Sense of Spectrum

At eight o’clock on a recent Tuesday night, two dozen of those viewers were sitting in the lobby of Channel 14’s studios. Located on the edge of an industrial park in Modi’in, central Israel, the complex bears unmistakable signs of the network’s right-wing orientation. Posters of fallen IDF soldiers abound, along with signs calling for “Total Victory” — a rejoinder to the ubiquitous left-wing calls for an immediate ceasefire with Hamas.

The group gathered in the lobby are teed up for their evening’s entertainment as live audience members at the biggest show in conservative news. Mostly older, they’re people you might find anywhere in Israel running a grocery or driving a taxi. As they wait for Yinon’s program to start, the group sits looking at a large screen featuring the channel’s ongoing broadcasts, commenting excitedly.

David, a Petach Tikvah man in his 60s and former air force mechanic who’s clearly the chevrehman of the group, discourses about the failures of Israel’s leadership. “Bibi — what’s Bibi worth? Give me Putin any day. He would have flattened Gaza, turned it into a parking lot.”

The men and women gathered around the table with the backgammon board and empty coffee cups nod in agreement. “I’m visiting from Los Angeles,” says one woman. “I follow Yinon over there — he’s the only one who talks sense.”

Harel, a man in his 30s from the working-class city of Holon, who has turned up with his young daughter, is eager to talk. A cigarette distributor by day, he used to watch the main left-wing news stations, Channel 12 and 13, but then discovered Channel 14. It gave voice to the frustration that he was feeling. “When the Kaplan anti-government protests broke out, I saw that we could elect a right-wing government — but that it wouldn’t be able to pass laws. And suddenly I discovered that Yinon Magal was saying the same things.”

That sense that “Kaplan” was a turning point is common to many Channel 14 viewers. Founded in 2014 as Channel 20 by Yitzchak Mirashvili — who also owns Radio Kol Hai, a leading chareidi station  — the network was the first attempt to create a big conservative network in Israel. While not a religious channel per se, it was identifiably religious-friendly from its inception.  The network’s orientation became clear when it got into legal trouble for refusing to feature reform rabbis. Unlike the other big networks, Channel 14 doesn’t broadcast on Shabbos. A number of the male presenters wear yarmulkes, some women a head covering, and a range of religious and chareidi guests is the norm.

Last week, as Shivah Asar B’Tammuz ended, Maggie Tabibi, the 8 p.m. news anchor, interrupted the broadcast to say that she was breaking her fast. She took a cup of water, made a brachah, and then continued with the programming. It was a sight that would have been hallucinatory on a major Israeli news station until just a few years ago.

Those stances meant that its viewing figures languished for years, until Magal joined in 2019 with his show. It was slow going at first, but then came the justice reform protests and ratings for the network took off, tracking the left-right clash. According to Israel’s official ratings body, the HaPatriotim show has the second-highest rating for the 9:00 to 10:30 p.m. prime-time slot. Some, though, claim that the official data (collected from a sampling of a mere 700 homes), is unreliable and that HaPatriotim is actually the most-watched program in Israel.

Inside Channel 14’s headquarters, there is none of the normal antagonistic sense of “us” and “them” that normally accompanies the religious-secular interaction in Israel, particularly when the religious in question are chareidi. Instead, there is a sense of a religious spectrum. As the studio audience lines up outside the small on-site shul to receive a HaPatriotim T-shirt to wear on-set, Elazar and Chaim, a duo of chareidi men from Bnei Brak, explain what brings them. “Yinon says things that resonate with me more than what the chareidi media says,” Elazar remarks. “Often he defends yeshivah students more vigorously than the religious newspapers.”

Total Victory

Suitably pumped by the studio manager — “Everyone clap hard for Yinon!” — the audience settles in and the show begins. It’s immediately obvious why Yinon Magal is a media star.

“Todah, todah! Thank you for joining us!” he booms, turning to the audience right and left, never breaking eye contact with the cameras. Dropping his voice into a singsong, he continues the bombastic patter: “And thank you for joining us from your homes, ladies and gentlemen, for HaPatriotim — the flagship program of the Middle East, although even in America there’s no program like this.” Adjusting his Trump-style baseball cap emblazoned with “Total Victory,” he focuses on the camera, exuding the adrenaline that projects directly into countless homes across the country as he introduces the evening’s panelists.

Every night, Magal hosts a revolving cast of commentors, military experts, and politicians from across the religious and secular spectrum: The common factor is that they are all identifiably right-wing. The heavily-satirical content features regular items like the “Nightly Lapid” — a long- running gag highlighting Yair Lapid’s frequently contradictory statements — and other sendups of errant politicians. One-liners, good sound bites, and humor are prized, drawing applause from the audience, and the impresario is Magal himself.

“I’m innately an actor, a showman,” he says. “When the camera goes on, I give a performance. Just like a salesman who has to know how to sell, we sell ideological merchandise, packaged in an attractive way.”

Part of that showmanship involves his fast-moving introductions, and nicknames for his panelists. Yedidya Meir — a leading religious journalist whose wife Sivan Rahav-Meir was at one time more famous than he as a TV presenter for the mainstream media — gets an unusual title. The “Ba’al Shel Tov,” Magal calls him, a nod to Meir’s penchant for chassidic quotations and erstwhile role as the “husband of” his more famous wife. Similarly, Irit Linur, a Tel Aviv novelist and journalist whose politics have moved to the right, is introduced with Magal’s trademark exaggerated hand-gestures and a grandiose title of, “The light amid the dark, from the Tzahala neighborhood,” which rhymes neatly in Hebrew.

On set at HaPatriotim, Magal’s role as both star and director of the show is obvious. His main objective is to keep the pace lively. Keeping an eye on the monitor showing when he’s off-camera, Magal gestures to his panelists to wrap up their points, while also signaling to the audience when to applaud.

Tonight, the show highlights the kind of firmly right-wing content that has seen HaPatriotim’s ratings double since the beginning of the war. A tweet by former chief of staff and current opposition figure Benny Gantz is projected on the screen.

“True victory is bringing home the hostages,” it reads — a reference to a potential hostage deal, which is seen by the right as handing victory to Hamas.

“I don’t agree,” Magal says to applause. “The job of a chief of staff is to defeat the enemy in the field, to destroy his soldiers. Of course we have to bring the hostages home, but the only way that’s possible is through military pressure on Hamas. Commanders who are constantly talking about ceasefires can’t win.”

Yoni Chetbon, a kippah-wearing former special forces officer and ex-Knesset member who’s sitting on tonight’s panel, weighs in. “When I was a mid-ranking officer in the Second Lebanon War in 2006, these were the types of officers who led us.” Left unsaid – but well understood by everyone in the room – is the outcome of that compromising mind-set. “There’s a gap between the regular soldiers who want victory,” he pronounces, “and senior officers who are led by other values.”

Faith Bloc

He may host passionate and articulate panelists, but the meteoric success of HaPatriotim is clearly due to its front man, who is no mere talking head. He’s a passionate ideologue, with a vision based on history and a fear for the Jewish future, who sees only one way forward for Israel: a return to its Jewish roots.

“Secular Zionism did something very significant. It shook off exile and founded a country. But like any secular ideology, which inevitably fades over time, the ideology of the kibbutzim hasn’t endured. That same danger faces the State of Israel as a whole: If it doesn’t return to Judaism, it will disappear.”

Yinon Magal’s views are shaped by his understanding of the past. “You see this throughout Jewish history. In the battle between the Perushim and the Tziddukim, between the Maccabees and the Hellenizers, who wins, who survives to tell the story? Those who keep the Torah and Jewish tradition — they survive. The left wing and Reform assimilationists here and in America who change halachah and invent a new Judaism — they’re irrelevant to the Jewish future. I understood that the Jewish future is like a speeding train, and you have to either jump on board or be left behind.”

The lines are classic, uncompromising Magal. But, he says, they are the thoughts of hundreds of thousands of others like him — who merely lack the platform to share them.

“A majority of the Jews in Israel see things like this. Look at this channel’s success and my hundreds of thousands of online followers. They’re afraid to speak about it publicly, but they grew up with a connection to Jewish tradition and want more.”

Today’s Israel, Magal says, is divided into two blocs. One is the secular left, which still dominates power nodes like the media, academia, the army, and courts. The right controls the Knesset, as they have done mostly since 1977, but struggles to govern because it lacks influence across other power centers.

What’s changed over the last 20 years, explains Magal, is the rise of what he calls the “Gush Ha’emuni,” or Faith Bloc — a coalition spanning the whole spectrum of right-wing and religious sub-groupings (and a throwback to the name Gush Emunim, the original settlement movement of the ‘70s and ‘80s). “This is the place of Israelis who see themselves first and foremost as Jews, who have a sense of Mi L’Hashem Eilai. Most Israeli Jews today belong to this Faith Bloc. That’s reflected in politics where a strong majority are in the Likud, or in chareidi and religious Zionist parties. And because of the birthrate, it’s only set to grow.”

Bibi Sitting

That Manichean view of Israeli society led Yinon Magal toward a de facto alliance with Bibi Netanyahu. Having served in Naftali Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi party, he was forced to resign amid a personal scandal in 2015, which led to a wilderness period. By the end of the decade, he emerged as a formidable ally of Bibi.

Frequently accused of blind devotion to the Likud leader, sticking with him through everything including the disaster of October 7, Magal claims that he’s clear-sighted about Netanyahu, although his defense of Israel’s long-term leader is unsatisfying. “We all — right and left — bear responsibility for the failures of October 7. But Bibi is the right leader of the bloc now.”

Given Yinon Magal’s reach and right-wing orientation, it was no surprise that Netanyahu chose HaPatriotim as the venue for his first interview with an Israeli media outlet since October 7. But it was a coup nonetheless — and sent ratings through the roof. The Prime Minister was greeted with a long ovation from the studio audience, and appeared comfortable among friends.

But the interview drew a sharp contrast between Bibi and his host. “I think that after the war, Israel should take control of a portion of the Gaza Strip, to punish the terrorists for what they did,” Magal told the Prime Minister, quoting a theme that has widespread traction on the right. Bibi — aware that the issue is explosive in Washington — was forced to play the role of moderate. “That’s not a realistic idea,” he replied.

Yinon Magal uses the episode to highlight what he feels are Bibi’s limitations as leader — and what comes next. “As the head of the Faith Bloc, you can’t categorically say, especially on the week when we read about the Meraglim, that it’s unrealistic to settle the whole of the Land of Israel. Is any of Judaism ‘realistic’? Is putting on tefillin every day realistic? That’s not how we measure things. He should have indicated that it’s not currently feasible because of international pressure.”

That response — what opponents would dismiss as hair-splitting — is actually classic Yinon Magal, mingling fierce ideology with spiritualism and faith. It’s a symptom of the religiously-fused belief that characterizes the New Right that is fast superseding the Likud old guard. In the short term that future is all about protecting the faith-driven Gush Ha’emuni. “The great test won’t be surviving the October 7 fallout, it’ll be surviving the day after Bibi — if Mashiach doesn’t come.”

Eastern Inspiration

As the son of a left-wing army officer, educated in an exclusive Jerusalem high school, drafted into the military’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit and then on to a career in Army Radio, how did Yinon Magal emerge as media frontman for the New Right? At least in retrospect, his father’s unusually firm views on Jewish identity seem to have paved the way.

“I grew up in a secular house with a deep Jewish identity,” says Magal. “For my father — a member of the Achdut Ha’Avodah socialist-Zionist party — army service and our education were the most important things. He had a lot of criticism for chareidim who didn’t serve in the army, but he also used to ask us, ‘Who are you closer to — the Druze who serves alongside you in the IDF, or to the chareidi in Brooklyn?’ ”

The right answer, for Yochanan Magal, was the latter — far from a given in the secular milieu in which he and his wife Edna raised their four children. “The message was that you’re first and foremost a Jew. My father’s own parents were chalutzim — part of the movement who drained the swamps in Emek Yizrael. They weren’t the Marxist far-left — they were connected to the Tanach and Jewish tradition.”

Exhibit A in that regard was the music  they listened to: Along with standard Israeli fare were Carlebach songs and Ish Chasid Hayah — a Jewish folklore-based theatre show that drew heavily on themes from the old world.

In what is a firmly established Israeli cliché, the future media star “found himself” in India, post-army service. “I loved the spirituality, the music, and that drew me to my own traditions.”

Magal became a self-professed “chozer b’teshuvah” along the way, noshing from religious Zionism, Chabad, and encounters with the yeshivah world. After returning from India, he lived in Jerusalem’s eclectic, religious Nachlaot neighborhood and — drawn to the Sephardic mysticism and warmth — enjoyed spending time in the local Kurdish shul.

Clearly, though, the TV presenter’s outward trappings reflect the incomplete transformation that he underwent. He sits for an interview and photo shoot with no kippah because it’s a weekday, and his explanation for that shows that he’s torn between two worlds.

“Why don’t I wear a kippah? I’ve come to a certain status quo, and maybe that will change, but I feel that to be the presenter of the change that I want to create in Israeli society, it’s better to look like this.”

That kind of fence-sitting reflects the amorphous religious world which legion traditional Israelis inhabit.

“I made a decision in my life: to be a bit more observant than my parents,” he says. “I say that to my four children as well — try to be a bit more observant than me. They live in Tel Aviv, so I don’t know what will happen to them, but that’s what I want.”

Call of Duty

After the disaster of October 7, the chareidi draft issue is perhaps the deepest test of whether the emergence of the Gush Ha’emuni represents a fundamental societal shift, or just a fragile political alliance of convenience. Emotions are running high on all sides: Chareidim are determined to preserve the yeshivah world — both to protect Torah study and to shield those who aren’t learning from the secularism of the army and wider Israeli society. In contrast, Likudniks and the dati-leumi parties hold IDF service to be a sacred duty — for security, social, and in some cases religious reasons. The issue has threatened to tear apart Netanyahu’s coalition.

As a key figure in Israel’s New Right, Yinon Magal’s outsize influence is important. The message he drives home on his program is that any change should come through respectful dialogue, not brute force.

“Yeshivah bochurim shouldn’t need to draft — they are doing their job for Am Yisrael. For anyone not learning, if the army can suit itself to them so that they can remain chareidi, then they should be able to serve the country in the right framework. But those changes should be made in an atmosphere of love and respect,” he says

Magal’s caveat — that the IDF build frameworks to ensure that chareidim stay chareidim — is crucial because, he says, there is a legitimate sense that the current setup is intended to secularize the chareidim. “The left doesn’t want chareidim to draft — they want to draft chareidim, which is a very different thing. This campaign they’ve built on a wrenching social issue in the middle of a war has been a way to crumble Bibi’s government from inside and bring it down.”

It’s positions like these that have given Magal tremendous “street-cred” in the chareidi world, with many younger chareidim appreciative of his fierce defense of the community. But whatever the power of his megaphone, how many people on the right see the draft issue as Magal does? “Many people do,” he responds. “Maybe not the liberal wing of the dati-leumi community — people like Naftali Bennett, who are closer to the secular point of view — but many others do.”

Yoni Chetbon also views the draft issue against this background. Long before HaPatriotim first aired — and in fact alongside Magal in his brief Knesset stint — Chetbon enjoyed his few minutes of fame over a previous incarnation of the draft issue. As a member of Naftali Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi party in 2014, when the party allied with Yair Lapid who’d made drafting the chareidim a signature policy, Chetbon defied his party leader and refused to vote for the coercive draft measure.

He paid the price for his defiance, losing his Knesset seat shortly after. Although he himself wants to see chareidim join the IDF, like Yinon Magal, he says that the mid-war attempt has to be viewed in its proper context, as a tool to bring down the right.

“There’s an identity crisis in Israel about the country’s Jewish future,” Magal says. “The last two years of protests from the left weren’t about justice reform, but about the elite perception that the country has changed and is becoming more traditional.

“That’s what we saw among the masses of soldiers preparing to go into Gaza — seemingly non-religious soldiers wearing tzitzis, singing, and saying Shema. These videos were seen everywhere, and they were a sign that we’re a different country than ten or fifteen years ago. That trend is unstoppable. Israel is changing and so the left want to use the draft issue to splinter the right.”

Yinon Magal’s answer to that attempt was the Yissachar-Zevulun campaign. “I wanted to create unity among the different factions of the right, and to show chareidim that average Israelis aren’t against them.”

In terms of raising awareness, Magal says, the campaign was effective. “Rav Dov Kook’s son-in-law told me that for the first time, people have started to come into his kollel in Teveria wanting to donate money, and that Rav Kook thought that it was because of the awareness raised on Channel 14.”

Historic Mission

It’s almost 11 p.m. by the time the screens go dark and Magal hands over to the latenight show in the adjacent studio, and then the selfies begin. “Yinon! Yinon!” go the greetings from the audience, and his mega-watt smile doesn’t falter until the last punter from Holon and Petach Tikvah is satisfied. On and off air, in the studio or the street and for most of his day, things are much the same: He’s on show in one way or another. And for this impresario, showtime is message time.

As we sit in the emptying studio, with the technicians folding away their gear for the night, he’s still focused on that message: With the chareidi draft law reaching boiling point, and IDF draft notices showing up in chareidi cities across the country, he’s laser-focused on the fallout for the Faith Bloc.

“It’s very important to me that there is loyalty within the bloc. There shouldn’t be a repeat of history, where in difficult moments like the Gaza disengagement, the national-religious parties couldn’t rely on the chareidim or that over the draft issue, the chareidim can’t rely on the national-religious. That’s a mistake.”

Once more, the showman-frontman of Israel’s New Right returns to the big picture, his vision for the big-tent traditional-religious right as the vanguard for a reinvigorated Jewish people. “Of course, the draft is a critical issue, but in this bloc, the members need to compromise. Because the Gush Ha’emuni has a meaning beyond the political. It’s a historic mission for the Jewish people.”

Echo Chamber

The explosion of Channel 14 is both an outgrowth, and expression of, the ascent of a political bloc that has been the backbone of Bibi’s years in power — especially since 2015. While today there is an entire right-wing media ecosystem — in addition to the conservative channel, there’s Galei Yisrael in radio and Yisrael Hayom, a giant pro-Bibi daily newspaper — the left-wing grip on the media was broken by the rise of social media.

“The social media platforms saved those of us on the right, by allowing other opinions besides the left’s to be expressed,” says Magal. “For decades, the ‘Peace Camp’ who invented the Palestinian people, decided that they wanted peace, gave arms and land to the Palestinian Authority, brought on us the Disengagement from Gaza — they couldn’t be criticized. There was no means for us to stop them. Journalists didn’t publish anything about Arafat’s terrorism during the Oslo years because it was forbidden to criticize him.”

Media deregulation in the early 2010s allowed the entry of conservative players, and the result is a right-wing media force that can finally punch back against the long-entrenched leftist media narrative. Although Magal shrugs off any comparison to the emergence of a powerful conservative media in America, the parallels are certainly there.

Fox News and its right-wing satellites have provided a model for a host of imitators overseas. Britain has seen the rise of GB News, and France now has an equivalent, CNews. In both cases, social media made the first crack in the wall of liberal media dominance — and conservative competitors pounced.

In Israel, the belated emergence of a true conservative media juggernaut has acted as a virtuous cycle, feeding off the rise of the Faith Bloc and reinforcing it. People no longer have to hide views that are going mainstream.

Yedidya Meir, a religious media figure and fixture on HaPatriotim, shares the same view of Yinon Magal’s role. “HaPatriotim is not a program. It’s something bigger — a voice for the silent majority. The media have traditionally represented a minority that is anti-religious and anti-right, and that’s been the reality for decades. People were used to watching media that spoke against them, and now, with the emergence of shows like HaPatriotim, suddenly they are no longer silenced. That explains the emotional, visceral response to the program. I get hugs in the street from viewers all the time.”

Radio Waves

Yinon Magal was a radio presenter long before he took to the TV studio, and some of his finest moments as a commentator are still on the airwaves. Every morning, he co-hosts a radio program on 103 FM, a central Tel Aviv station, with his polar opposite: left-wing journalist Ben Caspit.

Caspit, a staunch opponent of Netanyahu, represents the intellectual, academic, and anti-religious left-wing establishment, and is primarily identified with the secular Ma’ariv newspaper. The program is a slugfest that pits Magal and Caspit — two fast minds and lightning tongues — against each other in a bid to expose the other’s inconsistencies.

The discussions are often so heated that it is unsurprising that Caspit and Magal do not share a studio: The former broadcasts from a private studio in Holon, while the latter does so from the radio station. In terms of ratings, the formula works: “Magal and Caspit” is one of the most popular programs on the morning slot.

Faced with a top-rank opponent, each combatant is forced to employ his mental agility as he defends his politics and ideology. For Magal, it’s a chance to talk about the country’s Jewishness. When Caspit refers to the “Jewish State,” Magal retorts, “What aspect of Judaism is part of your daily life?”

A few days before we interviewed Magal, Caspit found a way to strike back at his co-host’s mockery. “What aspect of Jewish practice do I observe?” he asked metaphorically. “Every morning, I say the blessing, ‘Blessed are You, for not making me a Bibist.’ ”

Magal, as ever, is unmoved when it comes to attacks on his support for the linchpin of Israel’s right-wing coalition, saying that he represents a stepping stone in a process. “Bibi isn’t perfect but he’s right for this stage of the Jewish people’s development.”

Even though Magal is gold-dust for ratings, sometimes he’s too hot to handle. Two weeks ago, Magal discovered that he’d been suspended from the radio station, that he wasn’t logged into the weekly morning roster, due to pressure from Bank Leumi, whom Magal has been attacking on social media for their advertising boycott of Channel 14. Yet when Magal’s supporters threatened to pull their own accounts if Bank Leumi doesn’t retract its pressure, his place was restored.

Magal, for his part, was quick to reply to the suspension. “If anyone thinks we ‘re still living in the days when the Right was muzzled through Mafia scare tactics, it’s too late – those horses have left the stable.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1022)