Legendary Israeli television anchor and documentarian Haim Yavin, the Jewish state’s first TV news host who for decades was the face and voice of the evening broadcast of what had been the country’s only channel, died Wednesday at the age of 93.

Yavin’s news presenting career spanned more than 40 years and saw him at the forefront of many politically significant events, including the 1977 election in which Menachem Begin led the Likud party to power and put an end to three decades of Labor party rule, and the 1995 assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Known as “Mr. Television,” he was a founding member of Israel’s first televised news program, Mabat LaHadashot, and hosted the daily news roundup show from its inception in 1968 until 2008. He was awarded the Israel Prize for communications in 1997.

Yavin, formerly Heinz Kluger, was born in Germany in 1932, and his family immigrated to then-British Mandate Palestine in 1933.

His first foray into the media industry came in 1956, while he was studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, when he secured a job as a news anchor and music presenter at Israel’s public domestic radio station, Kol Yisrael, part of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, a predecessor to today’s Kan public broadcaster.

He later moved to the radio station’s documentary department, where he remained until the launch of Israel’s first television channel — Channel 1.

In 1968, Yavin joined the founding team of Mabat LaHadashot and presented its first-ever episode, which focused primarily on the hijacking of El Al flight 426 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Between 1971 and 1974, he was the Israel Broadcasting Authority’s US correspondent.

Yavin’s coverage of the 1977 Knesset election is remembered both for being the first time exit polls were broadcast on live........

© The Times of Israel