IBA English news

Thank you for “IBA English z’l?” (Editorial, October 14). It said everything I would have liked to say but couldn’t.

The demise of the IBA English news is a huge personal loss in my life. It was my lifeline to what has been happening in and around Israel, told from an Israeli perspective that owned up to infrequent mistakes and explained the other mysteries that interweave through the daily running of this special country.

Due to my inability to understand the fast-flowing Hebrew on other stations, my television watching now drops to near zero because the IBA news was a focal point of my day. If I missed it at 4 p.m., I knew I could catch it on METV at 7 p.m.

Those of us lacking fluent Hebrew are as deserving of the real stuff as any other language group in Israel.

In mourning,

GOLDIE SPIELER Jerusalem

Unbelievable! Subjected as we English speakers are to a diet of unremittingly biased anti-Israel “news” from the BBC, Sky and French television, what do we do? Close down!

The IBA English news provided a viewpoint about the Israel-Palestinian conflict that one hopes helped a little toward understanding an intractable problem. It provided a level of hasbara (public diplomacy) that sadly seems missing from our official policies.

What message is being imparted? In a world where English is the language of diplomacy, would it not be a better idea to increase the amount of quality news in English? I can still remember the top-flight discussions that took place on the air with IBA news presenter Leah Zinder not such a long time ago.

LESLIE GREENBAUM Pardes Hanna

IBA News has passed away. There are no mourners.

MICHAEL PLASKOW Netanya