Mizrahi Jews listened to Arabic broadcasts despite the state withholding them

Evidence

Nonetheless, many oriental Jews tuned in to the Arabic service. In a listeners’ survey of 1965, ten percent of the pool, which represented the Israeli Jewish population as a whole, admitted to listening to Kol Yisrael’s broadcasts in Arabic. Assuming that the vast majority of these listeners were of Middle Eastern origin, and given that oriental Jews made up some 40 percent of Israel’s Jewish population at the time, at least 25 percent of Mizrahi Israelis were listening to these broadcasts. Moreover, Arabic-speaking Jews had access and tuned in to the many Arabic-language stations that filled most of the AM band. For example, in a 1957 listeners’ survey, of a sample of 1,500 Israeli adults, 231 claimed to listen to programs in “Teimanit” (that is, Yemenite Arabic), but Kol Yisrael offered no broadcasts in that language at the time. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 698