Kol Yisrael

Kol Yisrael combined national news broadcasting with cultural, educational, and entertainment services, eventually operating distinct networks for different subjects and audiences.[3] Reshet Alef carried cultural discussions, general-interest material, and children’s programs; Reshet Bet concentrated on news and current affairs; and Reshet Gimmel offered popular and light music.[3] Other services addressed classical-music listeners, Arabic speakers, and new immigrants.[3]

The service’s institutional history crossed several forms of administration: it began as a government department, became part of the Israel Broadcasting Authority after the 1965 Broadcasting Authority Law, and continued within that organization until its replacement in 2017.[1][8] The name itself also changed over time: Shidurei Yisrael replaced Kol Israel as the broadcasting organization expanded to include television, while Kol Israel returned as the name for the authority’s radio services in May 1979.[1]

Multilingual broadcasting connected the service’s domestic and overseas functions.[5] Hebrew and Arabic programming formed part of its public broadcasting responsibilities, while other languages served immigrants in Israel and listeners abroad.[5][4] Its programming ranged from hourly news and weather[9] to music recordings, religious questions,[10] and broadcasts intended to maintain connections with Jewish communities outside Israel.[4]

The Palestine Broadcasting Service, Kol Yisrael’s institutional predecessor, began broadcasting on March 30, 1936, with daily programs in English, Arabic, and Hebrew.[1] Its transmission facilities were in Ramallah, while its first broadcast came from Jerusalem’s Palace Hotel.[1][11] The British administration presented the service as binational and trilingual, ordering its broadcast languages as English, Arabic, and Hebrew.[11]

The Hebrew service became known as Kol Yerushalayim, meaning “Voice of Jerusalem,” after disagreement over an earlier proposed name, Kol Eretz Israel.[1] The English service was called Jerusalem Calling and the Arabic service Iza’at al Quds.[8] Disagreement over names involved representatives of both the Arab and Jewish communities, and the resulting terminology formed part of the station’s development under the Mandate.[11]

The station initially broadcast for five hours each evening.[8] Arabic received the largest share of airtime, followed by Hebrew and English; the administration justified this distribution by reference to the Arabic-speaking majority, while the Yishuv pointed to the larger number of radio licenses held by Jewish residents.[8] The service was noncommercial, modeled on the BBC, and financed principally through government allocations and radio-owner license fees.[8]

Programming included news, music, theatrical works, educational talks, children’s hours, women’s programs, and occasional scriptural readings.[8] Programs for homemakers and farmers also appeared in its early schedules, alongside Arabic and Hebrew music and the classical repertoire.[11] Live radio plays were rehearsed before transmission, reflecting the station’s approach to prepared cultural programming.[11]

Locally hired staff exercised considerable autonomy over creative programs, which accounted for approximately 70–80 percent of broadcasting hours, while the government closely controlled news content.[8] The High Commissioner directed the early schedule to avoid politics.[11] In 1942, broadcasting was divided between two stations, one carrying English and Arabic and the other English and Hebrew.[8]

The Palestine Broadcasting Service opened its Jerusalem building on Heleni Hamalka Street in 1939, and the site became a long-term home of Kol Yisrael.[1] Its history therefore extended back into the Mandate period, before the establishment of the state radio service under the Kol Yisrael name in 1948.[1] In 1939, a bomb exploded in the studios, killing the head of the youth-programs department and a technician; the attack was apparently carried out by the Irgun in connection with an expected interview with the British High Commissioner about the White Paper.[11]

The Haganah opened a clandestine station called Kol Israel in March 1940, broadcasting initially on a 42-meter wavelength.[1] It soon stopped using that name, reserving it for the radio service of a future Jewish state, and resumed clandestine broadcasting as Kol Ha-Hagana in October 1945.[1] This underground use of the name preceded its adoption by the national service in 1948.[1]

As the British departure approached, a committee headed by David Ben-Gurion assigned engineer Hillel Langholz and two other engineers to prepare an independent nationwide station that could operate when statehood was proclaimed.[2] Work began on January 20, 1948, and security conditions led the engineers to establish the station in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem.[2] On May 12, Haganah Radio announced that it would become Kol Israel, the official name of the new state’s national radio service.[12] The following day, it announced a live first program from the National Assembly and asked other Haganah stations to relay the announcement.[12]

The Tel Aviv station began broadcasting music on May 13 and carried the declaration of independence from Dizengoff House the following day.[2]

Shortly before that transmission, two components burned out and the signal fell silent.[2] The damaged components were removed, allowing broadcasting to resume with audible static, and announcer Mordechai Zlotnik-Avidea opened with “Here is Kol Yisrael! Here is Kol Yisrael!” before the station connected by telephone line to Dizengoff House.[2]

The national service drew on staff and facilities inherited from both the Palestine Broadcasting Service and the former clandestine Haganah stations.[1] Initially a government department, it passed through the Ministry of the Interior, the Office of Posts and Telegraphs, and subsequently the Prime Minister’s Office.[1] In 1950, it merged with the service previously known as Jerusalem Calling and then Kol Yerushalayim; the organization running it was renamed the Israel Broadcasting Service in 1951.[8]

Overseas broadcasting developed alongside this domestic organization.[1] Kol Zion La Golah began in 1950 as a shortwave service for overseas audiences, operated from Kol Israel facilities by the World Zionist Organization in collaboration with the Jewish Agency.[1] The service was integrated into Kol Israel in 1958, after which its separate title was dropped.[1]

The Broadcasting Authority Law, passed on June 6, 1965, established the Israel Broadcasting Authority as an independent public body.[1] Kol Yisrael was then broadcasting on two wavelengths, and the authority subsequently incorporated television when that service was established in 1968.[1] The expanding organization adopted the name Shidurei Yisrael, before restoring Kol Israel specifically for its radio services in May 1979.[1]

Accounts differ on the chronology of Kol Yisrael’s second Hebrew network. One chronology lists a second channel named Reshet Bet beginning in 1952,[1] while another dates the launch of Gal Hakal, later Reshet Bet, to April 3, 1961.[13] The latter account describes Gal Hakal as a lighter, commercial, entertainment-oriented service that carried popular music and advertisements and was intended to compete with Radio Ramallah.[13]

The network structure allowed different types of programming to develop separately.[3] Reshet Alef offered cultural discussion, general-interest broadcasts, and children’s programs, while Reshet Bet became associated with news and current affairs.[3] Reshet Gimmel, added in 1976, specialized in popular music.[1][3] Kol Hamusica carried classical music, while Kol Haderech combined traffic information with music.[1][3]

The Arabic-language network, Reshet Dalet, began operating in 1958.[1] REKA served new immigrants, principally through broadcasts in Russian and Amharic.[3] Foreign-language output extended to fifteen languages, including Russian, Georgian, Yiddish, Spanish, Arabic, and Farsi.[4] In September 1950, the launch of Army Radio, Galei Zahal, ended Israel Radio’s broadcasting monopoly; programs for soldiers had previously appeared on Israel Radio before being transferred to the military station.[1]

Before the 1960s, Kol Israel broadcast only two or three newscasts a day.[14] A later educational resource describes its news as available in Hebrew or English on the hour, with updates covering Israeli events and weather.[9]

Interview programming included discussion of contemporary security and political affairs.[15][16] A November 15, 2015 interview featured Dr. Ely Karmon discussing the ISIS threat and the fight against it.[15] An August 20, 2008 interview with Eitan Broshi, the defense minister’s adviser for settlement affairs, addressed twenty-six outposts described as illegal in the research report that subsequently cited the broadcast.[16]

Kol Yisrael’s multilingual services included Russian, Georgian, Yiddish, Spanish, Arabic, and Farsi, addressing immigrant communities in Israel and communities abroad.[4] Kol Zion Lagola directed broadcasts toward Jewish communities outside Israel, while Arabic programming served both Israeli Arabs and listeners in Arab countries.[4] News and other programming were broadcast in Hebrew, Arabic, and additional languages under the Israel Broadcasting Authority.[5]

Persian broadcasting left an archival record of the service’s internal development.[17] Correspondence and notes in the Amnon Netzer Archive cover 1964–1994 and concern cutbacks to Persian broadcasts, internal conflicts, and the history of Persian broadcasting from Israel.[17] The surviving file contains material in Hebrew and Persian.[17]

Arabic programming included news and music and sought audiences beyond Israel’s borders as well as within the country.[18] One prominent announcer was Eliyahu Nawi, an orientalist who broadcast as “Daoud al-Natour.”[19] He advocated colloquial rather than literary Arabic, and his radio persona became popular among listeners in Arab countries.[19] Family recollections describe him altering his voice to sound older and keeping his broadcasting work secret.[19]

REKA, formally Reshet Klitat Aliyah, broadcast in languages including Russian, Amharic, and French.[20] For many older immigrants who did not speak Hebrew, it provided a daily source of information.[20] Its practical importance became particularly visible during the 2017 institutional transition, when listeners experienced a week without news between the old authority’s closure and the new broadcaster’s opening.[20]

A series of Ladino radio broadcasts began in 1954 under musicologist Yitzhak Isaac Levy, who headed Kol Yisrael’s ethnographic department.[21] Recordings of this programming survive within the sound collections of the National Library of Israel.[21] The series formed part of a broadcast repertoire that also encompassed Hebrew songs, classical music, and other cultural programming.[21][7]

Rabbi Haim David Halevi began hosting “Aseh Lecha Rav” in 1974.[10] He answered listeners’ questions orally, and those answers were subsequently developed into responsa addressing aspects of life in the secular state.[10] The resulting written material was eventually collected into a nine-volume set, linking the radio program with a substantial body of rabbinic writing.[10]

Youth broadcasting also provided a setting for performers and announcers who later worked across Israeli broadcasting.[22] Aryeh Orgad was a radio actor and host of Kol Israel youth programs; after army service, he became a senior announcer and host who produced and supervised broadcasts.[22] The Broadcasting Authority sent him to France for television training in 1965, and he joined Israel Television at its inception in 1968.[22]

Music production extended beyond selecting existing recordings for transmission.[7] From the 1950s through the late 1980s, editors arranged recordings of Hebrew songs and commissioned new works from composers and lyricists to enlarge the country’s recorded repertoire.[7] These activities generated material that later formed part of Kol Yisrael’s extensive sound archive.[7]

Broadcasts seeking missing relatives connected radio with the effort to reunite families after the Holocaust.[23] Refugee lists and messages were first transmitted on Kol Yerushalayim and later on Kol Yisrael, alongside the work of the Jewish Agency’s Search Bureau for Missing Relatives.[23] The bureau’s weekly publication appeared in sixty-three issues between July 1945 and September 1947 and contained more than 180,000 names of Holocaust survivors; radio broadcasts drew material from its lists and messages.[23] Families gathered around receivers during the weekly broadcasts, hoping to recognize a familiar name.[23]

Kol Yisrael broadcast the Eichmann trial live throughout the proceedings in 1961.[6] Hundreds of thousands of Israelis listened at home, at work, at school, and in the street, particularly to the testimony of Holocaust survivors.[6] The trial opened on April 11, and the verdict was read on December 15.[6] Through these broadcasts, the courtroom proceedings and survivors’ voices reached listeners far beyond the courtroom itself.[6]

Coverage of organized Jewish visits also connected Israeli broadcasting with Diaspora institutions.[24] For the United Jewish Appeal’s twenty-fifth-anniversary mission in 1962, Kol Israel devoted more than twelve hours of prime radio time to the mission.[24] Coverage included transmissions from Paris during the delegation’s visit, interviews with UJA and Jewish Agency leaders and government officials, and day-to-day reporting as the mission traveled around Israel.[24]

Personal testimony preserved in archival material also records listening beyond Israel.[22] Esther Lamovsky recalled that her family listened to Kol Yisrael and the BBC when the 1967 war began.[22] Other testimony in the same archival document describes letters from Soviet Jews being translated and broadcast by Kol Yisrael, as well as published in newspapers; one interviewee recalled having been detained twice.[22]

Kol Yisrael’s sound archive preserves news and current affairs, information programs, classical music, and Israeli popular music, amounting to hundreds of thousands of recorded hours.[7] Its holdings include the results of decades of studio recording and commissioned Hebrew songs, as well as material originally created for broadcast rather than commercial release.[7][25]

The National Library of Israel’s music collection includes approximately 10,000 records of Hebrew songs recorded for broadcast, mainly in the 1950s and transferred to the library in the 1970s.[25] It also holds approximately 10,000 tapes of Hebrew songs recorded by Kol Yisrael during the 1960s and 1970s.[25] The tapes were copied onto compact discs, and their contents became available at the library and through its website.[25]

Additional transfers brought other substantial groups of recordings into preservation.[26] In 1983, 6,300 records, mostly broadcast records, entered the library’s sound archive.[26] Approximately 20,000 more records arrived from Israel Broadcasting Authority storage in 2002; after sorting, about 5,000 were considered suitable for preservation and cataloging.[26] Many were in poor physical condition, making digitization part of the effort to preserve their contents.[26]

A 2019 account of the wider Israel Broadcasting Authority archive described material spanning seventy-seven years, from the beginning of Kol Yerushalayim in 1936 through the authority’s move to digital broadcasting in 2013.[27] It estimated approximately one million hours of radio recordings across the collection, although the exact total was unknown.[27]

The successor public broadcaster, Kan, began radio transmissions on May 15, 2017.[28] The opening included the Shema Israel prayer and a 6:00 a.m. news bulletin from Jerusalem, announced as “Kan Kol Yisrael miYerushalayim.”[28] Eight public-radio stations began broadcasting that morning.[28]

The transition replaced the authority that had administered public broadcasting since the 1965 law.[8] For REKA listeners, however, the interruption meant a week without their usual news service, affecting older immigrants who depended on broadcasts in languages other than Hebrew.[20]

The 1965 Broadcasting Authority Law was intended to make radio freer and less directly subordinate to the government officials responsible for its employees.[11] Retrospective testimony also recounts officials in Ben-Gurion’s office directing news content before the reform.[11]

Accounts of the Arabic service describe roles in psychological warfare and intelligence as well as ordinary broadcasting.[18] These operational accounts rest on retrospective interviews: former security officer Rafi Siton described twenty specially reserved recordings whose transmission could signal instructions to agents, and a song broadcast in 1966 was described as a signal to Iraqi pilot Munir Redfa that his route to Israel was open.[18] Such details are reported recollections rather than independently established operational records in the available material.[18]