A group of high-powered, high-tech investors led by Wiz Inc. CEO Assaf Rappaport will purchase Israel’s beleaguered Channel 13. The announcement thrilled Israel’s left, which feared a takeover by another contender, French media baron Patrick Drahi.
The Union of Journalists in Israel celebrated the announcement as a victory for democracy, media pluralism and “the liberal public in Israel.” Channel 13‘s workers’ committee also cheered the news, for political reasons and because it feared Drahi would have cut staff.
Observers JNS spoke with say the new ownership won’t have much impact on Israel’s media landscape. Channel 13 will continue as a left-wing channel. As a result, its ratings will further decline, they say.
Rappaport and his associates share a left-wing worldview similar to what the channel now propounds. It means more of the same for the struggling TV channel—struggling, critics say, precisely because it is so left-wing.
In February 2023, in protest over the government’s judicial reform program, meant to overhaul Israel’s activist court system, which had become the bête noire of Israel’s right, Rappaport announced his company would move its money out of Israeli banks.
While the identities of most of the high-tech group have been kept confidential, another member is Kobi Richter, a billionaire activist also involved with the judicial reform protests. Richter called to engineer an economic collapse to bring down Prime Minister Netanyahu, whom he called an “affliction.”
“It makes for a good marriage, which isn’t to say it’s not a scary marriage. Channel 13 used to pretend it didn’t have an agenda. They then adopted an openly left-wing editorial line. I don’t say it as criticism. It’s legitimate. We’re a free and open country. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t extreme,” Itamar Fleischmann, an Israeli media personality and panelist on Channel 14’s “The Patriots” current affairs program, told JNS.
“Ultimately, I don’t think there will be significant impact here. If there will be any impact it might be to steal viewers from Channel 12 News, but even that is doubtful,” Fleischmann said. (Although Channel 12 portrays itself as balanced, Fleischmann doesn’t see any real difference politically between the two channels.)
“The ones who bought this channel are talented people, but they’re talented in high-tech. The media is a different world. There are obstacles that money doesn’t necessarily solve, like viewing habits,” he added.
Hanan Amiur, a long-time critic of the Israeli press and author of the Hebrew-language book Guide to Manipulating Public Opinion: Six Ways the Israeli Media Tells You What to Think, told JNS that Channel 13 has lost its relevance in the public discourse. Rappaport’s ownership will only deepen that irrelevance if the station moves further left.
“They’ll become like Haaretz, only broadcast,” he said, referring to the far-left newspaper that the government cut all ties to after its owner called for sanctions against Israeli leaders. “Experience shows that a decision of this kind [to increase its left-wing tilt] leads to audience abandonment,” Amiur said.
‘The more left he goes’
Effie Mordechai, founder and host of “The Ulpanometer,” a podcast analyzing Israeli print and broadcast media, agreed, telling JNS that Channel 13 faces a dilemma. “13 is a very leftist channel. It has no ratings right now. The majority of Israelis aren’t in sync with its politics. A new guy comes along with a lot of money. What is he going to do with the channel? Is he going to swing even more left? The more left he goes, the less rating he gets.”
He surmised that Rappaport will go left. Rappaport appears to have political ambitions, Mordechai said. Channel 13 will start by removing its token conservatives, such as diplomatic correspondent Moriah Asraf, he predicted. “These high-tech people are surrounded by those who think exactly like they do. They’re in a bubble. So they might believe that the nation is with them. But in the end, the ratings don’t back that up.”
Amiur expects that the new owners will at some point understand that the large sums they’re expending to sustain the channel aren’t achieving their goal of shaping public discourse. Once they digest that failure, “and realize they’re really just shelling out for a lot of fat deals for lazy journalists, whom the public doesn’t trust, they’ll try to sell the channel.”
If so, Rappaport & Co. will follow the same trajectory as the current owner, Leonard Blavatnik, who sunk hundreds of millions of shekels into Channel 13 during years of losses. Blavatnik reportedly reached his limit. This, despite being ranked as the third-richest person in the United Kingdom with a net worth of $30.1 billion.
Rappaport is himself not without resources, with a personal fortune estimated at over $2.2 billion after he sold Wiz to Google for a reported $32 billion in 2025.
Mordechai of “The Ulpanometer” said that the left in Israel requires enormous sums if it wants to influence society, arguing that the issue runs deeper than who owns what channel. There’s a struggle between progressives and traditionalists, or in Hebrew, masorati, those adhering to Jewish practices and beliefs, he said.
Israel’s progressives want a state without particularistic Jewish aspects, what they call “a state for all its citizens.” The problem progressives face is a reality in which Israelis are becoming more traditional, a trend accelerated by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
Connecting with Jewish tradition doesn’t require large financial investments, Mordechai noted. Israelis absorb it naturally at home, around the Sabbath table and during the holidays. Progressives are at a disadvantage. Not only do they have to fight against the trend, they need to create alternative realities to win people over, he said.
“Left-wing politics does not represent where the Israeli public is going right now. After Oct. 7, and the rise of [the politically conservative] Channel 14 and social media, the left, through its control of media, no longer has a monopoly on our consciousness. We see the danger and understand we cannot allow ourselves to fall prey to their ideas,” Mordechai said.
Despite their disagreements with Channel 13’s new investors, Fleischmann, Amiur and Mordechai all expressed admiration for Rappaport and his group for trying.
“We need to respect Assaf Rappoport, just as we did Sheldon Adelson with Israel Hayom. When a person decides to buy a media outlet to influence public discourse, knowing that he will only lose money from it, that is something that deserves to be appreciated,” Amiur said.
Rappaport’s group is purchasing Channel 13 through the Merit Spread Foundation, a nonprofit that they back. It will own 75% of the channel’s shares. Blavatnik will retain 25%.
Merit Spread declined to answer specific questions from JNS about the sale, including the direction the new ownership will take the channel, saying only, “Regarding questions concerning the investment in Channel 13, details will be reported as customary in the financial statement to be published during 2027, which will be open for public review.”
