Haim Yavin, 'Mr. Television' and Israel Prize Laureate, Dies at the Age of 93

A pioneer of Israeli public broadcasting, Yavin anchored Israel's main evening news broadcast for 40 years, led Israel Television, directed some 100 documentaries and became one of the country's most recognizable journalists and broadcasters

July 22nd, 23PM July 22nd, 23PM

Haim Yavin, a recipient of the Israel Prize for communications known as "Mr. Television," and the long-time anchor of the evening news broadcast on Israel's first TV station, died on Wednesday at the age of 93.

"With great sorrow we part from our husband, father and grandfather, who lived a long and full life," his family announced. The funeral will take place at the Givat HaShlosha cemetery at 11 A.M. on Friday. Yavin was married to Yosefa and had four children.

Yavin was born in Germany in 1932 and came to Israel with his family at the age of 1, after the Nazis came to power and his father realized the danger Jews were in. The rest of the family died in Auschwitz. His parents settled in Kiryat Binyamin (later called Kiryat Ata) and, like many German Jews at the time, were forced to take menial jobs.

Yavin struggled at school and was eventually expelled, found a job at a glass manufacturer, and then completed his matriculation during his military service. After he was released from the army, he studied Hebrew and English literature at the Hebrew University.

During his studies, he started as a newscaster on Kol Yisrael radio in 1956.

Yavin was later among the founders of Israel Television and the first anchor on the main evening news program. He stayed in this job from 1968 until 2008, earning him the moniker "Mr. Television."

The major item on his first broadcast in 1968 was the hijacking of an El Al plane to Algeria. Iwresting it from the Labor movementt

In a biography he published in 2010, Yavin said that the changeover had also led to big changes in the Broadcasting Authority. He claimed that its new managers tried to instil "right-wing values that bordered on fascist into what was broadcast. This reached a peak with the assassination of Rabin in 1995."

However, Yavin emphasized on several occasions that blatant government intervention in media broadcasting began with the first prime minister David Ben-Gurion, continuing up to the tenure of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister.

In addition to his role as news anchor, Yavin presented other programs, including a weekly news digest. He also served as the broadcasting authority's correspondent in Washington for a period, during which he experienced the greatest blunder of his career: missing the announcement of President Richard Nixon's resignation following Watergate. From 1986 to 1990 he served as Israel TV's director-general, where he produced and directed about a hundred documentaries on a range of political and social issues.

He said that this was the most significant work in his professional life. He often expressed his political opinions in these programs, claiming that the settlers had become lords of the land. He also produced a series focusing on the situation of Israel's Arab minority, in which he emphasized the institutional discrimination that led to the October 2000 riots. In 2011, he produced a series that examined the attitudes of Israelis to military service.

In a 2016 interview, he was asked about his opinion regarding the MeToo movement. Yavin said that things were different and laxer in earlier years, and that in later years all the male staff would have been accused of sexual harassment. He said he preferred it when women responded with a slap rather than by running to a lawyer. Following that interview, there were complaints accusing him of harassment, some of it on a chronic basis. Yavin denied these accusations.

After leaving his job, he would often refuse to call himself a leftist when expressing his political options. He said that Rabin's assassination was the most difficult moment in his career. "I couldn't say the word 'dead' or 'murdered'. I just said he was no longer with us," he said in an interview. Yavin said he suffered from a lack of confidence, perhaps due to a stern upbringing. He also said that he was sensitive to negative criticism appearing in newspapers.

Israel's public broadcaster Kan said: "We express our profound sorrow over the passing of Haim Yavin, 'Mr. Television.' It is difficult to imagine a defining chapter in Israel's history over the past decades that Yavin did not bring into the nation's living rooms."

"Yavin, one of the pioneers of public broadcasting in Israel, was a news director and editor, anchor of the Mabat evening news, and a gifted documentary filmmaker. With sensitivity, courage and compassion, he documented Israeli society in all its complexity. He leaves behind a remarkable body of documentary work that has become an enduring television record of Israel's history," the statement added.