Legendary Israeli television anchor and documentarian Haim Yavin, the Jewish state’s first TV news host who for decades was the face and voice of the evening broadcast of what had been the country’s only channel, died Wednesday at the age of 93.
Yavin’s news presenting career spanned more than 40 years and saw him at the forefront of many politically significant events, including the 1977 election in which Menachem Begin led the Likud party to power and put an end to three decades of Labor party rule, and the 1995 assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Known as “Mr. Television,” he was a founding member of Israel’s first televised news program, Mabat LaHadashot, and hosted the daily news roundup show from its inception in 1968 until 2008. He was awarded the Israel Prize for communications in 1997.
Yavin, formerly Heinz Kluger, was born in Germany in 1932, and his family immigrated to then-British Mandate Palestine in 1933.
His first foray into the media industry came in 1956, while he was studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, when he secured a job as a news anchor and music presenter at Israel’s public domestic radio station, Kol Yisrael, part of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, a predecessor to today’s Kan public broadcaster.
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He later moved to the radio station’s documentary department, where he remained until the launch of Israel’s first television channel — Channel 1.
In 1968, Yavin joined the founding team of Mabat LaHadashot and presented its first-ever episode, which focused primarily on the hijacking of El Al flight 426 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Portrait of Haim Yavin, also known as “Mr. Television,” March 27, 2006. (Yossi Zamir/Flash90)
Between 1971 and 1974, he was the Israel Broadcasting Authority’s US correspondent.
Yavin’s coverage of the 1977 Knesset election is remembered both for being the first time exit polls were broadcast on live television in Israel, and for his dramatic announcement that Begin — the opposition leader for decades — had delivered the first election win for Israel’s right-wing since the founding of the state.
Yavin famously coined a new Hebrew word live on air that night — mahapach, roughly meaning “upheaval” or “power shift,” a word widely used to this day, including in sports to describe a situation in which a side had been behind but has now taken the lead.
Another key moment in his broadcasting career came some two decades later, when Yavin announced to the Israeli public that “the prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, has died as a result of an assassination.”
He later told the Mako news site that he hadn’t been at work at the time of the assassination, but went to the studio after his daughter told him Rabin had been shot.
“I ran to the studio, and my editor told me in my earpiece: ‘He’s dead, but you’re not allowed to announce it yet,’” he recounted. “I thought in that moment that I was going to faint.”
Channel 1 had been Israel’s only TV channel until 1992, when Channel 2 — a predecessor to today’s Channel 12 — started broadcasting.
Yavin continued to work as a presenter, producer and editor for Mabat LaHadashot until his retirement in February 2008.
In addition to being a staple of Israeli news broadcasts, Yavin was also a prolific documentarian, producing several multi-part series on topics ranging from Soviet Jewry and Israel’s political landscape to Arab Israeli society.
One of his more controversial documentaries, “Land of the Settlers,” focused on the situation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The five-episode documentary series aired in 2005 on the eve of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, to significant backlash from right-wing figures, who claimed he had misrepresented their reality.
An undated photo of Israeli news anchor Haim Yavin. (Moshe Shai/Flash90)
While remembered fondly by many, his reputation was marred in recent years by allegations of sexual misconduct.
In 2017, journalist Naomi Ron said that Yavin threw her on a bed and climbed on her while he was supposed to be sitting for a series of interviews with her.
Veteran Haaretz journalist Neri Livneh accused him that same year of propositioning her during a work meeting in the 1980s, promising her an enticing job offer if she became “very, very good friends” with him.
A year earlier, two women accused him of repeatedly touching them inappropriately or commenting on their bodies during his time at the Israel Broadcasting Authority.
He denied all allegations against him.
The Kan broadcaster — the successor to the Israel Broadcasting Authority — issued a statement on Yavin’s passing, saying “it is difficult to think of any historical event in the State of Israel in recent generations in which Yavin was not the one to convey it to the public.”
President Isaac Herzog also eulogized Yavin, saying he had “accompanied the citizens of Israel in the formative moments of our national life, with professionalism, responsibility and statesmanship.”
Yavin is survived by his wife, Yosefa, and three of their four children.
He will be buried at the Givat Hashlosha Cemetery on Friday.
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