Voice of Israel (Kol Yisrael)

Kol Yisrael became the central civilian radio service of the new state. The military station Galei Tzahal opened in 1950, and Kol Yisrael added its own second channel, Reshet Bet, in 1952.[1] Together with its Mandate-era predecessor, Kol Yerushalayim, its broadcasts recorded events including the UN partition vote, the declaration of statehood, wars, immigration, cultural programs, and sporting events.[6] Overseas services in Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, and eventually more than a dozen languages reached Jewish diaspora communities and audiences across the Middle East.[7][4]

Before statehood, Haganah leaders had reserved the name Kol Israel for the broadcasting service of a future Jewish state.[1][8] In the 1970s, the IBA briefly replaced it with Shidurei Yisrael ("Israel Broadcasting") before restoring the Kol Israel name in May 1979.[1] The service evolved from a government department into the Israel Broadcasting Service and then the Israel Broadcasting Authority, which operated until the transition to Kan in 2017.[1][2]

The Palestine Broadcasting Service began official broadcasts from Ramallah on March 30, 1936. Its staff received BBC training and broadcast in English, Arabic, and Hebrew.[1] Translator Yitzhak Abadi opened the first transmission from Jerusalem's Palace Hotel with "Hello, hello, Jerusalem speaking."[9] Jewish representatives favored the Hebrew name Kol Eretz Israel ("Voice of the Land of Israel"), but Arab objections led to the compromise Kol Yerushalayim ("Voice of Jerusalem").[1][9]

British authorities described it as a "binational, trilingual mandatory station." It broadcast for five hours daily, in the order English, Arabic, and Hebrew, and was barred from discussing politics.[9] Its news reflected British priorities, making the station an instrument of Mandatory policy as well as a source of cultural and public-service programming.[10]

After World War II, Kol Yerushalayim—and later Kol Yisrael—broadcast refugee lists and messages issued by the Jewish Agency's Search Bureau for Missing Relatives.[11] Families gathered around their radios hoping to hear familiar names. The Bureau's weekly, Lakarov Ulerahok ("To the Near and Far"), published 63 issues from July 1945 to September 1947 and listed more than 180,000 Holocaust survivors.[11] A report to the 1946 Zionist Congress said the Bureau's activities helped more than 30,000 Jews in Palestine reunite with relatives and enabled 60,000 survivors to contact relatives there.[11]

Alongside the official Mandate service, the Haganah operated the most extensive and organized Jewish clandestine radio network of the pre-state period.[8] Its Tel Aviv station began on March 13, 1940, as Kol Israel, broadcasting on 42 meters, or approximately 7,000 kHz.[1] It protested British censorship and restrictions on land sales to Jews. Haganah leaders soon reserved the name for a future state service, renamed the station, and suspended broadcasts in June 1940 amid the danger of an Axis invasion.[1][8]

The service resumed on October 4, 1945, as Kol Ha-Hagana.[1] Haganah added Arabic broadcasts between 1945 and 1948. Shaul Bar-Haim, an Iraqi Jew who had immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, headed them for a period and later directed the Israeli Radio Arabic Service.[8] Their content included allegations about Arab leaders, warnings to named individuals, and reports about conditions behind Arab lines.[8]

A separate Jerusalem station began operating from the sixth floor of an apartment building in 1947. It initially used the name Kol Israel, but Haganah leaders again reserved that title for the future state service. From March 1948 until independence, the Jerusalem station called itself Voice of the Jewish Defender.[8]

Mandate law prescribed imprisonment for illegal broadcasting, so transmitters were moved frequently and personnel followed elaborate security procedures.[8] No Haganah station is recorded as having been discovered by the British. One Tel Aviv newsreader signaled that a broadcast had ended safely by walking on a predetermined side of a watched automobile. During a curfew, news copy was hidden in hollowed-out oranges and thrown across streets during brief breaks.[8]

The Arabic broadcasts also had a psychological purpose. The source reports that some individuals fled to Egypt after receiving warnings and recalls a joke that Haganah raids began at 8:45 p.m. because Arab listeners were then at home following the Arabic news. This was a recollection of perceived influence, not a measured audience statistic.[8]

On May 12, 1948, Haganah Radio announced that it would soon become Kol Israel. The following day it announced that its first program would be transmitted live from the National Assembly and asked other Haganah stations to relay the notice.[8] A team of three engineers led by Hillel Langenholz had begun constructing the transmitters on January 20 at a Tel Aviv site disguised as a noodle factory; the Palestine Electric Corporation supplied power under that cover story.[12]

The station began transmitting music on May 13. On May 14, announcer Mordechai Zlotnik-Avidea opened with "Here is Kol Yisrael!" before the Declaration of Independence was carried by telephone line from Dizengoff House, then the Tel Aviv Museum.[12][3] Kol Yisrael began the state era using staff and facilities from both the Palestine Broadcasting Service and former Haganah stations.[1] A newspaper notice scheduled the declaration broadcast for 4 p.m.; the ceremony lasted 32 minutes, and 350 people were admitted to the museum.[13]

The pre-state service had also reported on the British attack against the refugee ship Exodus 1947, describing the assault, the ship's condition, and the refugees' decision to head toward Haifa.[14]

After independence, Kol Yisrael became a government department, successively under the Ministry of the Interior, the Office of Posts and Telegraphs, and the Prime Minister's Office. Its parent organization became the Israel Broadcasting Service in 1951.[1] In its early years it carried only two or three newscasts daily, although Galei Tzahal began providing radio competition in 1950.[1][15]

An early American Jewish Archives document describes Kol Yisrael broadcasting for 17 hours daily from Jerusalem, with some programs originating in Tel Aviv. It lists six daily Hebrew newscasts, three in Arabic, two in English, and one in French. Immigrant programming included daily Yiddish, Ladino, and French; Romanian, Hungarian, and Turkish three times weekly; and Persian twice weekly.[7] Later programming included easy-Hebrew news, a "Hebrew for the People" department, and morning exercises led by Michael Ben Hanan.[6]

A late-night service called Kol Zion La-Golah ("Voice of Zion to the Diaspora") broadcast in English, French, and Yiddish under an agreement between the government and the Zionist Organization.[7] Telephone broadcasting entered studios in the early 1950s, while two-way interaction with listeners developed in the 1960s.[6]

A second Kol Yisrael channel began in 1952 as Reshet Bet, after which the first was called Reshet Alef.[1] A Times of Israel account instead dates Reshet Bet's establishment specifically as a news station to 1960, suggesting a distinction between the channel's launch and its later news role.[16]

The Broadcasting Authority Law, passed on June 6, 1965, created the Israel Broadcasting Authority as an independent public body.[1] The change was intended to reduce direct political control over the radio service. A Maariv history recounts claims that officials in David Ben-Gurion's office sometimes dictated what news editors should say and explains that the law was designed to free the service from direct subordination to those paying its staff.[9] The IBA later assumed responsibility for television, while overseas radio programming received statutory protection.[1]

The service developed channels for distinct audiences. Reshet Alef carried cultural discussions and children's programs, Reshet Bet focused on news and current affairs, and Reshet Gimmel, launched in 1976, offered popular Hebrew music.[10] Its launch also accompanied a move from highly formal broadcasting language toward a more conversational style.[6] Other services supplied classical music, traffic reports, Arabic programming, and broadcasts in Russian and Amharic.[10] After the Yom Kippur War, Kol Yisrael increased its news output from a few bulletins a day to approximately twenty.[15]

A 2010 U.S. Department of State report described the IBA as state-owned and said it controlled Kol Israel radio, which broadcast news and other programming in Hebrew, Arabic, and additional languages.[17]

The National Library's sound collections include recordings from Kol Yisrael's early years. The Library reports receiving about 10,000 records of Hebrew songs, mainly from the 1950s, and another 10,000 tapes of songs recorded during the 1960s and 1970s; digitized material was made available through the Library.[18] A separate project announced in 2010 involved digitizing 80,000 hours of recordings with Harvard University. The magnetic tapes were to be cleaned, checked, preserved, and converted into digital files, with Harvard retaining a research copy and the originals returning to the Kol Yisrael archive.[19]

By its later years, Kol Yisrael broadcast in fifteen languages, including Russian, Georgian, Yiddish, Spanish, Arabic, and Farsi, serving immigrant communities in Israel and audiences abroad.[4] Its news was also available in Hebrew and English on the hour, with updates on Israeli events and weather.[20]

Israel's state media outreach to Arab audiences began in the 1950s with an Arabic-language Kol Yisrael channel and state-sponsored Arabic newspapers. Later services included Arabic television material and Farsi-language radio.[21] During the unrest following Iran's 2009 election, Kol Yisrael broadcasters claimed that two to three million people in Iran listened to their programs, but this figure was not independently verified.[4]

The Institute for National Security Studies assessed that this broader outreach had not fundamentally changed regional attitudes toward Israel, while acknowledging that the available measurements were "not methodical or completely accurate."[21] Historical overseas programming also included Kol Zion La-Golah for Jewish communities abroad and Haganah Arabic broadcasts that combined news with strategic messaging.[7][8]

Kol Yisrael and its institutional predecessors created a major documentary record of Israeli public life. Their surviving broadcasts cover the UN partition vote, statehood, wars, immigration, music, radio drama, and sporting events.[6] Researchers found that many early broadcasts had not survived and therefore combined tens of thousands of recordings with the recollections of former employees and listeners. Preserved material includes hundreds of hours of radio plays and large collections of Hebrew songs.[6][18]

The refugee-name broadcasts of the mid-1940s were among the service's most consequential public programs. Families gathered around the radio hoping to hear a familiar name among the more than 180,000 Holocaust survivors listed in the Search Bureau's publications.[11] A 1946 report credited the Bureau's activities, including its radio broadcasts, with helping more than 30,000 Jews in Palestine reunite with relatives.[11]

Kol Yisrael's news and current-affairs broadcasts ended on May 10, 2017, during the dissolution of the Israel Broadcasting Authority and the transition to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, known as Kan.[2] The last scheduled news broadcast began at 7 p.m.; afterward, Reshet Bet continued carrying music and hourly bulletins until the replacement broadcaster began operating.[2]

The IBA had evolved from Kol Yisrael and remained responsible for the service until 2017, when the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation replaced it.[22] The transition ended Kol Yisrael as a distinct institutional service while carrying much of Israeli public radio into Kan's new network structure.

A separate Jerusalem-based English-language station also operated under the name "Voice of Israel." Presenter Mottle Wolfe said his first show aired on July 13, 2014. Glen Ladau served as chief executive and Yishai Fleisher as programming director and a presenter.[5]

At its height, shortly before it apparently stopped broadcasting, the station carried 14 regular programs. Presenters included Josh Hasten, former MK Dov Lipman, Dan Diker, Jeremy Gimpel, Eve Harow, Daniel Seaman, Fleisher, and Wolfe.[5] Fleisher estimated that his program reached 100,000 monthly listeners in more than 150 countries, but the figure was his own estimate rather than an independently verified station-wide audience count.[5]

The station charged $5.89 per month or $58.90 annually. Ladau described it as a for-profit venture intended to provide returns to American investors rather than as a donation-funded project.[5] Its leadership portrayed it as a means of connecting English-speaking diaspora audiences more deeply with Israeli affairs and countering Israel's delegitimization; these were their descriptions of its purpose, not independent assessments of its output.[5]

The station's apparent closure followed the financial difficulties of its principal U.S.-based investor. Employees said July salaries had not been paid, and approximately 32 workers were affected. The station announced that it had temporarily stopped regular programming because of "some difficulties" and was trying to resume, but its studios closed and equipment was packed away.[5]

Accounts differ on the service's early chronology. A Jerusalem Post article says Kol Yisrael first aired independently on March 14, 1948.[22] By contrast, the Jewish Virtual Library places the start of the state service on May 14, when Israel declared independence.[1] A ynet account distinguishes preliminary music broadcasts beginning May 13 from the declaration broadcast on May 14, but it does not resolve the Jerusalem Post's March date.[12]

Sources also frame institutional continuity differently. Maariv calls the Mandate-era Kol Yerushalayim the first incarnation of Kol Yisrael, while separately mentioning the Haganah's pirate station.[9] Other verified accounts describe the 1940 Tel Aviv Haganah station and the 1947 Jerusalem station as distinct clandestine operations whose leaders reserved the Kol Israel name for a future state service.[1][8] It is therefore clearer to treat the Mandate station, underground stations, and post-independence service as connected strands rather than as a single unchanged organization.

Political influence before 1965 is likewise described through historical recollections rather than neutral administrative records. Maariv recounts claims that officials in Ben-Gurion's office dictated content and presents the Broadcasting Authority Law as an effort to reduce that dependence.[9] The INSS assessment of Arabic-language outreach is also qualified by its authors, who acknowledge that their measures were not methodical or fully accurate.[21]