Right-wing media star Yinon Magal is the face of a back-to-tradition resurgence

Photos: Ezra Trabelsi, Avraham Katanov

Right-wing media star Yinon Magal is both loved and loathed, his themes few and simple: total victory over Hamas, clipping the wings of the left-wing elites who still dominate Israel’s power centers, and the preservation of the country’s Jewish character. A Shabbos observer who puts on tefillin daily yet will never wear a yarmulke in public, he’s a banner for the New Right and the back-to-roots shift in the public domain

Just when you thought we’d hit Peak Matching — that every possible crowdfunding campaign had been seen and done — along came Israel’s right-wing media star Yinon Magal.

Last month, in the wake of the High Court’s move to defund the yeshivah system, Magal’s hundreds of thousands of followers woke up to a post.

“One of the most moving things that I’ve merited to do,” he wrote to his fans, alongside a picture of himself with a kollel avreich. “A partnership agreement (like in the days of Yissachar and Zevulun) in which I pay a stipend each month to an avreich (above draft age), and the merit of his learning is divided between us. Together let’s increase all the Torah learning we can!”

Within hours, the game was on. Under a blizzard of announcements headed, “Brothers, Partners,” a shaven-headed TV presenter was pictured with an avreich with long peyos, a soccer star had adopted a Yissachar, and the campaign was well on the way to 1,500 partnerships, totaling over a million shekels.

In purely financial terms, the whole thing was a flash in the pan, dwarfed by the scale of the Israeli yeshivah world’s problems. But amid a bitter societal clash over the chareidi draft, its real value lay in the context. It was a resounding declaration that for many traditional and secular Israelis, Torah study should be supported, not targeted.

Before it was swallowed in the flashflood of the Israeli news cycle, the campaign highlighted the unique influence of its creator. A chest-thumping, ratings-chasing media wizard, Yinon Magal, 55, is straight out of MAGA central casting, broadcasting nightly on Channel 14, Israel’s upstart Fox News equivalent. Part of a wider revolution that has finally broken the Israeli left’s iron grip on the media, his current-affairs talk show, HaPatriotim, now draws audiences in the hundreds of thousands. When Bibi Netanyahu made it the venue for his first interview since October 7, ratings climbed to levels only enjoyed by top entertainment or sports shows.

Magal’s themes — hammered home with a combination of satire, wit and forceful argument — are few and simple: the need for total victory over Hamas, the failings of the left-wing elites who still dominate Israel’s power centers, and the fight to preserve the country’s Jewish character. As he wages verbal battle, his primary weapon is showmanship. “Oyoyoy!” — his frequent riposte to left-wing hand-wringing and liberal feinschmecking — has become a trademark.

Loved and loathed in equal measure for his pugilistic style, Yinon Magal leaves few Israelis indifferent. But to outsiders, he’s an enigma. Visit his home and there is evidence everywhere of his observance. Among the pile of books and bills on his dining room table are a Tanya and a Gemara. There’s a picture of the Beis Hamikdash on his wall. He puts on tefillin daily, keeps Shabbos and kashrus. Yet outwardly he retains the trappings of the secularism he was raised with: He lives in secular northern Tel Aviv and doesn’t wear a kippah during the week.

Understand the complexities of Yinon Magal and his world, and you’re a long way to fathoming the New Right that has risen in Israel over the last few years — one that after last year’s anti-government protests leans more conservative, religious, and Bibi-ist than ever before.

Magal is a parable and symbol of something bigger than himself; the avatar of a deep, incremental shift that has quietly transformed Israeli society and politics over the last couple of decades.

“I’m a dos,” he says, employing the derogatory term that secular Israelis use for religious people. More importantly, he’s hardly an outlier. “There are vast numbers of people who look secular like me but who really treasure Jewish tradition. They understand that the left-wing attempt to draft chareidim by force is just part of a wider assault on the Jewish character of the country.”