Israeli state radio was conceived as an instrument for assimilating immigrants into national citizenship.

Evidence

At a PCRA meeting in 1952, Yehuda Yaari stated that the purpose of radio was “to make from the immigrant communities a single national unit.” The following year, PCRA member Mordechai Breuer, a historian and Orthodox Jew, called upon radio to “draw the new immigrants nearer to the basic concepts of citizenship and life in the state, such as taxes, police, what is a queue, instruction about the laws of the land and guidance on the life of law and justice.” — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 685

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities and the role of national media in nation-building; also echoes the reader’s interest in infrastructure as nation-building.
• SEED: A possible essay on how states weaponize ‘civic education’ through media—teaching immigrants ‘what is a queue’ as a technology of national homogenization.