Kol Yisrael or Kol Israel (קול ישראל lit. "Voice of Israel", also "Israel Radio") was Israel's public domestic and international radio service. It operated as a division of the Israel Broadcasting Service from 1951 to 1965, the Israel Broadcasting Authority from 1965 to 2017, and the radio stations it used to administer are currently administered by the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation.
Kol Yisrael was originally an underground Haganah radio station that broadcast from Tel Aviv. It started consistently broadcasting in December 1947 under the name Telem-Shamir-Boaz, and was renamed to Kol HaHagana ("Voice of the Haganah") in March 1948. With Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948, it was transformed into the official station Kol Yisrael. Another station named Kol Yisrael operated in Haifa, and was renamed Kol Tzva HaHagana ("Voice of the Defense Force").[1]
The first Kol Yisrael transmission was a live broadcast from Tel Aviv of David Ben-Gurion reading of the declaration of independence. It was operated by a department of the Ministry of the Interior responsible for domestic and international broadcasts. Responsibility for the service was later transferred to the Office of Posts and Telegraphs and then to the Prime Minister's Office.
The station inherited the facilities of the former Palestine Broadcasting Service, which had been founded as the official broadcaster of the Mandate of Palestine in 1936, and had run the Kol Yerushalayim radio station. Kol Yisrael staff was made up of both former PBS personnel and former staffers at the Haganah underground radio stations.
Kol Yisrael pioneered the use of FM transmission. In the early years, stations were operated in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa.[2] The PBS had had its transmitter in Ramallah, but this transmitter was lost to Kol Yisrael due to Ramallah being in the Arab sector.[3]
In March 1950, international broadcasting began under the name Kol Zion La Golah ("The Voice of Zion to the Diaspora.") The broadcasts were produced at Kol Yisrael by the World Zionist Organization in cooperation with the Jewish Agency, and aimed to foster communication between the Israeli state and the Jewish diaspora. The service broadcast readings from the Torah alongside documentary programs on life in Israel. In 1958, the international service was merged with the domestic broadcaster, with both services operating under the Kol Yisrael name.[4]
Between 1958 and 1965, the "Kol Yisrael" international services expanded rapidly, inaugurating new shortwave services in Afrikaans, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Persian, Romanian, and Yiddish.[5] Between 1960 and 1963, the service also broadcast daily programs in English, French and Swahili for African audiences and began distributing tapes for rebroadcasting across the continent.[6] This appeal to international audiences was closely tied to Israel's Periphery doctrine, which sought to align Israel with states on the fringes of the Middle East to avoid 'encirclement' by the Arab states and counteract international support for Palestinian nationalism.[7] Programs on the international services ranged from news and commentary programs to competitions, documentaries and readings from the Bible and Quran.[8] However, the technical quality of the international services was often poor beyond Israel's immediate neighbors in the Middle East.[9]
In 1965, the Israel Broadcasting Authority, an independent public entity, was created and took over responsibility for Kol Yisrael from the Prime Minister's Office. In 1973, the IBA adopted the name Shidurei Yisrael ("Israel Broadcasting") for the service's domestic radio and television services. The name Kol Yisrael was revived for the domestic and international radio service in 1979.
Kol Yisrael's shortwave services have gradually been discontinued over time. The last remaining shortwave service, the Persian programme for Iran, ceased transmissions on June 30, 2013. However, Israel continues to broadcast international services in fourteen languages under the label of Israel Radio International.[citation needed]
A previous station named Kol Yisrael had briefly been operated by the Haganah in 1940 on the 42-meter band. However, the station was soon renamed when the Haganah decided that the Kol Yisrael name should be reserved until independence.
Besides meaning "voice of Israel", Kol Yisrael is also a wordplay which in Hebrew sounds like the phrase "all of Israel" (although spelled differently), known to many Jews as part of the Talmudic expression כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה (kol Yisra'el arevim ze ba'ze, roughly translated "all of Israel are responsible for one another").
Kan Tarbut ("The Culture Network"), also referred to as Kol Yisrael – General talk and cultural programming.
Kan Bet ("Network B") – Popular radio station with news and current affairs programming, as well as sports coverage. There are news bulletins on the hour in Hebrew.
Kan Gimel ("Network C") – Radio station devoted for promoting Israeli music. There are news bulletins in Hebrew at the same times as Kan Bet.
Makan ("Network D") – Arabic-language radio station also known as Sawt Isra'eel (in Arabic: صوت إسرائيل, lit.'Voice of Israel')
Kan REKA (Acronym of REshet Klitat Aliya" - lit. "Immigrant absorption network") – Radio for olim (immigrants) to Israel. Broadcasts in 14 languages, including English at 0430, 1030, 1830 UTC (+1 hr during the Summer).
Kan 88 – "High Quality" music (their terminology). Jazz, blues, electronic music and more, plus traffic news
Kan Kol Ha Musica ("The Voice of Music") – Classical music and drama.
Kan Moreshet ("The Heritage Network") – Religious broadcasting on Kan Tarbut's network.
There are also educational stations broadcasting via low-power transmitters from colleges and universities across Israel under the collective banner of Tachana Chinuchit.
All of Kol Israel's stations are available worldwide through streaming audio over the Internet. Live broadcasts as well as archived programs are available to listeners.
Gallery
Broadcaster microphone in Kol Yisrael studios near Sarona
International broadcasting, in a limited extent, began during World War I, when German and British stations broadcast press communiqués using Morse code. With the severing of Germany's undersea cables, the wireless telegraph station in Nauen was the country's sole means of long-distance communication.
The Israel Broadcasting Authority was Israel's public broadcaster from 1948 to 2017, succeeded by the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation.
The Second Authority for Television and Radio is an Israeli commercial television and radio authority, established in the wake of a law passed by the Knesset in 1990.
Television in Israel refers to television broadcasting services in the State of Israel, inaugurated on March 24, 1966. Initially, there was one state-owned channel, operated jointly by the Israel Broadcasting Authority and the Israeli Educational Television. In 1986, a second state-regulated channel was launched. This channel became a state-regulated commercial channel in 1993. An additional commercial channel was introduced in 2002, followed by the introduction of three commercial niche channels: an Israeli Russian-speaking channel, a channel of Israeli popular music and an Arabic-speaking channel. Colour transmissions were introduced gradually around 1977 and 1979. Multichannel cable television service became available to subscribers gradually since 1989, although illegal cable TV stations were present in the big cities during the 1980s. Satellite-based multichannel service has been available since 2000.
Voice of Peace was an offshore radio station that broadcast in the Middle East for 20 years from the former Dutch cargo vessel MV Peace, anchored off the Israeli coast in the Eastern Mediterranean. Founded by Abie Nathan and the New York-based Peace Ship Foundation, the station broadcast almost continuously between 19 May 1973 and November 1993. The station was relaunched but solely as an online station in August 2009. A second online channel called The Voice of Peace Classics was added in 2014.
Kol Tsion HaLokhemet was the underground radio station of the Irgun.
Army Radio or Galei Tzahal, known in Israel by its acronym Galatz, is a nationwide Israeli radio network operated by the Israel Defense Forces. The station broadcasts news, music, traffic reports and educational programs to the general public as well as entertainment and military news magazines for soldiers. The network has one main station and an offshoot - Galgalatz - that broadcasts music and traffic reports 24 hours a day in Hebrew. The staff includes both soldiers and civilians. As of December 2013, the station is no longer broadcast via shortwave to Europe. There is still a livestream feed on the internet. After the 2023 Israel-Hamas war, they began using the former frequency of 1287KHZ and 945KHZ as it can reach to the bomb shelters and other areas in Israel.
Israel Radio International or Reka is the radio service of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) for immigrants and listeners abroad.
There are over ten different languages in the Israeli media, with Hebrew as the predominant one. Press in Arabic caters to the Arab citizens of Israel, with readers from areas including those governed by the Palestinian National Authority. During the eighties and nineties, the Israeli press underwent a process of significant change as the media gradually came to be controlled by a limited number of organizations, whereas the papers published by political parties began to disappear. Today, three large, privately owned conglomerates based in Tel Aviv dominate the mass media in Israel.
Channel 1 was the second oldest television channels in Israel and one of five terrestrial channels in the country.
Ron Ben-Yishai is an Israeli journalist. A veteran war correspondent, Ben-Yishai has covered many military conflicts in several different regions. In 2018, he won the Israel Prize, Israel's most prestigious civic honor.
Keren Neubach is an Israeli journalist, television presenter for the Israeli (government) Channel 1, and radio presenter for Reshet Bet.
Jerusalem Calling was the radio station established by the British Mandatory Authority through its broadcasting wing, the Palestine Broadcasting Service. It broadcast in three languages, Arabic, English and Hebrew.
The Recording of the Israel Declaration of Independence was a complete recording of the declaration using a direct to disc recording technique on acetate discs using special cutting machines. Neither the original records nor their duplicates were demanded by Israel state authorities and to date they cannot be located, except for one original acetate disc. However, copies of the recording itself survived on different media.
Yigal Ravid is an Israeli radio and television presenter, best known for hosting the Eurovision Song Contest 1999 in Jerusalem.
Razi Barkai is an Israeli media personality.
The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation is the national broadcaster of Israel.
The 1960 Israel Song Festival was the 1st edition of the annual Israel Song Festival. It took place in Tel Aviv and was held at Heichal HaTarbut on 2 May 1960 as part of the 1960 Independence Day celebrations. The show was hosted by Itzhak Shimoni.
Michael Ben-Hanan was commander of the Haganah in Jerusalem, an educator, and Israeli radio broadcaster, who from the years 1945 to 1970 woke up radio listeners in the land of Israel with a morning exercise program broadcast on the Kol Yerushalayim radio station and then on Kol Yisrael.
References
↑ Bar-On, Mordechai (2001). The Beginning of the Israeli Historiography of the 1948 War. Ministry of Defense Publishing. ISBN965-05-1126-1.
Mann, Izi (2008). This is the Voice of Israel broadcasting from Jerusalem...: A Nation Behind the Microphone. Israel Broadcasting Authority. (in Hebrew)
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kol Israel.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
