Starving in Virtual Israel
ESSAY / Sheli Teitelbaum
IT'S BEEN A WOEBEGONE YEAR FOR US VIRTUAL Israelis, out here on the edge of the Digital Diaspora, our cyber-homeland. Only a year ago, we were all living in a Promised Land of fast and free-floating pixels. News junkies could pull the entire Hebrew-language print content of Ha'aretz off the Net, six days a week, gratis. The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem made its daily Hebrew press digest available on the Hebrew University server. The Hebraically challenged could avail themselves of selected articles from The Jerusalem Report, as well as The Jerusalem Post and Globes.
Expatriate electronic media hounds could find cyber-solace in free webcasts of Israel Radio's Reshet Bet radio station, daily Channel 1 television newscasts, the weekly "Popolitika" TV slugfest, the Friday night variety shows, and "Tekumah," the jubilee history of Israel. This quintessential cornucopia came courtesy of the Artificia website, along with added treats, periodically, from IDF Radio, the thenpirate station Arutz 7, and some of the smaller regional stations bravely dipping their toes into this new medium.
Those of us who came to rely upon such broadcasts turned in each night blessing our various benefactors and their offspring. I even gave away my short-wave radio.
Then the boom fell.
First Ha'aretz closed down its free Hebrew site, restricting access to those willing to pay a hefty subscription fee. Artificia followed suit, and then, 21 of the 22 episodes through "Tekumah" hit the skids altogether. The Israel Broadcasting Authority filed a lawsuit barring the electronic re-broadcasts although it had initially, allegedly, agreed to them. Arti-ficia assured its subscribers that service would resume once the matter was resolved. But a year later, both Artificia and Reshet Bet's official website are still posting "Temporarily closed" notices.
Still, in the past few weeks, we have been offered two sources of partial salvation. Israel's commercial second television channel has launched a free website (www.israelnews2.co.il) featuring brief audio and video highlights from its daily newscasts and from such public interest shows as "Meet the Press" and "Ulpan Shishi" (its Friday news feature show). But these selections, while welcome, are no match for the broadcasts-in-toto that Artificia used to deliver.
And a privately held Israeli company, Spectrum Telecom Inc., has debuted IsraeLive (www.israelive.com), offering fee-based access to an assortment of regional radio stations, from Radio Tzafon (out of Ma'alot in the North), via Radio Yerushalayim, to Radio Darom (out of Beersheba), with various other semi-obscure broadcasters in between.
There is something here for everyone - ranging across all kinds of Hebrew pop, sports updates, cooking slots and interminable talk shows for the abused, the distressed and the politicians. But while we virtual Israelis pride ourselves on our grasp of local developments, some of these stations are a little parochial even for our needs. I am not sure I need to hear the mayor of Beersheba's thoughts on garbage collection, or to get yard-by-yard directions to the annual corduroy pants blowout sale in Afulah.
Back during the 60s, the Fabulous (and now politically incorrect) Furry Freak Brothers, of underground comic-book fame, used to say that dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope. Somewhat along those lines, IsraeLive will get you through times of no Artificia better, say, than a kick in the leg with a frozen boot. But it doesn't cut it as a substitute for our lost, lamented Israel Radio and Channel 1.
The burning question out here at the edge of the Digital Diaspora is what, if anything, does the Israel Broadcasting Authority have in mind for us now. Israel Radio broadcasts are available to short-wave owners free of charge, so why not to net-surfers? The beauty of the Web, as Canada's CBC, London's BBC, Germany's Deutsche Welle and sundry other government-funded broadcasters have discovered, is that it offers an elegant, relatively inexpensive means for a country to put its best foot, and its most human face, forward.
I'll bet most of us virtual Israelites would even be prepared to pay the "Agra," the despised licence fee reluctantly forked out by real Israelites, for the privilege of staying connected.
And that's the news from the Digital Diaspora, where all the modems are fast, all the computers up to snuff, and all of the websites worth lingering.