Sunday, August 9, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
MEDIA-MIDDLE EAST: Hebrew TV Goes on the Air in Cairo
Cam McGrath
- The first ever Egyptian television broadcast in Hebrew began with a message of hope to the Israeli viewers it hoped would be watching.
“Happy New Year! We hope that every Israeli citizen will have his hopes fulfilled in the new year, and that it will be a good and blessed year,” Hassan Ali Hassan, head of Egypt’s new Nile Hebrew service said.
State-owned Nile TV launched the daily broadcast on Tuesday to reach Hebrew speakers, particularly in Israel, so as to clarify the Arab stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other regional issues.
“The purpose is to present the Egyptian and Arab point of view on events in the Middle East to Hebrew speakers and as a kind of rapprochement between Arabs and Jews,” Youssef Rizqallah, head of International Nile TV, told IPS. “Our target audience is anyone watching Nile TV, whether here or in Europe– or in Israel.”
He said the idea of Hebrew broadcasts was conceived during a meeting of Arab information ministers last August, when members discussed ways of supporting the Palestinian Intifada (uprising), now in its sixteenth month.
Egypt’s Minister of Information Safwat el-Sherif agreed to allocate funds to media programming that would espouse the Arab cause and “call for peace based on justice and the legitimate rights on the Palestinian people”.
The 30-minute Hebrew service is carried by Nile TV’s terrestrial and satellite broadcasts at 6 pm daily, with an hour allotted to programming on Saturdays. The station plans to expand the service to two hours in the future.
Programmes include news and political commentary as well as reviews of the Egyptian press.
“They also include cultural programmes that provide information on Egyptian civilisation and Islam,” Rizqallah said.
In its inaugural broadcast, the service welcomed Israelis to participate in the project despite an official ban on hosting Israelis on Egyptian television.
“We would be pleased to host any Israeli who would like to express his opinion and create a dialogue and maintain the connection,” Hassan told viewers.
Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979, but have maintained chilly relations ever since. The outbreak of the Intifada in September 2000 further soured ties and prompted Egypt to withdraw its ambassador from Tel Aviv in protest against Israel’s handling of the issue.
The new Hebrew service is aimed in part at warming relations between the two neighbours.
With just a handful of Egyptians able to speak fluent Hebrew, finding presenters for the service was difficult. Hassan and the five other Egyptians presenting programmes were drawn from Radio Cairo’s Hebrew Service, which has operated continually since 1954.
Their voices have been heard on the airwaves for years, but it was the first time for television viewers to see their faces.
Hala Hashish, deputy director of Nile TV, said the programmes seek to counter the bias of Israeli media.
“One reason for the persistence of the Israeli-Arab conflict is that the two parties are separated from one another because of the stereotypes presented by the Israeli media,” she told a Cairo weekly. “It is time to act so that our opinions do not reach them only via the Israeli media, which is far from being impartial.”
The big question in everybody’s mind is whether or not Israelis will watch. No figures have been given, but it is widely known that almost all Israelis get their television either through cable or satellite channels that do not carry the Nile TV signal. The only certain recipients of the programming are the staff at the Israeli Embassy in Cairo.
Embassy spokeswoman Ayelet Yehiav said she supported the idea of attempting to bridge cultural and political gaps.
“But if the people who are involved in producing these broadcasts have a notion that by presenting only criticism toward Israel, smearing it, even inciting against it … they would succeed in reaching the Israeli audience, I really doubt it,” MSNBC quoted her as saying.
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