Grapevine, May 17, 2024: Power of the press

Israeli journalists win prizes

WITHIN THE span of a week, two organizations will award prizes to Israeli journalists.

On Monday, May 20, Yonit Levi, Channel 12’s longtime news anchor, will receive the Robert St. John Chair in Objective Middle East Reporting Award at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s annual meeting of its Board of Governors.

“Quality journalism is the hallmark of a robust democracy, so it is our privilege to award Yonit for her professionalism and initiative over the past 20 years and especially the last couple of years, which have been especially challenging,” said BGU  President Prof. Daniel Chamovitz.

Following the noonday ceremony, Levi and fellow journalist Nadav Eyal will hold a conversation.

Levi has been Channel 12’s primetime news anchor for the past 20 years. Not long after starting out in 2003 as the program’s co-anchor, she was appointed lead news anchor. Her broadcasting career began on Army Radio, where she was a foreign news reporter. Due to her excellent command of English, she was a natural for interviewing top-ranking global figures. The long list includes, among others, US presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama (who called her a “groundbreaking anchor”), George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, as well as secretaries of state Antony Blinken, Mike Pompeo, and Hillary Clinton; former ambassador Nikki Haley; and former British prime minister Tony Blair, as well as international icons such as Bill Gates, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and comedians Jon Stewart and Conan O’Brien. One of her most recent interviews was with US Ambassador Jack Lew, who tweeted afterwards that he appreciated the opportunity to speak about the strength of the US commitment to Israel and, in the course of the interview, said that nothing has fundamentally changed in the relationship between the US and Israel, despite all the publicity about the delay in shipping certain weapons; everything else is going through as usual, he added.

In addition to anchoring the news and interviewing global personalities, Levi runs a weekly podcast with respected British journalist Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian under the title “UNHOLY: Two Jews on the News.”

The podcast’s focus is Israeli and world affairs from a Jewish angle, and it has attracted thousands of listeners from more than 120 countries.

Chicago-born Robert St. John, in the course of his 70 years in journalism, distinguished himself as a much-celebrated author, foreign correspondent, and lecturer.

He covered major events in the Middle East, such as Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, the Eichmann trial, and, at the age of 80, the 1982 war with Lebanon.

He wrote a dozen books about the Middle East and Judaism, including well-reviewed biographies of Gamal Abdel Nasser and David Ben-Gurion. An unabashed non-Jewish spokesman for Jewish causes, he maintained close ties with the Jewish state until his passing at the age of 100. Ben-Gurion called him “our goyisher Zionist.”

Broadcast journalism

ANOTHER CHANNEL 12 journalist, Elad Simchayoff, will be awarded the B’nai B’rith World Center Prize for broadcast journalism on Sunday, May 26, at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. Prizes are awarded annually to broadcast and print media journalists, with one of the recipients being named as the outright winner of the award. This year, the winner is Canaan Lidor, who writes for The Times of Israel.

It will be the 32nd annual presentation of the awards, which were initiated by the late Dr. Wolf Matsdorf, a member of B’nai B’rith, a journalist, and a social worker who believed that such an award would encourage more Israeli journalists to take an interest in Jewish Diaspora communities.

The awards recognizing excellence in Diaspora reportage were named in memory of Wolf and Hilde Matsdorf. The award in the print media category is named in memory of Luis and Trudi Schydlowsky. In recent years, an award in the category of the arts, whose recipient is recognized for fostering Israel-Diaspora relations, was added in memory of famed songwriter Naomi Shemer; this year, it is veteran singer Ilanit, who, at 76 years of age and only a few months older than the state, is still going strong. She was one of the performers at the recent ceremony at the President’s Residence, in which 120 outstanding young soldiers were honored in the presence of their families. The keynote speaker at the B’nai B’rith event will be Eylon Levy, a former Israel Government spokesperson with a vast following, who will speak on “A National Home on a Hostile Frontier.”

History of film

PRE-DAWN RISERS on Independence Day who tuned in to radio Reshet Bet or Reshet Gimmel were able to enjoy a wonderful documentary on the history of film in this country, built around Moshe Edry, who was among this year’s Israel Prize laureates. The program included anecdotal tributes to deceased icons of the industry such as Menachem Golan, Shai K. Ophir, and Haim Topol, among others. Hopefully, KAN will package this program and make it available on social media platforms because it is a great contribution to Israel’s cultural achievements in the development of the state.

Unpicking historical Ashkenazi elitism

IN THE evening, after all the official Independence Day events had concluded, there was an extremely interesting interview with Shaike Levi, a former Israel Prize laureate. Levi is best known as a member of the beloved comedy trio Hagashash HaHiver (The Pale Scout), together with Gavri Banai and the late Yisrael Poliakov. Among the things that Edry, born in Morocco, and Egyptian-born Levi have in common is that they were both poor immigrant youth. They grew up in Israel during the years in which the Ashkenazi elite treated non-Ashkenazim as inferior and often looked down on them in disdain.

The upshot, as happens with any downtrodden minority, is that its members strive against discrimination, humiliation, and defeat, and they usually succeed. To this day, the most famous singers in Israel are of North African background because music was their ticket to mainstream society. Something similar happened to the African Americans and to the Jews who migrated from Eastern Europe to America. Let’s not forget that these oppressed Jews made Hollywood what it became in its hey-day. Even today, Hollywood is brimming with Jewish screenwriters, producers, directors, actors, and comedians, as well as composers whose music provide the soundtracks for some of Hollywood’s most successful productions.

Home-grown

MARKETING IS not the purview of the office of the President of the State. But exceptions to any rule may be prompted by circumstances. Thus, at the annual Independence Day reception for diplomats, hosted by President Isaac Herzog, all the fruits and vegetables served were grown in Israel; the cheeses were made from milk produced by Israeli cows, sheep, and goats; and the pastries, of course, were baked in Israel.

This was not the first time that the president’s office went out of its way to help farmers in the north and south of the country, as well as food suppliers and restaurant owners whose businesses have suffered drastically due to the evacuation of populations from surrounding communities coupled with the enormous downturn in incoming tourism.

At past receptions, the marketing was done for wines and cheeses; this time, it was done for a variety of foods, with the intention of making diplomats and other invitees aware of some of the culinary talents in Israel’s peripheral areas.

Haim Dimri’s Nichochat Haim, for example, is a boutique bakery in  which  hand-crafted baked goods are produced by people with special needs. Buza ice cream is a joint Arab-Jewish enterprise.  Don Restaurant has an intriguing variety of coffee beverages. Noor is a kosher Druze restaurant owned by Basma Hino. Four Cheeses are produced by Chef Luis Dastal of Kibbutz Mefalsim, where he also serves as a security guard on reserve duty, although his wife and children have been evacuated.

PM moved to digital

PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu was in a bind on Israel’s Independence Day. He knew that some of his opponents would disrupt the ceremony if he were present at the four main Independence Day programs, so he opted instead to send videos to the events and visit wounded soldiers at Sheba Medical Center. Most media took him to task for what they regarded as nothing more than a photo opportunity. However, if he had participated in events, he would have faced criticism for his perceived disregard for the hostage families. As a result, he apparently believed that videos and visits to wounded soldiers were the best options.

But there were people, including Rani Rahav, one of the best-known public relations executives in Israel, who tweeted that Netanyahu’s decision was a big mistake, particularly his absence from the event recognizing 120 outstanding soldiers as well as from the Israel Prize ceremony, which had already been tainted by politics.

Kafka's legacy

NEXT MONTH, on Monday, June, 3, the Israeli Writers Association will mark the 100th anniversary of the passing of prolific Czech-Jewish writer Franz Kafka with a conference at the Cameri Theater coffee shop. Kafka, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 40, had instructed his good friend Max Brod to destroy his unfinished manuscripts, but Brod failed to heed the instructions of the dying man and had several of them published. Brod, also a writer of significance, came to Palestine in 1939 and brought the Kafka materials with him. He wanted his own literary estate, in which Kafka’s works were included, to go to the National Library. But in the interim, Brod left his literary estate to his secretary, Esther Hoffe, who in return left it all to her  descendants. After a very long courtroom battle with Hoffe’s daughters, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the National Library.

At the Kafka conference, where numerous academics will participate, Dr. Jeremy Fogel of Tel Aviv University will lead a panel discussion on the court cases.

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