Israel

Development

Israel's printed media date to the nineteenth century, when Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. The first two Hebrew newspapers, Halevanon (The Lebanon) and Havatzelet (Sand-Lily), both of them monthlies, began publication in 1863, but authorities closed them down about a year later, on the grounds that they lacked a license. The Hebrew press developed very slowly under Ottoman rule, the number of newspapers and periodicals increasing only gradually. The development of the press in Arabic was even slower, primarily due to the low level of literacy among the Arab population of Palestine. With the outbreak of World War I almost all newspapers were closed down and only resumed publication after Palestine was occupied by the British Army in 1917–18. British rule in Palestine lasted for thirty years, mostly under a mandate from the League of Nations, until the establishment of Israel on May 14, 1948.

Shortly after the occupation of Palestine, the British Army began publishing a weekly, The Palestine News—in Hebrew and in Arabic—whose purpose was to supply information to the local population (another edition, in English, was intended for the troops), but also supplied some of its communication needs. About a year and a half later, the military authorities decided to transfer publication to private hands, but only the Hebrew edition was revived and became a cornerstone of the Israeli media. In 1919 the Hebrew daily Ha'aretz (The Land) was established as the military's official periodical and continues to appear today. Privately owned, Ha'aretz is the newspaper of Israel's elite with a daily circulation of 65,000 copies.

Over the next few decades the number of printed media gradually increased, including daily newspa-pers—primarily belonging to political parties—and many journals. After World War II, the printed press flourished, and within a few years, 12 new newspapers began publication. The Jewish population of Israel at the time of independence in 1948 was only about 600,000, yet the region produced about 150 papers and periodicals of various types [Page 806]and in diverse languages, including 23 dailies (16 morning and 7 evening papers). One reason for the multiplicity of the printed media lies in the waves of emigration from Europe. The Jewish immigrants, many of them Holocaust survivors, were accustomed to reading periodicals in their former countries and continued to do so in their new home. Another cause was the division of Israel's Jewish society along ideological and party lines, which meant that each political party sought a newspaper or journal of its own. The blurring of ideological differences and the subsequent decline in the power of political parties has led, as in many European countries, to the demise of party journalism. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, only the religious and ultra-Orthodox parties in Israel maintain separate newspapers.

...