Palestinian Broadcasting Service, founded in 1936 and modeled after BBC was instrumental to the emergence of middle-class and cultural identity in the years immediately preceding the foundation
of Israel. Today the PBS is mostly forgotten, but its legacy is significant. In this, the first in-depth study of its history, Andrea Stanton (a scholar of religious studies and the Levant)
gives us a fascinating picture of the way it functioned and influenced its surroundings, both socially and politically. A voice of the mandate government, its programming was heavily
concentrated on education, but also included religious broadcasts targeting all three major religions of the region which, paradoxically, may have contributed to separatism, contrary to its
goals. In some ways, its goals were self-contradictory, attempting to reconcile the idea of self-governance for all the inhabitants of Palestine, while at the same time supporting Zionist aims.
In those days, when radio was just emerging as the cultural voice for national identity, PBS played a significant part in exacerbating pre-existing national and religious tensions, and it is
reflected in its final fate: breaking up into an Arabic station in Jordan and a Hebrew station in Israel. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
