Haim Yavin, one of the founders of Israel’s Channel 1 and the country’s first television news anchor, died Wednesday at the age of 93.
Yavin presented the channel’s flagship news broadcast from the launch of Israeli television in 1968 until 2008 and became one of the most recognizable figures in the country’s media history.
Over the course of his career, he worked in nearly every branch of Israeli communications, including radio, television, directing, production, documentary filmmaking, literary writing and election-night broadcasting. He was awarded the Israel Prize for communications in 1997.
“With profound sorrow, we bid farewell to my husband, our father and grandfather, who reached a ripe old age,” his family said. His funeral will be held Friday at 11 a.m. at the Givat Hashlosha cemetery.
Yavin was born Heinz Kluger in 1932 in northern Silesia, then part of Germany and now located in Poland. He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine with his family at the age of one and was raised in Kiryat Bialik.
He attended high school in Kiryat Motzkin but left before graduating and began working as a metalworker at the Phoenicia glass factory in Haifa. He completed his matriculation exams after his military service. Yavin later studied Hebrew and English literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, initially intending to become a teacher before entering broadcasting.
(Photo: Avigail Uzi)
Yavin began his media career in 1956 at the state-run Kol Yisrael radio station. In 1962, he founded the lighter entertainment-oriented radio service known as Hagel Hakal, which later became Reshet Bet. He subsequently moved to Kol Yisrael’s documentary department, where he worked as an editor, producer and presenter.
Yavin was among the founders of Channel 1, originally called Israeli Television, when it officially launched in 1968. On July 23 of that year, he presented the first television news broadcast in Israel, Mabat LaHadashot, which reported on the hijacking of an El Al aircraft to Algeria.
In the decades that followed, Yavin became the figure most closely identified with Israeli television. Alongside anchoring the news, he edited Mabat and the investigative program Mabat Sheni, which he also presented, and worked on numerous documentaries. He served as director of Israeli Television from 1986 to 1990.
The birth of ‘Mr. Television’
Over the years, Yavin became known as “Mr. Television,” a nickname he said he had never chosen for himself. “I didn’t give myself that nickname,” he told Ynet in a 2010 interview. “I regard it with an indulgent smile. You could say it is embarrassing, but flattering.”
During Israel’s 1977 election broadcast, Yavin coined the Hebrew expression “mahapach,” meaning political upheaval or reversal, after Menachem Begin’s Likud defeated the long-ruling Alignment.
The phrase became one of the most famous expressions in Israeli political culture. “The expression ‘mahapach’ caught on so strongly that since 1977, if a woman dyes her hair blonde, people immediately say she has undergone a ‘mahapach,’” Yavin recalled in a 2016 interview with Yedioth Ahronoth.
The 1977 broadcast was also the first Israeli election night to use an exit poll and announce projected results immediately after voting ended. Yavin recalled that news director Dan Shilon had shown him footage from British television demonstrating how results could be projected when polls closed. “I told him, ‘Have you gone mad? How will they approve such a thing?’” Yavin said. “He replied, ‘You’ll see that they will.’”
'Mr. Television'
(Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)
Twenty-five sample ballot boxes were secretly placed across the country with the assistance of statistician Hanoch Smith. As the results arrived, Smith told Yavin that Likud was going to win and Begin would become prime minister. “I turned as pale as the wall,” Yavin recalled.
Yavin was widely associated with the formal, restrained style of Israel’s public broadcaster and generally avoided revealing his political views while serving as an anchor. In 1981, however, he grimaced on air after a speech by Begin, later saying he had objected to the way the segment had been edited.
The expression sparked a dispute with Begin, who remarked that “Mr. Yavin’s face will remain twisted for a long time.” When the two later met, Begin clarified that he had intended the comment humorously.
Beyond news broadcasting, Yavin built an extensive documentary career. His work included The Elected and A Smoldering Ember, for which he traveled to the Soviet Union and later wrote a book of the same name.
He also created the controversial 2005 documentary series Land of the Settlers and the 2016 film Jerusalem: City of Broken Dreams.
In 2003, he became the first recipient of the Israeli Academy of Film and Television’s lifetime achievement award. “For an entire generation, Haim Yavin has accompanied the State of Israel through the television screen,” the academy wrote at the time. “He was there when it was the only option and he remains there now. He is the face of the news, the title of the announcement, the statement, the nuance, the story and the political upheaval.”
Ben-Gurion University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2009.
In May 2007, Yavin shook Israel’s media industry by announcing that he planned to step down as presenter of Mabat after approximately 40 years. He anchored the broadcast for the final time in February 2008.
He largely withdrew from public life in later years, publishing his autobiography, Over Masach, in 2010 and continuing to present radio programs.
In 2016, five women accused Yavin of sexually harassing them. He strongly denied the allegations.
Yavin is survived by his wife, Yosfa, his sons Yonatan, Miki and Hagai, and his grandchildren.