Jerusalem calling: The birth of Mandate-era broadcasting in British Palestine

‘This is Jerusalem calling!” With these words, the Palestinian Broadcasting Service (PBS) began its journey on March 30, 1936, from Ramallah. 

This significant broadcast marked a pivotal moment in Mandate Palestine’s history and laid the foundations for future developments in the region, eventually influencing the State of Israel. The inaugural event drew dignitaries from the Mandate government and prominent Zionist leaders, including Jewish Agency chief David Ben-Gurion.

At the time, the region was already home to several government-operated stations, including Radio Damascus, the Egyptian State Broadcasting Service (Radio Cairo), Beirut’s Radio Orient, and an intermittently broadcasting station in Mosul. 

The British initiative to establish a radio station in Palestine was part of their commitment as overseers of the territory, fulfilling promises made at the European Radio Conference in Lucerne in 1933. This promise was part of a broader colonial strategy to modernize and develop the regions under their control.

“There was supposed to be the obligation of the British and the French to support people in the region toward ultimate self-governance,” Prof. Andrea Stanton, author of This Is Jerusalem Calling: State Radio in Mandate Palestine, told In Jerusalem. “Therefore, in an era in which free states had radio stations, government or national radio stations, then getting a radio station for Mandated Palestine was also something that the British reported on in their annual reports to the League of Nations as something that they were doing to fulfill their responsibilities.”

British High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope, the governor-general of Mandate Palestine and the highest British authority there, delivered one of the opening speeches, expressing his belief in the significant benefits that a well-directed Broadcasting Service could provide to any community, as quoted in The Palestine Post (later The Jerusalem Post.) His speech set the stage for the PBS’s role in the community.

With Wauchope’s words, the PBS officially began its broadcasts, establishing it as the national, state-run radio station of British-controlled Mandate Palestine. Modeled after the BBC, PBS was a non-commercial public station with a broadcasting monopoly in the region. It was funded mainly by government allocations and supplemented by annual license fees from radio owners. The programming aimed to “educate and elevate” listeners as citizens, not merely entertain them. The PBS’s inauguration linked Palestine to broader developments across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

In the politically charged environment of Mandate Palestine, Wauchope declared that the station would avoid political content and instead focus on “knowledge and culture.” This set the tone for the radio station’s mission, highlighting both the potential and the limitations of broadcasting during that era. Wauchope articulated the British bureaucratic view of Palestine’s challenges: advancing the rural Arab “peasant” population into modernity while offering cultural enrichment for the urban Jewish “professional” population.

“The Arabic service had the largest amount of time on air, and then the Hebrew language service had the second, and then the English language service had the least,” Stanton explained. “They ended up having two wavelengths, and so it really was separated – Hebrew on one wavelength, Arabic on the other, and English on both. 

“The argument from the government’s side was that Arabic speakers make up the majority of the population, and so they get more air time. And the argument on the Yishuv’s side was the number of radio licenses,” which were higher amongst the Jewish population. Basing it similarly on the BBC model, owners of radio sets had to pay for a license to listen in the 1930s and ’40s. 

THE BBC was to play a role in the inspiration for the PBS station 

Wauchope, during his opening speech, concluded by reading a message from the chairman of the BBC, expressing confidence that the PBS, founded on high aims and public interest, would significantly contribute to the social and entertainment life of the people. His references to the BBC and other Mandate officials underscored the close relationship between the BBC and the PBS in its early days, as well as the intertwined nature of government branches in the station’s operations. 

“The BBC was the model, and the Mandate government brought over people from the BBC to serve as officials of the station in its early days, and throughout the life of the station. That was very intentionally the model,” Stanton told In Jerusalem. 

While the government maintained strict control over news content, the creative programming offered a different dynamic. Locally hired PBS staff had considerable autonomy in creating musical, theatrical, ethical, children’s, and women’s programs, which comprised 70-80% of broadcasting hours. These programs reflected and reinforced post-World War I cultural trends in the Arab world, including changes in musical composition, the popularity of “foreign” dance tunes like the tango and foxtrot, new theatrical forms, innovative pedagogies, and discussions on culture, ethics, and national identity.

Listeners experienced urban modernity through prominent local lecturers, regionally famous singers, new interpretations of traditional music, and elite women discussing topics such as “The Arab Mother” or “The Muslim Woman during Ramadan.” This highlights PBS’s significant role in shaping Palestinian cultural identity.

“The cultural programming – the kinds of things that the Hebrew service or the Arabic service put on – was so important,” Stanton expanded. “The types of people that they put on air, the kinds of voices, women’s voices, for example, immigrant voices, voices with accents from different regions, musicians with different ideas, children – it all played a major role.

“The fact of having a station, the fact of it broadcasting in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, all of that is innately political, even though their news broadcasts tended to be more anodyne than the news broadcasts of other stations.”

The station broadcast for five hours each evening, offering programs in Arabic, English, and Hebrew. The English broadcasts were under the name Jerusalem Calling. The Hebrew language transmissions were under the name Kol Yerushalayim (The Voice of Jerusalem), while the Arabic language broadcasts used the name Iza’at al Quds (Radio al Quds).

During the inaugural broadcast in March 1936, High Commissioner Wauchope reiterated that the PBS would not involve itself in politics, focusing instead on spreading “knowledge and culture” while also respecting religious claims. These principles shaped the station’s programming, which consisted of parallel segments divided by language, including news broadcasts, music, theatrical works, educational talks, children’s hours, women’s programs, and occasional scriptural readings. The Arabic section received the most airtime, followed by Hebrew and then English.

Entertainment for general interest was provided through relays, gramophone recordings, and local productions. Stanton explained, “The BBC model was kind of shorthand for ‘educate and elevate’ people – this notion of radio as a public good and radio as a kind of social responsibility, and not just providing people popular music and whatever they wanted, but giving them responsible programming, such as classical music or light music rather than popular music.

“It’s really important as a station, because, particularly with the cultural programming, particularly with the music, the talks, they were very important. Both [Jewish and Arab] communities were really trying to articulate this really modern national identity. 

“You see it in the development of language. You see it in the topics. You see it in the work to develop music, even classical music, to make it more distinctly proto-Israeli,” Stanton told In Jerusalem. “On the Arab side, it was important to make it distinctly Palestinian, and not just Egyptian, which was the big pop music dominator of the region. So it’s a really important station.”

THE LAUNCH of PBS marked a significant milestone for Palestine, yet it also brought potential controversy. Within weeks, the station found itself amid the larger crisis of the three-year Arab revolt. PBS broadcasts during the general strike showcased both the potential and limitations of a government station. 

While the Mandate government restricted news broadcasts and criticized the BBC Arabic service for reporting on violence and reprisals, it also used PBS to reach out to listeners and try to calm the situation. High Commissioner Wauchope made several broadcasts in 1936.

The deteriorating political situation in Europe at the time also shows the mentality of radio among certain governments. “The governments at the time, the big European governments, were deeply fixated on radio as a political medium,” according to Stanton. “They all were deeply convinced that other countries’ radio stations were these incredibly powerful propaganda machines that could just say anything on air, and people would listen to it and believe it.

“So the British were particularly terrified about the Italians and the Germans doing that with the Arabic-speaking population in Mandate Palestine. They did not think of their own station like that, however.”

Despite numerous challenges – logistical, technical, and political – the PBS continued to operate. Surviving the Arab revolt and World War II allowed PBS to become a vital institution, shaping ideas of national and cultural identity, religious affiliation, and rural-urban distinctions.

In 1942, the transmissions were split into two stations: one for English/Arabic (Radio al Quds) and another for English/Hebrew (Kol Yerushalayim). The original channel transmitted on 668 kc/s kHz (449 meters) with a power of 20 kW. The second channel (PBS2) transmitted on 574 kHz (522 meters) at 20 kW. The first channel, PBS 1, was slightly moved to 677 kHz (443 meters), allowing it to be heard better in Europe.

In 1950, two years after the establishment of the State of Israel, Jerusalem Calling (by now Kol Yerushalayim) merged with Kol Yisrael, which became the country’s official radio station.

The Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) evolved from Kol Yisrael, which first aired as an independent station on March 14, 1948, and the organization running Kol Yisrael was renamed the Israel Broadcasting Service in 1951. The Knesset passed the law establishing the IBA on June 6, 1965, and the authority continued until 2017, when it became the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation.

The Palestinian West Bank authorities, part of the Jordanian administration that took over the West Bank after 1948, continued broadcasting the station in Arabic and English using the name Al Quds Arabic Radio, with studios in Ramallah. This continued from 1948 until 1967, when it ceased broadcasting after the Six Day War.■