived as a medium that undermines this segregation. Indeed, in 2000, a religious court of the ultra-orthodox community published a declaration prohibiting the use of the Internet and computer games (Gerstenfeld and Weiler 2002: 136). The ruling was in line with the ever-stronger recognition that the computer, although a Halachic auxiliary tool, could quickly become a tool of corruption and defi lement. Rabbi Yaakov Hillel voiced this recognition: What shall we speak and what shall we say? Everyone who perceives how the situation is developing stands astounded and shocked at the might of Satan. At first, the computer was nothing more than a typewriter and a bookkeeping machine. Thus, the innocent computer gained entry into thousands of homes, and gradually became more sophisticated and highly developed. The situation today is that in the homes of yeshiva students, in the homes of rabbis and righteous men, there are computers offering the option of arriving, in the blink of an eye, at sin and offense . . . we have already heard of important people who began preparing the lesson with the diskettes of the Mishnah and Halachic adjudicators, and ended with matters that one is ashamed to mention. What we have come to!!! After all, one can do anything by just one press of a button. It’s all mixed up—the sacred and the profane, light and darkness, in a single easy turn. (Quoted in Horowitz 2000: 7)

Many people perceived the sweeping prohibition on the use of the Internet as too severe an edict. Ultra-orthodox society is very heterogeneous and far from uniform in its views. Along with absolute rejection of the Internet, we

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can find another concept in this community: one that accepts the technology with reservations and seeks to utilize it as a tool for obtaining information and services. It is also seen as an intra-community tool, which will strengthen the bonds between members of the community and the rabbis and among the members themselves. The Internet facilitates connections not only to family members but also to events in which the luminaries of the generation participate and to many sites in which Halachic exegesis is presented (Lev-On and Ben-Shahar 2009: 73). In view of the rabbis’ opposition to the use of the Internet, it is hardly surprising to find a clear coefficient between the self-definition of religiosity and the rates of Internet access in the home: as self-definition attests to a closer connection with religion, we see a decline in the ratio of people hooked up to the internet. The data of the Central Bureau of Statistics as of 2005 indicate that among those who defined themselves as ultra-orthodox, 10 percent have a home link to the Internet, while those who defined themselves as religious reported a 50 percent hook-up rate. Among the secular, the rate of connection to the Internet at that time was 71 percent (Goldschmidt 2007). However, the low rates of penetration of the Internet among the ultraorthodox may also be due to their low income levels and the material poverty that is the lot of many members of that public. Many would find it difficult to purchase a computer and pay for an Internet connection. It should also be noted that there are different assessments as to the actual rate of surfers of the Internet among the ultra-orthodox. And contrary to what might be expected in light of the low rates of penetration of the Internet among that public, an examination of the forums designated for the ultra-orthodox community reveals it to be very vibrant (Lev-On and Ben-Shahar 2009: 96). Barzilai-Nahon and Barzilai (2005), who attempted to characterize the tension caused by the Internet as a key phenomenon of the contemporary (modern, scientific, and individualist) era and fundamentalist religious tradition (not necessarily ultra-orthodox), identify four possible conflicts areas: Hierarchy: religious communities are based on a rigid lifestyle and subordination to religious authority, and their communication patterns are vertical—from the religious authority down to the general public—whereas the Internet is seemingly characterized by openness and more horizontal communication. Patriarchalism: while religious communities are characterized on the whole by a patriarchal hierarchy, the Internet gives women a platform from which to make their voices heard. It can offer a refuge and arena for self-expression that are not possible in non-online life. Discipline: religious communities are characterized by a high level of discipline. Underlying them is a rigid system of rules that controls all strata of the community. The Internet network can offer an inappropriate alternative to this religious system and accordingly is frequently perceived as a technology that promotes

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lawlessness and a shaking-off of the tenet of complete obedience to the religious authority. Seclusion: The Internet may dilute and erode the seclusion of religious communities and breach their social boundaries.

Barzilai-Nahon and Barzilai point to the setup of ultra-orthodox sites that are designed to reinforce and preserve the status and hierarchy of the rabbinical leadership. These sites engage in religious matters and disseminate rabbinical texts, and they reflect the patriarchal aspect of the ultra-orthodox community due to the fact that most users are men. Ultra-orthodox women have a far lesser place and representation in Internet discourse, as part of the public arena in general. However, since some ultra-orthodox women work outside the home as the family’s breadwinners, they have relatively high access to the Internet. Indeed, ultra-orthodox women are making alternative use of the Internet through closed forums designated specifically for them. Lev-On and Ben-Shahar (2009: 97), who examined those forums, note that the online links ultra-orthodox women create are primarily with other ultra-orthodox women, but about half of these women are also in contact with “other people” (some of whom likely are men). The researchers conclude that, through the Internet, ultra-orthodox women can “create ties which, similar to most Internet users, they would not have created in the real world.” As to the issue of seclusion, Barzilai-Nahon and Barzilai (2005) find that ultra-orthodox users emphasize intra-community Internet communication (for example, forums) and focus less on inter-community applications (for example, electronic commerce). Researchers thus conclude that in the ultra-orthodox context, Internet technology has become “cultured”: not only has it not destroyed the ultra-orthodox communities, it has undergone a sort of “religious conversion” that has reinforced it. Technology exposes the non-ultra-orthodox public to ultra-orthodox values, on the one hand, and deepened the intra-community bond among community members on the other. However, despite the culturation of the Internet by the ultra-orthodox (for example, by setting up designated content sites), these solutions were not sufficient to lessen the intensity of the network threat against them. The very popular ultra-orthodox sites (BeHadrei Haredim (Surreptitiously), Kikar HaShabbat (Sabbath Square), LaDaat (To Know), Etrog (Citron), and Kugel (Noodle casserole) had increasing influence on the agenda of the ultra-orthodox sector (Ettinger 2009). In response, at the end of 2009, some of the most prominent rabbis signed a public proclamation warning against surfing ultra-orthodox sites on the Internet, which resulted in the closing down of some of the ultra-orthodox sites. Other sites announced that they would cease publishing news. At the beginning of the year 2010, parents of pupils in Torah educational institutions were required to declare whether

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their home had an Internet connection and to give details about the limitations they placed on its use. Parents were required to sign a declaration that they would report any change in the type of Internet connection in the future—if they did not, their children could be expelled (Globes 2010).

Russian-Language Internet Sites For immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU), the Internet network provides contact with their countries of origin and with émigré communities from those countries in all parts of the world. Interactive communication on the Internet encourages more and more migrants to play an active role in the public space in the Russian language (Elias and Zeltser-Shorer 2007b: 151). In the opinion of Nelly Elias and Marina Zeltser-Shorer (2007a: 7), Russian-speaking migrants’ use of the Internet is an example of transnationalism—that is, migrants’ connection with the country of their birth and with speakers of their language in the countries in which they are dispersed. The Internet provides an alternative space for migrants scattered around the world. A particularly conspicuous case is the transnational communication among migrants from the FSU. Some ten million migrants left those countries, with around one million settling in Israel and others dispersed in many other countries, mainly Germany and the United States. Through this transnational network, these migrants maintain a connection with Russian-speaking migrants elsewhere in the world and with their countries of origin. Russian-language sites allow them to preserve Russian culture and maintain ties with acquaintances and relatives (Elias and Zeltser-Shorer 2007a: 24–26). Similar to the great wealth of Russian-language works in print in Israel, a plethora of Internet sites intended for immigrants from the FSU originate in Israel. The mapping of these sites is no simple matter and is beyond the scope of this chapter. But the online press, in contrast to the traditional printed press, offers immediate updates on happenings in the country of origin and the countries of other émigrés. One such popular online newspaper is MIGnews, which seeks to position itself as an international newspaper (see Elias and Zeltser-Shorer 2007b: 149). Among the most popular Russian-language sites are portals that provide a summary of current affairs in Israel, the countries of the FSU, and elsewhere in the world, along with a diverse range of content and applications (for example, the portal Zahav.ru offers coverage of intra-Israeli events alongside relevant links from the countries of the FSU). There is an abundance of other journalistic, political, and public sites, which are slightly less popular than the online newspapers and portals (for the mapping of these sites, see Elias and Zeltser-Shorer 2007b). Surfers from this population group in Israel also use Russian-language sites originating outside of Israel.

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The Internet and the Public-Political Sphere in Israel The interactive applications that allowed people to communicate through the Internet were seen to have the potential to motivate collective action. Marginal groups could in this way make themselves heard and influence the public agenda (Weisslitz 2008: 7–10). By means of talkbacks, readers can among other things respond to articles they have read, take part in chats on current affairs, and send e-mails to newspaper reporters. In this atmosphere of dialogue, a newspaper story can set in motion a public debate, with readers and writers taking an active part in the journalistic discourse (Scott 2005: 2120–2121). Internet journalism is thus described as floating issues from below—from “the field”—and not from above (i.e., from the reporter to society) (Haas 2005: 338; Matheson 2004: 453). A unique Internet-based journalistic genre that embodies the network’s potential to promote democratic debate “from below” is the blog. Blogs engage in a diverse range of topics; some are written by professional authors and others by amateurs. There are those who regard blogs as an equalizing medium that bestows the right of expression at minimal cost: “Blogs provide new freedoms, products of the information consumption revolution. Included among these freedoms is the freedom to control the media and no longer to be controlled by it” (Frenkel-Faran 2007: 244). Michael Keren (2006: 8–9) argues that blogs breathe new life into the public sphere; they are liberating agents, allowing individuals, who were silenced in the age of the traditional mass media, to make their voice heard. In his opinion, the fact that millions of people have begun reading and writing blogs cannot be explained merely by the existence of the enabling technology. Blogging reflects frustration with political media in the age in which we live (149). While traditional media emphasize information from official sources, blogs derive their legitimacy by distancing themselves from power hubs— through their anti-establishmentarianism and their common sense (Wall 2005: 153, 165). Bloggers often regard their readers as colleagues and writing partners, reflecting the mounting tendency to merge public and authors into a single entity. A point to be mindful of, however, is that the concept that users are active is not necessarily correct: a small minority actually writes the content, a larger group responds, but the vast majority remain passive readers (van Dijck 2009: 41). In practice, only a handful of blogs become highly popular; and writers find it difficult to make use of the interactive tools furnished by the Internet. It is moreover argued that the proliferation of blogs is no assurance of a multiplicity and diversification of voices. Journalists who write blogs do not always offer a subversive alternative and usually present a worldview similar to that presented in the established press (Vaisman 2009: 224).

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In Israel, as Carmel Vaisman (2009) points out, blogs are customarily regarded as a marginal phenomenon. The “Israblog” of Nana and the “Blogia” of Tapuz host tens of thousands of Hebrew-language blogs, but most of them are inactive. Many active blogs are also published on the social network TheMarker, and there are also other, smaller Hebrew-language blog sites. Hebrew blogs also appear on international platforms (225). The attributes of the Hebrew-language blogs are not identical to those of the United States, where blogs are accorded relative prominence: in the United States, bloggers are predominantly “men, white, young, relatively well educated” (Frenkel Faran 2007: 247), while many Israeli bloggers are minors (mostly female), although there has been a recent increase in the average age of Hebrew bloggers. Vaisman notes that blogs have not taken root in Israeli journalistic sphere. The institutionalized news channels, for instance, usually do not review political blogs. This is quite different from the United States, where blogs compete with the established media. These U.S. sites are additional players in the media arena, while in Israel blogs serve primarily as alternative association spaces. Israeli writers, often politically leftist, seek to recruit readers through their blogs, for example, to take action in the domain of labor relations. Even if these blogs have some success (for example, by galvanizing people into action), the fact that the established media ignores them boosts the public’s perception that the Hebrew blogosphere has no real influence (Vaisman 2009: 249). It should, however, be noted that the position of blogs in the Israeli public arena has recently shifted, especially in the attitude of the institutionalized press towards issues that first surface in blogs. An example is the affair of Eden Abergil, a female soldier who had her photograph taken with blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian prisoners and posted it on her Facebook page (under the caption “The army—the loveliest time of my life”). From there, it made its way onto a Hebrew blog. The national and even the international press published the pictures and gave them wide coverage, arousing public outcry (HaAretz 2010). Following this affair, the “Breaking the Silence” organization published similar pictures of other soldiers, showing that this practice was a norm in the army, not a deviant incident (Fyler 2010). The trend of using blogs as primary sources of information for the established press will presumably continue and intensify, not only due to the higher standing of blogs but also due to the weakness and lack of resources of the established press. Online newspapers are also now providing additional platforms for writing blogs as part of the online press (for example, in the sites of HaAretz and in NRGMaariv). This new practice proves the very existence of blogs as influential, even though in Israel, blogs, as stated, are still not given the status of an independent source of information. When it comes to affecting the socio-political agenda in Israel, political discourse on the Internet is still not equal to discourse in the traditional media

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(Frenkel-Faran and Lehman-Wilzig 2008). As Carmit Weisslitz’s (2008) research indicates, social organizations in Israel are using the on Internet to fight for local social goals. The organizations that Weisslitz examined gain media coverage through the popular traditional media, and “the Internet is perceived as less effective than and inferior to other media” (129). Televised media coverage is the preference, followed by the printed press, and then the radio. On the other hand, the organizations do not see their Websites as an alternative to the mass media, but rather “as a merely supplementary means of media activity. When organizations speak of the “media,” they are referring to the traditional media and news products” (130). Weisslitz notes, however, that these organizations still see websites as an asset, since they find it difficult to gain entry to the traditional media to make themselves heard. Their independent sites are not trammeled by any limits of time or space. Furthermore, they can publish a great deal of in-depth, complicated information on the website, which is not possible in the traditional media such as television. Moreover, on their Internet sites, they control the material being published and can offer alternative framing for current affairs, which mitigates the conventional and hegemonic concepts that are rife in the established mass media. However, a perusal of the content being published on the websites of these Israeli social organizations indicates that most of them in fact adopt the style and framing characteristic of the mass media, rather than any alternative line emphasizing subjective or experiential aspects. In the opinion of Weisslitz, one possible explanation for this is the will to obtain the authoritative and authentic standing that pertains to the media through the adoption of some of these reporting principles. The use of highly detailed formal-factual writing, may, the organizations believe, confer on them the image of truth-disseminating organizations that “know what they are talking about.” In that way, perhaps, they seek to gain the status achieved by the key traditional media. (171)

Internet Discourse in a Security Crisis The discourse on the Internet thus still does not occupy a central place in determining the public political agenda in Israel. However, in times of security crisis, evidence shows that the Net becomes a vibrant public arena, presenting official information and reports alongside utterances of a more personal political character. Hannan Naveh (2008: 29–30), who examined the Internet arena during the Second Lebanon War, found hundreds of blogs that were written during the war. Many of them were written by inhabitants of the north, who were under rocket fire. Appearing on the established media sites, in addition to the blogs, were “war diaries” of a kind, in which the inhabitants

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of the north recounted their experiences. Mutual aid sites were also aired on the Internet, and e-mail was transformed from a private communication tool to a busy hub of national-political activity by means of “viral” distribution. In times of security confrontation, the Internet becomes a powerful means for conveying information to the public, competing with the traditional media (Birnhack 2003: 173). For example, during “Operation Defensive Shield” (2002), on the day when thirteen IDF soldiers were killed in activity in Jenin, non-institutional news sites (Debka or Rotter) and various forums began publishing various news items—some of them erroneous and unreliable— relating to the event. These news items preceded the bulletin by the IDF spokesman by several hours. The delay in the official bulletin was not, in fact, due to any ban imposed by the censorship; however, the army requested that the spokesman refrain from explicit reporting of the fatalities until the families could be notified. As Michael Birnhack (2003: 175) argues, it would seem that the reports circulated on the Internet did not infringe any legal prohibition but did constitute a departure from the ethical code generally accepted in the established media. In particular, the Internet sites included information that was unreliable or unverified. The flow of information in this format, especially during hostilities, further highlights questions about the regulation and control of information being published on the Internet. In 2003, the Press Council notably resolved that the rules of journalistic ethics would apply to “online newspapers.” The council failed to specify, however, exactly whom this definition covers: in other words, does publishing in a blog, a forum, or a chat room fall within the definition of an online newspaper? Or does this refer to institutionalized sites only, such as HaAretz or Ynet? (Birnhack 2003: 200). It should also be remembered that when the writer is not a professional journalist, the council can impose only the most limited and insignificant sanctions. The argument over institutional control of content published on the Internet is reflected in part in recurrent attempts to enact the “Talkback Law.” This law is supposed to impose criminal and civil liability on respondents publishing responses of an injurious nature and on the owners of major sites who publish such responses. In 2008, the Knesset in First Reading approved a version of the bill, but it was shelved in order to enable the site editors to create apparatuses for self-oversight of the content being uploaded by surfers. Seeing that no progress was being made in this domain, a similar bill was tabled in 2010, whereby a court could order an Internet provider to expose the identity of users disseminating libelous material. Those who supported this legislation are of the opinion that the sweeping extension of privilege to the identity of the writers on the Internet might encourage the commission of torts under cover of anonymity; whereas those who oppose it maintain that this would

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destroy the unique properties of the Internet and severely injure freedom of expression (Bandar 2010; Meranda and Keinan 2008). Such issues—relating, as they do, to the control of content being published on the Internet—become even more complicated when invoking the oversight of the Military Censor. On the one hand, the huge volume of discourse on the Internet makes it impossible to control all of the information being posted there. On the other hand, even when the censor detects the publication of information it has ruled out, or seeks to rule out, its power to impose the publishing ban is limited and ineffective. Likewise, the ostensibly anonymous use of the Internet hampers the activation of censorship, since even if the rule-breaker can be traced, the process of identifying a particular user is long and complicated. Again, the problem is not with the established Internet sites (those that operate under the auspices of or in collaboration with the printed newspapers), which follow the rules of professional ethics of the printed press. The problem arises on alternative sites, forums, and virtual communities that are not under the supervision of the censor. The lack of effective censorship of non-institutionalized Internet news sites is another aspect of the decline of the status of regulation in the nation state (Barzilai-Nahon and Barzilai 2006: 483–485). However, Karin Barzilai-Nahon and Gad Barzilai (2006) note that even if the governmental restrictions on the Internet are ineffective, this does not mean that the Web is devoid of self-regulating and censoring mechanisms. Infrastructure providers and community forum managers impose control, in part to preempt intervention by state authorities (496). In virtual communities, some members practice voluntary censorship community, since the posting of problematic material is an offense against the community’s rules.

Interim Conclusions Not enough time has passed since the Internet became a popular media for us to evaluate its role and impact on national spheres in general, and on the Israeli sphere in particular. Yet, as shown in previous chapters, the traditional media in Israel have undergone many changes in recent decades and some are in severe crisis, in part due to the expansion of Internet use. At the same time, in Israel the use of the Net has not yet developed into a real politically independent arena. Despite the predominantly global image of the Internet, it seems that trends of nationalization and localization are strengthening rather than weakening as the Internet matures (Postill 2011). The surfing patterns of Israeli users reveal the domination of local Hebrew sites. The Internet has taken on the tasks of local daily life. It also has enabled the expression, as we

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have seen in the discussion on interactive maps, of new national and local discursive layers. As we have seen, traditional media contributed to national cohesion through the ritual of simultaneous consumption of identical communications products. Anderson uses the example of people in the public sphere reading the same newspaper at the same time, referring to this as a ritualistic act that creates a national consciousness connecting them to each other. The Internet has the potential to weaken the visibility of such simultaneous public consumption. Of course, people often still consume the same media content, but they can now read news on their cell phones or tablet computers. This makes consumption much more individualistic and intimate and less evident in the public sphere—as it is not clear to others what users are engaged with (Soffer 2013). However, this does not mean that the national role of the media is declining in the Internet era. While engaging with communication might become less ritualistic or noticeable, it continues to form and reproduce nationalist discourse. As we saw in the examples of the MSN site and in local search engines, the digital Israeli flag (like that of other nations) is waved on the Internet in a very natural and banal way. It is not likely that popular news sites, which are affi liated with institutionalized media organizations, will offer a discourse on the Internet that is any different from that which they are offering through traditional media. We can more likely assume that the same hegemonic banal discourse will continue to flourish on the national language sites. Although more alternatives are available than ever before, most users are attracted to the local Hebrew domains. This national experience, however, is embodied (and therefore perhaps better marked as the binary of “what belongs to the national sphere and what doesn’t”) in the global spirit and potential of the internet.

Notes 1. Expressions of this include the founding of the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and also the rising strength of international conglomerates. 2. See http://www.isoc.org.il/pr_heb/pr_200911c.htm 3. See http://www.isoc.org.il/index.html 4. According to data of the Central Bureau of Statistics, in 1998, only 8.2 percent of households in Israel were connected to the Internet network, compared with 61.8 percent of households that were connected in 2008. See http://www.cbs.gov.il/ reader/newhodaot/hodaa_template.html?hodaa=200915198 5. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Conclusion

It would seem, at least on the face of it, that the technological and conceptual changes in the broadcast media market—especially in television—are challenging the principal attributes of mass and national viewing that predominated in the second half of the twentieth century. The media consumption patterns of the older generation—which research often still refers to as “natural” patterns—are by now no longer relevant to many members of the younger generation. Consumption patterns and options for creating media content—which are highly individual and take place when, where, and how users find it convenient—pose a challenge to the simultaneous reading of the morning papers, to listening to daily news editions on the radio, to prime time viewing, to the flow of television programs, and even to the viewing of alternative flows of programs on parallel mass media (Sandler 2009: 84). The changing media patterns, alongside the changes they embody in the role of the audience (and it is not without reason that in the Internet age we speak of “users”) and of the media manufacturers, at least ostensibly call into question the use of the term “mass media”—and especially the “mass” component of the expression. In contemporary society, we are witnessing the fragmentation of the audience and the rise of social networks in which active players take part. Meanwhile, the overarching institutional framework of “the mass media” is becoming progressively fractured, while there emerges a diverse range of media channels that no single framework can easily contain (McQuail 2010: 138). As we have seen, at least for the present, the traditional media patterns of television watching and radio listening are still relevant in Israel despite academic predictions of the death of the pre-dictated flow of broadcasting. Yet processes of change in these consumption patterns are undoubtedly under way. It is entirely possible that the severe crisis that is currently overtaking the printed press market offers us a vantage point as to what is about to happen to other media. It would seem, on the surface, that printed newspapers in Israel are losing their raison d’être and their ability to survive as economically independent businesses.

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The foregoing does not necessarily mean that the newspaper market is characterized by nothing but newspaper closures. On the contrary: in recent years, many new free newspapers have begun to appear. An examination of the debut of free newspapers into the media markets of Europe indicates that as far as most of their consumers are concerned, they are not being read at the expense of the reading of bought newspapers. For example, free newspapers draw into the circle of readers more young people, who are not accustomed to reading bought newspapers (Bakker 2008: 440). Even so, in Israel, at least, where there is a limited reading public, it would seem that both the rationale for the existence of newspapers and the attributes of the newspapers are undergoing a marked change. From being an economic business, the newspapers are becoming a tool designed to influence public opinion politically. Alternatively, the newspaper serves as a medium that is designed to support, or at least to enable support of, other economic activities of its holding economic concern. It does so by virtue of its ability to influence public opinion (Ezrahi, Goshen, and Leshem 2003: 7–8). One need not, of course, be a newspaper owner or even a wealthy advertiser in order to try to exploit the newspaper or the news on the broadcasting or online media so as to influence the agenda. Daily we see more and more public relations firms and spokespersons feed reporters with a mounting pile of position papers and news-like products, one version or another of which frequently finds its way to the news. The professional and employment status of journalists continues to erode. An increasing number of reporters (usually the most junior) are employed on a freelance or temporary basis at low pay. Only a small stratum of “star” reporters earns a large salary. Since the 1980s (at which time, in Israel, the Hadashot newspaper instituted the personal contract employment method in the journalism field), more and more cracks have appeared in the wall of relative protection afforded by collective labor agreements of professional journalists as salaried employees. As the established press crisis deepens, increasing numbers of small, non-institutional media organizations crop up, many of which offer problematic working conditions. A study conducted with regard to journalists in the United States indicates that young reporters employed by small newspapers of this type complain of low wages and very heavy work pressure, reporting the highest erosion of those employed in the profession, with the majority considering leaving the profession of journalism (Reinardy 2011: 34). There is no reason to assume that the situation is any different in Israel. These changes in the media market are part of the trend whereby the liberal model of communication is being reinforced—in the world in general and in Israel in particular. The liberal model greatly encourages individualism while opposing state intervention in the media market (Hallin and Mancini 2004: 299). The concept of the media in free market terms also naturally acquires economic orientation in

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the activity of the media organizations, at the expense of their professional or social orientation. The changes in the newspaper market in recent years are also related to an increasing shallowness in public discourse and a change in the place of the newspaper and the press in general in the public arena. Free newspapers, for example, often seek to ensure that their contents can be read in a short space of time: for example, on the commute to work. Moreover, these newspapers usually do not conduct independent journalistic probes. The commercial orientation of the contemporary press leads to their making themselves accessible to broad publics. The question that presents itself, therefore, is whether there exists any alternative rostrum for the in-principle-ideological discussion the printed press hosted several decades ago. The increasing superficiality of the public discourse and the change in the cultural role to which the media see themselves as obligated are also linked to the transition to commercial broadcasting on radio and television. Although the Yishuv era is usually seen as devoted to state-building processes, its journalistic sphere was to some extent polyphonic, mainly due to the important place reserved for the party press. The founding of the Hebrew radio largely expressed the emergence of the statist media center and the aspiration to create a uniform national voice. The attributes of the medium play an important role in this matter: the radio is a means of communication that makes use of the state resource (broadcasting frequencies) and whose influential power was considered to be immediate and far greater than that of the printed word. Television carried on even more emphatically with this trend of reinforcing the concentration that has characterized broadcast media expression. Parallel with the reinforcement of these media in the Israeli public arena, the printed political party press was being progressively eroded, while the commercial press was influenced by the commercial trends—its discourse changed accordingly, and it adopted popularizing features. The power of the journalistic multiplicity of voices to compensate for the concentration of the broadcast public discourse, which was strictly limited in terms of the number of channels involved, therefore rapidly eroded. Commencing from the 1990s, the concentrated character of public broadcasting was diluted in the face of changes in media ecology, characterized by multiple broadcasting channels. This phenomenon originated in the setup of Channel 2 followed by Channel 10, which, for the first time, aired television news programs as alternatives to those of the public channel. Cable television, followed by satellite broadcasts, added direct access to many international channels. At the same time, many regional radio stations commenced broadcasting. But the proliferation of channels did not necessarily lead to the diversification and deepening of the media discourse. One of the reasons for this was the commercial influences being exerted on television broadcasting—that

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is, the attempt to orient media products to the widest common denominator of consumers and thereby to merge the news discourse with the entertainment discourse. These manifestations, which restrict the official multiplicity of channels and prevent its being translated into any real polyphony, are not unique to Israel. However, it would seem that in Israel, certain factors exacerbate this state of affairs. These include the following: The weakness of the public channel. The advent of the commercial broadcasting channels, primarily those based on television, into countries in which the public model prevailed (the prime example being European countries) led to a shake up and injury to public broadcasting. In countries such as Britain, in which public broadcasting was strong to begin with, injury was relatively slight. On the one hand, public broadcasting found itself new niches that gave a voice to minority groups or quality productions, while on the other hand it recruited alternative financing sources (for example, the sale of broadcasting time for advertising, with certain restrictions on the channeling of funds to the production of broadcasts that have no commercial justification). The public broadcasting channels can express voices other than the commercial ones, thereby enriching the media arena discourse. Their significance is even greater when the number of local commercial television channels is limited, as indeed happens in Israel. But in the situation characterizing Israel, in which public broadcasting was weak from the outset and is subject to direct political influences, commercialism led to the crash of public television broadcasting. The attempt by Channel 1 to battle the commercial channels in the ratings arena was destined to fail. Due to a variety of reasons, including some connected to overly high payroll costs and murky labor relations, the Broadcasting Authority is suspended between life and death. This situation is convenient from the point of view of the political echelons, since it renders the Broadcasting Authority all the more dependent on them. Small market with a great deal of cross-ownership. Israel is a small country with a limited market of domestic consumers, which in certain domains is restricted to Hebrew-language content. The Israeli market is characterized by concentration and cross-ownership—only a limited number of groups of investors are active in it. These are groups that possess the resources to invest in media infrastructures, and they are frequently involved at the same time in various businesses in the media domain. The cross-ownership enables costs to be kept down while more effectively taking advantage of economic opportunities. As stated, this phenomenon is being exacerbated in Israel, due to the restricted nature of the market (Ezrahi, Goshen, and Leshem 2003: 16). Cross-ownership is liable to prove prejudicial to freedom of expression and democracy: it impinges on the proliferation of opinions and interests (that are able to counter-balance one another) in the media market; it can lead to deception in the attitude of various media toward the ruling authorities or toward political players and economic firms that are relevant to media business; it is also liable to engender backroom agreements among the few players whose aim is to shore their standing and block the entry of new competitors as far as they are able (Ezrahi, Goshen, and Leshem 2003: 17–21).

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As part of the effort to combat the phenomenon of cross-ownerships, many countries restrain the owners of one medium (for example, a printed newspaper) from acquiring control in another medium (for example, a radio or television station or even another newspaper). In Israel, the Second Television and Radio Authority Law sets forth various restrictions on cross-ownership (see Section 40 [B2]), but these are few in number and do not cover ownership of all media. And indeed, a number of instances of cross-ownership have arisen in the media domain in Israel. For example, in 2008, Eliezer Fishman held 66 percent of the shares of the Globes newspaper, 38 percent of the shares of Yediot Ahronot, and 14.6 percent of the shares of HOT (TheMarker 2008); the Mozes family controlled 62 percent of the shares of Yediot Ahronot and held 16.8 percent of the shares of HOT; while Patrick Drahi, who holds 44.8 percent of the shares of HOT, is the 100 percent owner of the mobile company MIRS (Taig 2010). At the end of 2012, the publisher of the Makor Rishon newspaper also acquired the Maariv newspaper. The dependence of the commercial channels on political echlons. With a view to securing public interests, the commercial broadcasting channels were subordinated to public regulatory bodies. This public regulation, which was designed to restrain the commercial interests of the channels, enables pressures to be exerted by political elements on the broadcasting channels, especially in times of crisis. The commercial channels resort again and again (as part of a real fight for their survival or as part of a business strategy) to the intervention of political echelons in legislative changes and debt rescheduling, to which they are obligated under the Second Television and Radio Authority Law. This dependence has an impact on the freedom of the press and could lead to self-censorship on the part of the media channels, whose future is at stake. An outstanding example of the involvement of the political echelons in commercial broadcasting was to be found at the end of 2012, when the closure of Channel 10 was prevented at the eleventh hour following legislative changes that enabled the rescheduling of the channel’s debts. It should be noted that in the last few years, public trust in the Israeli government has diminished dramatically, due among other things to the relationship between government and capital. A committee appointed to examine the capital-government relationship found worrisome signs in the Israeli government that politicians consider personal or sectorial benefits over governmental obligations as public trustees. The committee especially noted the negative potential of the capital-government relationships with regard to Knesset members—in elections as well as in the legislative and regulative acts they are involved with. The committee also notes the special negative potential of the oft-noted relationship among the capital, the government, and newspapers: “meaning the recruitment of media that are under the influence of the capital in order to glorify Knesset members in order to make them promote capital interests” (Committee for the Examination of Capital-Government relationships in Israel 2012: 3, 19). The relative weakness of the Internet arena on the political level. We have seen that the Internet arena in Israel has yet to become an important alternative in its own right in the public space. Even though the Internet may offer alternative arenas

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(for example, in addressing special niche publics) that give expression to voices different from those heard in the institutionalized press, in practice the Israeli news discourse dominating the network is that of the channels that belong to the media organizations, and especially of the establishment press. Problematic legislative infrastructure. Freedom of expression in Israel is not anchored in any constitution or Basic Law. In effect, as we have seen, what remains in place in Israel is a draconic Mandatory legislative infrastructure, which has the power to impose severe restrictions on the freedom of expression and the freedom of the press (Negbi 2011). To be sure, in certain instances the High Court of Justice has set limits and tests that are designed to restrict governmental use of said legislative infrastructure; but the very existence of such legislation signals a perpetual “state of emergency,” which can serve as a justification for the restriction of the freedom of the press. Implications of “the security condition.” As shown throughout the book, the media have played an important role during security conflicts and wars. In practice, the key role of the military has likewise influenced the structure of the media map: Galei Zahal came to assume an important role in the Israeli broadcasting map, especially in an era of the monopoly of the Broadcasting Authority. The security conflict may be said to have become, in fact, a state of consciousness that is frequently common to both senders and addressees. As Baruch Kimmerling (1993: 131) argues, the Israeli-Arab dispute has been structured as part of the routine reality and as an immutable constraint of fate.

This militaristic conciseness not only leads to sometimes unconscious self-censorship, it also preemptively limits the range of opinions in the central stream of the media. Moreover, as Dani Dor (2003: 9) points out, the dissonance between the positions of the Israeli channels and the international channels is perceived by most Israelis as evidence of universal hostility towards Israel. In a discussion of the impact of the ongoing “security crisis” and “state of emergency” on the Israeli public arena, it should be borne in mind that periods of security crisis cause the expression of an outburst of patriotism (First and Avraham 2009). The abandonment of the ostensibly objective and neutral position in times of crisis is a familiar journalistic ritual that is not unique to Israel. Michael Schudson (2002: 40), who examined the journalistic discourse in the New York Times following the events of 9/11, defines this ritual of the press as a change in the tone or in newspaper parlance—the adoption of a quiet, far more conventional tone, as if a conversation were taking place during a funeral. Journalists refrained from criticizing the federal government and the President and adopted as axiomatic values and concepts common “to us”—meaning, of course, to the American public at large. Thus it can be said that in such times of calamity, the press reports the state of affairs through a conventional national prism (Durham 2008).

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It should be remembered that the media is occasionally described as a problem, or is seen as a guilty party, and negative influences are ascribed to it (McQuail 2010: 55). In times of security crisis, there is a growing tendency to criticize the media and accuse it of injuring public morale and state security. In such an atmosphere, it is hardly any wonder that the Israeli public does not necessarily appreciate and cherish the change in the Israeli media since the 1973 War—a change that found expression in a departure from the automatic siding with the political and military leadership in times of crisis. Thus, in the Second Lebanon War, the media was subjected to incisive criticism concerning a supposed injury to state security and to the morale of the hinterland—and even of endangering human life following some reporting of military secrets. By contrast, there were those who accused the media of lacking critical attitude and concealing information (Committee for Setting Rules of Ethics for the Press in time of War, 2007: 6). At the same time, even when reporters express criticism, the nature and character of that criticism must be examined. From a study examining the critical discourse during that war, it emerges that whenever journalists employed critical rhetoric, they refrained from condemning the principal values of the national community. The critical attitude was communicated in a manner that did not cast doubt on the national loyalty of the journalists and sometimes relied on a non-journalistic criticizing element (Neiger, Zandberg, and Meyers 2008: 39). The Israeli media is called upon to cope with fairly complex ongoing dilemmas that relate, among other things, to the public’s confidence in the Israeli media. According to a democracy index survey, this confidence was constantly eroded in the period 2004–2010. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, only 33.8 percent of total respondents had a certain degree of confidence or great confidence in the media. In that same year (2010), the military was accorded 81 percent confidence among respondents from the total population and 90 percent from among Jewish respondents. Confidence in the media was similar to confidence in the government (33 percent) and slightly lower than confidence in the Knesset (37 percent) (Arian, Hermann, et al. 2010). The year 2011 reflected a significant recovery in the public’s confidence in the media and also its confidence in other governmental institutions. This increase may be attributed to the recovery from the trauma of the Second Lebanese War, which created a significant crisis of confidence in the main institutions of state, including the media (Arian, Hermann, et al. 2010: 78–79). In a reality of this sort, and especially in light of the predominance of the commercial media, there is definitely an economic value in adopting conventional positions that are consistent with the outlook of the widest possible publics. To put it plainly: this is not, or not necessarily, a matter of deliberate manipulation. The hegemonic concepts in society—those that are perceived

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as being obvious or “natural”—are usually common to both senders and addressees. In any event, a deviation from those hegemonic values—in the name of the professional journalistic functions, for example—encounters criticism. It is obvious that each of the channels or the newspapers seeks to position itself differently and uniquely—even in terms of criticism—within that hegemonic framework. There may be some journalists who challenge the premises of the hegemonic media dialogue in Israel, but in Israel’s mainstream media, the range of opinion is fairly limited to these conventional national attitudes.

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Index

Academy of the Hebrew Language, 84, 92 accessibility, 8, 9, 42, 115, 156, 168, 178, 183, 197 Adoni, Hanna, 155, 157, 163 advertising, advertisements, 8, 13, 55, 62, 88, 112, 122, 198; cable channels, 133; and commercial broadcasting networks, 79; Internet, 70, 176, 180, 181; local and regional, 58, 111; pirate radio, 87, 102, 103; printed press, 28, 58, 59, 62, 70, 103, 104, 121; radio, 77, 88, 93; in Russian, 161; television, 121, 130, 165 Al Hamishmar (newsp.), 45, 47. See also HaMishmar alternatives: listening, 78, 87, 93, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 113; viewing, 10, 126, 150, 151, 160, 165, 191, 195, 197 Anderson, Benedict, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 20, 76, 79, 139, 194 Arab population, 61, 82, 95, 106, 114, 128, 159, 176; and Arabic Voice of Israel, 91; broadcasting to, 95, 128, 136, 140, 162; and the Hebrew press, 63; and Internet use, 183–184; riots of 1929, 40, 81; and television viewing, 125–126; and the Yishuv, 36, 40, 81, 82, 83 Arabic language; and Internet, 184; press, 35, 36, 60–64; radio broadcasts in, 80, 82, 85, 91, 95, 105, 114; television broadcasts in, 124, 126, 128, 135, 136, 162, 163, 184 Ardh, El (newsp.), 61 army, 37, 96, 97, 98, 100–101, 106, 153, 190, 192. See also Israel Defense Forces Ashkenazim, 49, 51, 68, 147, 159, 160; Hebrew pronunciation of, 83, 84 At (periodical), 56 Avneri, Uri, 53 Avraham, Eli, 140, 160

Bak, Israel, 26 BaKehila (newsp.), 68 Barzilai, Gad, 186–187, 193 Barzilai-Nahon, Karin, 186–187, 193 BBC (British Broadcasting Association), 8, 78, 82, 83, 86, 88, 97, 102, 103, 119, 130 Begin, Menachem, 42, 146 Ben-Avi, Itamar, 28, 32 Ben Gurion, David, 31, 54, 73n9, 85, 97, 38, 42, 86, 124, 126 Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer, 27–28 Berlin (Bar-Ilan), Meir, 31 Bible, 83, 90, 141 Big Brother, 16, 156, 165 Bikurei HaItim (periodical), 23 Billig, Michael, 9, 10, 16, 166, 178 blogs, 70, 172, 175, 181, 184, 189–190, 191–192 Board of Editors, 41–42, 43 Brill, Yehiel, 26, 27 Britain, 8, 9, 36, 78, 130, 133, 198; pirate radio stations, 102–103; radio, 78, 80, 102, 108, 112–113; television, 119, 135 Broadcasting Authority Law, 136, 144; amendment, 130 Broadcasting Authority, 87, 88, 96, 99, 101, 106, 114, 129, 131, 132, 148, 198, 200; appointment to, 86; and Arabs and Arabic, 136, 162; and commercial broadcasting, 130; founding, 85, 86, 109; politicization of, 86; and Ratings Committee, 132; and TV transmission, 142, 144–145, 147 Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Council, 161 cable broadcasting, 120, 132, 133, 153, 158; pirate, 150

222  |  Index cable channels, 132, 134, 135, 161; financing, 135 Carlebach, Azriel, 33–34 Caspi, Dan, 38, 40, 66, 86, 126, 135, 136, 163 censorship, 37, 42–44, 94, 55, 62, 73n10, 83, 84, 139, 192; and Internet, 193; self-, 38, 39, 45, 199, 200 Censorship Commission, 43 ceremonies , 4, 7, 77, 83, 89, 91, 105, 139, 158, 166; national, 6, 89, 140, 141 Channel 10, 134–135, 151, 156, 181, 197, 199 Channel 2, 55, 107, 131, 132, 135, 139, 154, 155, 156, 158, 166; and Arabic, 162; Internet sites, 181; and multichannel broadcasting, 151, 197; program formats, 156, 157, 160; and Russian broadcasts, 161 Channel 33, 162 Channel 7, 108, 114 Channel 9 (cable station), 132, 161, 162 children, 92, 145, 147; channels for, 133; and Internet, 182, 188; newspapers for, 30; programs for, 90, 138; VOD for, 64. See also youth cinema, 7, 30 122, 128, 135, 137 collective memory, 45, 76, 84, 90, 93, 94, 115 commercial broadcast model, 79, 96, 115, 119 commercial broadcasting, 79, 96, 112, 115, 119; Israel, 58, 107, 112, 116, 130, 131, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 197, 199 commercial television, 22; channels, 55–56, 130–131, 152, 198 commercialization, 6, 115, 152 concessionaires, broadcasting, 88, 89, 131, 132, 133, 134, 152, 158 cross-ownership, 181, 198–199 cultural imperialism, 13, 14, 170 cultural proximity, 157, 178 Dallas, 120, 137, 141, 166 Davar (newsp.), 29, 30–31, 33, 37, 45, 46, 47, 48, 56, 126 Defense (Emergency) Regulations 1945, 40, 43 democracy, democratic, 52, 77, 97, 100, 150; debate, 189; and media, 38, 43;

participatory, 141, 157; and press, 51, 52; and radio, 110, 111; and television, 124 dialects, 18, 22, 23, 83 dialog, 39, 52, 91, 110, 115, 189, 202; broadcasting, 99; “dialogic” with television, 165 Diaspora, 22, 31, 46, 52, 65, 72, 76, 122, 125, 173 digital broadcasting, 119, 163, 164 Diyar, Al (newsp.), 61 Doar HaYom (newsp.), 31, 32 documentaries, 124, 131, 138–140, 154 Eastern Europe, 1, 35, 157; Hebrew newspapers in, 23, 24, 26. See also Holocaust editors: electronic media, 42, 180, 192; newspaper, 21, 36, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 56 education, 58, 95, 123–124; and Arab population, 128, 136, 163; and broadcasting, 78; and cable television, 132; and Galei Zahal, 97, 98; and Internet, 174, 183, 187; Jewish, 23, 31; and newspapers, 23, 30; and radio, 81, 83, 85, 90–91, 110–111; and Russian language, 65; systems, 5, 6, 78; and television, 118, 122, 125–127, 131, 132, 135–136 Eichmann Trial, 93–94 Elias, Nelly, 65, 66, 67, 188 elite, elitism, 49, 51, 56, 78, 91, 112, 155, 161; Arab, 60, 127 ; intellectual, 5, 65; journalistic, 36 ;party press, 45; press, 52, 55 entertainment, 60, 96, 125, 138, 146, 152, 161; and cable TV, 132; content, 11, 13; Friday night, 137; and Galei Zahal, 98; and national media, 9; and news discourse, 155, 198; and radio, 95, 93 Eshkol, Levi, 73n9, 94, 126, 127 “ESR Russian Press” corporation, 66 ethics, journalistic, 21, 58, 88, 192 ethnicity, 3, 4, 109, 143, 172; and community rifts, 114, 138; and globalization, 120; and Internet, 16, 171, 172, 173, 184; and niche channels, 9 Etzel (Irgun Zvai Leumi), clandestine radio broadcasts of, 84 Europe, 28, 96–97, 143, 147; and commercial broadcasting, 10, 112, 115, 198; and free newspapers, 196; and imported

Index  |  223 entertainment, 13; and Internet, 174, 175; and local dialects, 18; and national movements, 12, 18; and nature of Israel, 53, 65, 83; and pirate stations, 102–103, 106, 107; and political party press, 20; and public broadcasting, 77, 79–80; and radio broadcasting, 109, 112–113; and television, 118, 133. See also Holocaust Eurovision Song Contest, 141, 146 Facebook, 171, 176, 177, 190 Falastin (newsp.), 35 First, Anat, 140, 160 foreign programs, broadcasting, 120, 141, 156 forums, online, 174, 180, 181, 184, 186, 187, 192, 193 fragmentation, 2, 11, 12, 14, 72, 160, 169, 172, 195 freedom of expression, 40, 41, 43, 88, 100, 184, 193, 198 freedom of the press, 40, 184, 199, 200 French language, 64, 85, 105, 111 Frumkin, Dov, 27, 28 Galei Israel (Israel Waves), 89 Galei Zahal (Galatz), 85, 87, 95, 96–101, 104, 108, 111, 114, 181, 200 Gellner, Ernst, 5, 6, 9 Germany, German, 8, 23, 26, 27, 46, 70, 73n2, 97, 170, 188 globalization, 12–14, 105, 120, 143, 171, 172, 176 Globes (newsp.), 48, 56, 199; Internet site, 180 Globus (Russ. newsp.), 66 Golden Pages site, 179 Google, 176–177 Ha’Ir (newsp.), 59, 60 HaAretz (newsp.), 32, 33, 37, 46, 48, 51–52, 55, 59, 64, 145, 180, 190; The Marker, (newsp.), 56, 70–71; Supplement, 37 HaAriel (newsp.), 27 HaBoker (newsp.), 31, 47 HaCohen, Michel, 26 Hadashot (newsp.), 48, 55–56, 73n10, 196 Hadashot Me-HaAretz (newsp.), 32 HaEdah (newsp.), 69 Hagana, clandestine broadcasts of, 84

HaHoma (newsp.), 69 HaKol (newsp.), 23 HaLevanon (nwsp.), 26–27 HaMagid (newsp.), 23, 24 HaMashkif (newsp.), 31 HaMeasef (periodical), 23 HaMelitz (newsp.), 23 HaMishmar (newsp.), 31, 37. See also Al Hamishmar HaMizrahi movement, 31, 47 Hamodia (newsp.), 46, 47, 68 HaOlam HaZeh (newsp.), 53–55 HaOr (newsp.), 28 Hashkafa (newsp.), 28 Hashomer haTzair movement, 31, 47 Haskalah movement, Maskilim, 23–24, 28 HaTzefira (newsp.), 23 HaTzofeh (newsp.), 31, 47 Havatzelet (nwsp.), 26–27 HaYarden(newsp.), 31 HaYom (newsp.), 23 HaZvi (newsp.), 28 Hebrew: culture, 1, 75, 84, 91, 97, 121, 123; tradition, 83 Hebrew language, 24, 54, 65, 105, 123, 128, 136, 161, 198; advertisements, 121; and Arabs, 63, 162–163, 184; blogs, 190; broadcasting, 80, 81, 82–83, 116, 136–140; in Diaspora, 72, 76; and immigrants, 66, 72, 115; as national language, 27; in Palestine, 36–40, 67, 197; pre-state newspapers, 17, 22–34; programs in, 157, 162; programs translated into, 121, 166; pronunciation, 83–84; and radio, 1, 82, 83–84, 85–86, 90, 91–92, 95; teaching of, 83–94, 96, 90, 92, 97, 124 Hebrew Language Committee, 84, 92. See also Academy of the Hebrew Language Herut (newsp.), 46, 47 Herut movement. See Revisionist movement High Court of Justice. See Supreme Court Histadrut (General Labor Federation), 30–31, 34, 45, 46, 47, 48, 60, 143 holidays, 77, 118, 128, 158 Holocaust, 45–46, 52, 85, 90, 93, 94, 115, 158 HOT, 133, 164, 199 IDF. See Israel Defense Forces

224  |  Index imagined community, 6, 20, 59, 140, 168 imagined Israeliness, 89–93 imagined nations, nationality, 3, 4, 7, 25, 76, 79, 83, 129, 139, 168 immigrants, 52, 80, 151; absorption of, 35, 86; from FSU, 64–65, 66, 78, 133, 161–162, 188; HaAretz’s, 52–53; and Internet, 183, 188; and Israeli nation, 90; from Middle Eastern countries, 90, 91; in news items, 159; newspapers for, 29, 34, 64–66, 72; from North Africa, 53, 90; and radio, 80, 86, 90, 97, 111, 115; and television, 124, 133, 161–162; and Zionism, 29, 72 imported television programs, 12, 120, 137; localized, 166 Inbaa, Al (newsp.), 60–61 Independence Day, 54, 91, 128, 129, 141 interactivity, 16, 163, 164, 179; Internet, 169, 171, 180, 181, 188, 189, 194; television, 119, 165 interviews: newspaper, 68; radio, 90, 9, 94, 95; television, 137, 151 153, 154 intifada: First, 62, 101, 153, 154; Second, 87, 153, 154 Israel 10, 134. See also Channel 10 Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 98, 192; and HaOlam HaZeh, 55; Independence Day Parade 1968, 128–129; and Six Day War, 95. See also Galei Zahal; Galgalatz Israel Internet Association, 174 Israeli-Arab conflict, 38–39, 95, 104, 154, 163 Israeli Rating Committee, 131–132 Ittihad, Al (newsp.), 61 Jamaa Al-Arabiyya, Al- (newsp.), 35 Jamal, Amal, 61, 63 Jazeera, Al-, 13 Jerusalem, 32, 34, 60, 118, 120, 128; Arabic journalism in, 35; Hebrew press in, 26, 27, 28, 29; Old City, 95, 129; radio broadcasts from, 82–83, 84, 89, 94, 95, 106; TV broadcast from, 128–129, 141 Jerusalem Post (newsp.), 34; group, 71 journalism, 66, 70; as an occupation, 25, 29, 37; and Zionist leaders, 25, 30, 81 journalists, 9, 21, 36, 38, 44, 63, 70, 97, 153, 154, 189, 196, 201, 202; Arab, 35, 36, 60, 136, 184; broadcast, 86, 155;

commitment to establishment interests, 38; the “national story” and, 20, 120; and political party press, 45, 47, 53; Russian-language, 66–67; self-censorship, 38, 39, 193; and women’s papers, 56; writers in local papers, 60; and Zionism, 37, 38, 72 Kabha, Mustafa, 35–36, 61–62, 184 Kan (Here) company, 132 Katz, Elihu, 11, 120, 128, 129, 140, 166 Katznelson, Berl, 30–31 Kerem Hemed (periodical), 23 Keshet, 131, 132, 181 Kirschenbaum, Moti, 138 Kol BaRama, 89 Kol Ha’ir (newsp.), 59 Kol HaAm (newsp.), 31, 37, 41, 47 Kressel, Getzel, 27, 29 Kul Al-Arab )newsp.), 62 Lahiton (weekly), 60 LaIsha (magazine), 56 LaMerhav (newsp.), 47 languages, national, 18, 38, 72; broadcasting in, 120; dissemination of, 18; displacement of local, 15; and the Internet, 15, 170–171, 177, 194; and national groupings, 5, 7, 18 Liebes, Tamar, 38–39, 81, 94, 120, 141, 151, 153, 154, 155 Likud, 42, 49, 115, 130, 143, 147 Limor, Yehiel, 38, 40, 86, 114, 126, 135 listeners, 12, 75–79, 84, 89, 90, 91–92, 93, 103, 105, 109, 116; Arab, 95; special groups, 101; audience of, 10, 79, 84, 90, 101, 108, 111, 112, 115; transnational community of listeners, 105. See also Light Wave; pirate stations: radio; Reshet Gimmel; Voice of Peace listening, 10, 76, 79, 85, 92, 137, 195; to Arabic, 114; and Internet, 181; and radio, 11, 75 76, 90, 195 Livni, Yitzhak, 98, 99 localization, 80 115, 177, 181, 193 London, Yaron, 136–137 Maariv (newsp.), 33–34, 37, 43, 48–49, 51, 55, 70, 71, 199; NRGMaariv site, 180, 190; online edition, 180; “Weekend,” 37

Index  |  225 Maariv corporation, 59, 66 Mabat (TV news program), 139, 153 Makor Rishon (newsp.), 47, 51, 199 Mandate, British, 38, 41, 43, 90, 121, 200; and press, 28–29, 31, 35, 36, 40; and radio, 1, 80–82, 85, 122. See also Yishuv era Mann, Rafi, 38, 101 Mapai, 31, 45, 46, 47, 73n9, 86 Maxwell, Robert, 49, 50 melting pot, concept of, 65–66, 86, 90, 109, 110, 123, 143, 161 Metro Israel (Israel Post; giveaway paper), 71 Mevaseret Zion (newsp. suppl.), 27–28 Meyers, Oren, 37, 42, 115 Midan, Al (newsp.), 62 Mishpacha (newsp.), 68 Mizrahi Jews, 52–53, 91, 138, 147 movies: Israeli, 131, 158, 162; by students, 131 Mozes (family), 33, 48, 50, 199 MSN site, 177–178, 194 multichannel era, 115, 134, 137, 141, 149–160, 162, 165, 171 music, 14, 60, 79, 85, 95, 109, 112, 113, 137; broadcasts, 102, 103, 137; cable channel, 132; cassette, 109; classical, 85, 90, 91; foreign, 82, 104, 106, 108, 111; Hebrew, 83, 90, 108, 111; and Internet, 184; Mediterranean, 101; Middle Eastern, 110; pop, 60, 87, 93, 96, 102, 103–104, 111; from recordings, 102, 103; rock, 98. See also pirate stations: radio Nasha Strana (Our Country; newsp.), 64 Nathan, Abie, 103–104, 106–107, 150 nation, 3–5, 6, 7, 11, 118, 128, 170; and Internet, 171; Jews as a, 24, 25; and language, 18, 72; and the press, 19, 29; and radio, 76 80, 89, 92, 93; and television, 119, 121, 125, 130 nation building, 1, 2, 11, 17, 28–29, 30, 81, 83, 117, 166 national consciousness, 9, 166, 194 national languages, 5, 18, 27, 38; broadcasting in, 120; and Internet, 15, 170, 171, 177; newspapers in, 7, 72; national movements, development of, 18 nationalism: modern, 5, 17, 22, 72; modern Jewish, 1, 17, 72, 117

nationalism, national, 2, 3–5, 9, 16, 17, 39, 79; Arab, 36; banal, 5, 9, 10, 15, 72, 166, 171, 178, 194; as a communication phenomenon, 5–7, 10; “hot,” 39, 173; and the Internet, 171; Jewish, 1, 17, 72, 117; and mass media, 7, 9; and national language, 7, 72; and the press, 17–20, 22–25, 72, 76, 82; and television history, 117 nation-in-arms mechanisms, 98 nation-state, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 39, 72, 79, 80, 120, 122, 143, 156, 169, 171, 172, 177 Naveh, Hannan, 114, 191 Negbi, Moshe, 43–44 news, 9, 20, 22, 25, 28, 38, 42, 57, 70, 152, 153–154, 159, 179; and cable broadcasting, 153; and Israeli identity, 158, 166; local and national, 13, 58; and radio, 8, 83, 91, 133, 195; and television, 139, 140, 155, 163; and the ultra-othodox, 69, 187 news programs, 10, 11, 91, 138, 139–140, 197; aesthetic studios, 152, 153; representation of Arabs on, 159; watching, 160 news sites, 172, 184, 192, 193, 194. See also portals Nimrodi family, 48, 50, 60 1977 Israel political turnover, 42, 49, 115, 143, 147 Novosti group, 66 Novosti Nedeli (Russ. newsp.), 66 NTV channel, 161 original productions, 120, 131, 158, 161, 162 Oren, Tasha, 95, 122, 124–126, 128 ORT channel, 161 Palestine News, The (newsp.), 31, 32 Palestine Post (newsp.), 34. See also Jerusalem Post Palestinians, 36, 61, 62, 121, 127, 136, 153, 154 Panorama (newsp.), 62 Panorama (Russ. newsp.), 66 periphery, 14, 49, 58, 101, 111, 124 photographs, newspapers, 49, 52, 55, 68 pirate stations: financing, 82; radio, 87, 89, 96, 102–109; television, 132 pluralism, media, 87, 95 101, 103, 113, 111

226  |  Index political party press, 20–21, 29–31, 45, 46, 64, 197 portals, 108, 177, 181, 188. See also news sites Press Council, 44, 50, 55, 73n10, 192 public broadcasting, 8, 77, 112, 118–121, 164, 197, 198; British, 78; civilian, 95; financing, 139, 198; and Galei Zahal, 100, 101; model, 13, 77, 78, 79, 86; monopoly on, 80, 87, 104; and newscasts, 152; and pirate radio, 108 public space/sphere/arena, 1, 17, 21, 94, 106, 140–141, 166, 194; alternative, 25, 160; and blogs, 189, 190; and Hebrew press, 25; and Internet, 169, 187, 188, 191, 199; local, 59; and national rituals, 8; and press, 36, 197; and private space, 77, 105; reading in, 6, 194; and Russian speakers, 67, 188; and security crisis, 191, 200; and spoken Hebrew, 84; and Ultra-Orthodox women, 187 public’s faith in media, 39, 50, 94–95 Radio 2000, 114 Radio HaBira (Capital City Radio), 89 Radio Lev HaMedina, 114 radio stations: clandestine, 84; commercial, 2, 10, 22, 77, 88, 96, 104; community, 79; financing, 82; micro, 110, 150; regional, 79, 87, 88, 89, 107, 109, 110, 111, 113–114, 197. See also Hebrew language: and radio; pirate stations: radio ratings, 79, 111, 113, 139, 155, 156, 176, 198; Galei Zahal, 97; listening, 113, 114; local programs, 16; of sites, 177, 179; viewing, 131, 155, 157 reality shows, 13, 156, 165, 166 Regev, Motti, 66, 98, 108, 111, 137 Reka Radio (for immigrant absorption), 111 Reshet (Network), 131, 132 “response commission”. See Board of Editors Revisionist movement, 31, 46, 47 rifts: ethnic, 114, 147; in Israeli society, 87, 113, 114, 138, 165; political, 114, 138; religious, 60, 68 rock/pop music, 60, 104, 108, 137. See also music

Roeh, Itzhak, 51–52, 91, 110 RTR channel, 161 Russian language: broadcasting channels, 161–162; immigrant speakers of, 67, 133; and Internet, 67, 188; press, 23, 64–67, 72, 161; radio, 111, 114; virtual community of speakers of, 170 Salomon, Yoel Moshe, 26 satellite broadcasts, 2, 10, 13, 134, 150, 151, 156, 164, 197. See also Yes Schejter, Amit, 133–134 Schnitzer, Shmuel, 56 Schocken corporation/chain/group/network, 59, 60, 70, 181 Schocken family, 32, 48, 55 Second Television and Radio Authority Law 1990, 87, 88, 107, 114, 131, 134, 135, 158, 159, 163, 199 Second Television and Radio Authority, 87, 88, 113 sectors, 14, 49, 109, 160, 199; Arab, 133; religious, 47, 60, 114, 184, 187 secularization, 19, 22, 24, 137 security crisis, 39, 191, 200, 201 sensationalism, 28, 32, 33, 49, 51, 52, 62, 152 Sephardic Jews, 49, 83–84, 160 Shaar (newsp.), 56 Shaarei Zion (newsp.), 27 Shilon, Dan, 155 Shinar, Dov, 109, 111 Sinara, Al (newsp.), 62 Sirat, Al (The Upright Path; Arabic newsp.), 61. 62 soap operas, 137, 151, 155, 157, 160, 160, 161, 164 social networks, 177, 190, 195 sports, 13, 37, 70, 71, 118; cable channel, 133; events, 69, 141, 158; and nationalism, 10; and radio, 90, 112; site, 181 statism, 15, 25, 90, 115, 137, 143, 197 stereotypes, 10, 58, 147, 160 Supreme Court, 41, 44, 138, 142, 144 Survivor (TV program), 16, 156, 165 talk shows, 152, 154–155, 160, 161 talkbacks, 172, 180, 189 Tarde, Gabriel, 19–20

Index  |  227 Tel Aviv, 29, 58, 59, 60, 84, 105, 106, 126; “Tel Avivian” culture, 106 Tel-Ad, 131, 132 Telecommunications (Bezeq and Broadcasting) Law 1982, 87; amendments to, 132, 133–134 territory, 105, 143; and boundaries, 3; element of a nation, 11; and Internet, 168, 170; and Mandatory Palestine, 35; “paper” for Jews, 17, 72, 73n1; and the press, 19; and radio, 105, 114; and television, 156 “300 Bus Route Affair,” 55, 73n10 24 Dakot (giveaway paper), 71 United States, 7, 21, 96, 133, 143, 157, 161 196; commercial broadcasting, 21, 115; and Internet, 172, 173, 183, 184, 190; and newspapers, 69, 70; and radio broadcasts, 80, 83, 96; and television, 117, 119, 123, 142 values, 14, 31, 52, 79, 98, 118, 123, 124, 151, 157, 172, 187, 200, 201; collective, 4; cultural, 90; democratic, 124; global, 181; group, 10; Haskalah, 24; hegemonic, 38, 39, 58, 104, 159, 202; journalistic, 37–38, 44, 58; national, 8, 120, 167; socialist, 33, 45, 46, 115, 122, 125, 142; Zionist, 29, 34, 45, 83, 90, 143 Vermia (Russ. newsp.), 66 Vesti (Russ. newsp.), 66 viewing, 11, 79, 119, 150, 157–158, 164, 166, 195; audience, 118, 119; and interactive broadcasting, 165; multichannel, 151; patterns, 160, 161, 165; population, 132; public, 125, 158; and ratings, 131, 155, 165, 166; shared, 10, 11, 118, 139, 166; and VOD, 164; and young people, 182. See also “Eraser” and “Anti-Eraser” Voice of Israel, 77, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 92, 94, 99, 111; advertising on, 93; Arabic broadcasts, 91, 94. See also Light Wave

wars and military campaigns, 43, 94, 106, 155, 167; First Lebanese, 100–101; and Internet, 173; 1948, 33, 39–40; Second Lebanese, 154, 191, 201; Six Day, 94–95, 125, 127, 129; Yom Kippur, 49, 99 Watan, Al (newsp.), 61 Weimann, Gabriel, 151, 155 women, 37, 54, 69, 99, 160; and Internet, 186; in news items, 159; and newspapers, 29, 56–57; representation in television programs, 160; and ultraorthodox, 186, 187 Yarmuq, Al- (newsp.), 35 Yated Ne’eman (newsp.), 68 Yawm, Al- (newsp.), 60 Yediot Ahronot (newsp.), 33–34, 37, 48–49, 40, 51–52, 55, 56, 71, 179, 180, 199; Calcalist, 56; “7 Days,” 37 Yediot Hadashot (newsp.), 34 Yediot Tikshoret corporation, 59, 60, 66 Yes (firm), 134, 151, 164, 181 Yiddish, 23, 24, 64, 65, 85 Yishuv era, 2, 28–29, 30, 33, 34, 40, 197; and the Holocaust, 46; and press, 17, 29, 36, 40; and radio, 1, 80–85, 114 Yisrael HaYom (giveaway paper), 71 Ynet site, 72, 180, 192 Yom LeYom (Day to Day; newsp.), 68 youth, 92, 102, 123, 135, 137, 182, 183. See also children YouTube, 176, 177 Zandberg, Eyal, 45, 115 Zemer, Hannah, 47 Zionism, 1, 39, 46, 52, 81, 105, 122–123, 138, 145, 151; and Bible, 83, 111; and broadcasting, 90, 115; and journalists, 37, 38, 39, 42, 72; leadership, 1, 25, 31, 38, 117; and Palestinians, 36; and press, 29, 30, 32, 34–35, 45, 72; religious, 31, 69; and and Sephardic culture, 83