New Israeli Competitor to Al Jazeera

We’ve just learned from our colleague, Vicki Marantz, about a new international news channel, “i24 News,” coming out of Israel and broadcasting in English, French and Arabic. One of its prime-time English-language anchors is a 32 year-old Israeli-Arab woman (Lucy Aharish) who grew up in the mostly Jewish town of Dimona in the Negev.

There are plans to expand to American television sets early in 2014. Click here for its English website including this link to the live broadcast: http://www.i24news.tv/en/tv/live. Also, there’s an article about this in The New Yorker.

A promising example of i24 News programming has just been reported by a J Street staffer: J Street’s Israel program director Yael Patir debated a spokeswoman for the settler movement. Vicki Marantz promises to keep us informed on the station’s progress: “I’ll watch to see if it’s worthwhile.”