When you host one of the world’s last over-the-air radio shows in Yiddish, fans will occasionally contact you. But you hear more often from critics. They write to Avraham Zaks, the 37-year-old behind the mike of a weekly program called “We Are Here!” to nitpick about his grammar. Or to complain about his accent, which doesn’t sound Eastern European enough to them. Some tell him the show needs more religious content.
Mr. Zaks, who has specks of gray in his beard, warm dark eyes and metal-rimmed glasses, doesn’t mind. On some level, he’s a bit tickled by the feedback.
“I write and say, ‘Thank you very much, we’re doing our best. It’s nice to hear you’re listening,” he said on a Wednesday afternoon, minutes before his show started. “The problem with broadcasts in general is that most of the time you don’t get any response. You feel like you’re talking to yourself.”
“We are here!” is one of the few niche language radio offerings from Kan, Israel’s public media network, officially known as the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation.
Most of the company’s 1,000 employees run a highly regarded TV, radio and digital news division or oversee the production of some of the country’s most prestigious television programs, some of which air on U.S. streaming platforms. As Israel’s answer to the BBC or PBS, Kan, headquartered in Jerusalem, is more interested in gravity than ratings.
Today, Kan has a new focus: survival. It is right in the crosshairs of Israel’s right-wing government elected in November. Through Shlomo Karhi, the communications minister, the government has issued a number of threats against the network, starting with a vow to defund and shut down the company.
“There is no place for a public service broadcaster these days when there is a wide range of channels,” Mr Karhi said at a press conference in January.
In case anyone thought he was talking exclusively about saving taxpayers’ money – Kan receives the equivalent of $180 million a year from Israel’s treasury, about 85 percent of the company’s budget – he accused the media more broadly of also of “being too left-oriented. ”
A few weeks later, a spokesperson for Mr Karhi said in a statement that Kan’s shutdown was postponed “until further notice” to allow the government to focus on overhauling the judiciary, a plan that has left the nation in turmoil .
More recently, the minister said he wants to strip three of his eight radio spectra, which are needed for radio stations, from Kan. The station playing “We Are Here!” is expected to survive any culling because an Israeli regulation requires foreign language broadcasts in this immigrant country.
The fear among Kan’s supporters is that once the government has finished overhauling the judiciary, whether its plans succeed or fail, it will be the turn of the network.
“If you’re looking for a textbook on how to turn a democracy into an autocracy, it includes shutting down independent media,” said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, who has developed the Journalism Code of Ethics. Can drafted.
The media market in Israel, a country of 10 million people, is small and highly competitive by American standards. There are a total of four TV networks. The other three are privately owned, and Kan is tied for fourth overall in the ratings race with Channel 14. That network, often referred to as Israel’s version of Fox News, enthusiastically supports the Netanyahu administration. According to the network, it has seen a surge in ratings in recent months.
Political leaders in Israel, like those in virtually every country, try to influence and shape news coverage. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems especially eager to manage the media. Two of the three corruption trials against him involve consideration for favorable reporting by powerful publishers – one owner of a major daily newspaper and the other a telecommunications magnate who runs a popular online news site. (Mr Netanyahu denies wrongdoing.)
“The Coalition is not interested in the standard pushback game we’ve seen in the past,” said Shuki Tausig, editor-in-chief of The Seventh Eye, a media watchdog publication. “They want to use regulation to weaken or even destroy big commercial players that don’t play by the rules. And they want to eliminate or control Kan.”
The network is the successor to the Israel Broadcasting Authority, which shut down in 2017 after critics across the political spectrum concluded that its programming was shabby and that the authority was too easily harassed by politicians, who appointed its board members and cut the budget. checked.
Kan is designed to be relatively impervious to partiality; the job of selecting board members is up to industry professionals. It’s a structure that has produced a catalog of highly engaging television, including a three-part documentary about Adolph Eichmann, “The Devil’s Confession,” available on Amazon Prime and funded by a number of companies. Last month, Kan was nominated for 125 Ophir Awards, Israel’s version of the Oscars and Emmys, more than double that of his closest rival.
“All the other networks are trying to make a profit, so they’re full of shows where people fight on an island for three weeks over a sack of rice,” says Tsuriel Rashi, an associate professor at Ariel University’s School of Communication. The Eichmann documentary, he added, was “a huge undertaking”.
“It’s expensive and it doesn’t make any money,” he said, “but it’s important.”
Kan is located in an office building in a generic spot in Jerusalem, not far from an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood and near the Israeli tax office. On a recent visit, it was buzzing with reporters preparing an evening broadcast. In the Arab media room, a handful of employees watched dozens of television channels from across the Middle East.
“Today it’s a bit quiet,” said a reporter with his eyes on the screens. “A machine gun was fired into the air in Gaza, which set off sirens in Israel, but no rockets.”
“I’ve seen scarier things in my professional life,” said one of his colleagues.
Despite the business-as-usual vibe here, morale has dropped, as with any institution facing extinction.
“We had a company-wide meeting a few weeks ago and I said to everyone, ‘I know there are people here who go home at night and ask kids if they have a job in the morning,'” said Gil Omer, chairman of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, said in an interview at Kan. “And I told them we will do everything we can to keep this place alive.”
For now, the government seems to have reduced its ambitions to those three radio spectra that it wants to make available to commercial networks.
It is not a measure that Mr. Karhi can take unilaterally. Yoaz Hendel, his predecessor as communications minister, said in an interview that Mr Karhi did not seem to understand the job, which has nothing to do with Kan’s budget – which is the purview of the Ministry of Finance – and everything to do with building communications infrastructure, such as 5G.
“Karhi could announce tomorrow that all Israelis should wear red hats, but that doesn’t mean anyone will listen to him,” said Mr. lever. “He needs to focus on what he’s been assigned to do, which is to make sure Israel is well connected.”
Elad Malka, the deputy director general of the Ministry of Communications, disagreed. “The minister responsible for public broadcasting is the communications minister,” he said. “Of course, if there are any changes that the minister wants, he should go to the Knesset,” Malka added, referring to the Israeli parliament.
Even though he does not have the authority to single-handedly disengage Kan, Mr Karhi, a former member of the Knesset, has attracted national attention in Israel because his statements seem to reflect the will of the government. And attracting attention is one of Mr. Karhi’s specialties.
In February, he denounced critics of the judicial overhaul plan as “erav rav,” an old term for demons who pose as Jews and must be killed. In early March, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, he tweeted a message wishing everyone well — except reservist soldiers who opposed the judicial review, who he said could “go to hell.”
“He has no interest in media,” said Mr. Tausig. “His actions as minister are just political opportunism, a way to show that he is more extreme than extreme, to serve Netanyahu.”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Communications declined to comment.
Mr. Zaks, the host of “We Are Here!”, has been following closely the drama that has engulfed his employer, but on a recent Wednesday afternoon, he was more interested in his upcoming interview with the head of the Yiddish branch of the Hebrew University.
They discussed how to lure ultra-Orthodox from Israel to Yiddish theater and literature nights, a major challenge given that much of the canon is blatantly irreligious. Reaching out to the Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, community is important to Mr. Zaks, who grew up in a Lubavitcher community outside Tel Aviv. By the time he was 20 he realized he was an atheist and left. He spent the next few years discovering popular culture he had never encountered before – television, movies, professional sports.
“I knew about radio because it was on all day at home,” he said. “That was it.”
The largest group of Yiddish speakers in Israel are Haredi, but he reckons they make up a small percentage of the audience for “We Are Here!” because it’s a secular show. However, he knows that a few thousand leave the ultra-Orthodox community each year and he is happy to offer them a connection to the world they have left behind.
“It’s like being an emigrant and reading a newspaper in the language you grew up in,” he said. “I don’t like the place I left, but I like Yiddish. It is a heritage that we must preserve.”
