Iran targets Israelis with new Hebrew TV channel

Tehran greenlights launch of international television channel broadcasting in Hebrew, with aim of promoting Iranian state propaganda among Israelis.

By World Israel News Staff

Iran is preparing to launch an international television channel broadcasting in Hebrew, Iranian media have reported, in a bid by Tehran to foment change within Israel.

According to a report by the Iranian state media outlet IRNA, President Masoud Pezeshkian has ordered the national broadcasting company, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, to establish a Hebrew television channel.

The new channel will target Israelis in the Jewish state and abroad and is intended to “respond to the media propaganda of the Zionist regime and its affiliates,” according to the directive signed by Pezeshkian.

The order defined its target audience as “everybody speaking Hebrew in the world.”

The move was first proposed last September by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. The president’s signature marked the final hurdle before the plan is implemented.

The new television channel is the latest in a long-running effort by Iran to appeal directly to Israelis with Hebrew-language media outlets in order to alter public opinion in Israel.

In 2022, the Tasnim News Agency, a semi-official outlet affiliated with Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, launched a Hebrew website.

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While the new Hebrew television channel will promote Tehran’s narratives regarding the Israel-Arab conflict and the June war between Iran and Israel, it is also expected to exploit internal political and social divisions within Israel.

In recent months, Iranian media outlets have heavily covered the ongoing ultra-Orthodox draft crisis in Israel, giving significant attention to stories of anti-draft protests, the arrests of draft-refusing yeshiva students, and reports of several dozen yeshiva students leaving Israel to avoid the draft.

Past Iranian content in Hebrew on the Tasnim website has also promoted criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.