Israeli TV Anchor Receives Prestigious Reporting Award from BGU
Israeli TV Anchor Receives Prestigious Reporting Award from BGU
May 21, 2024
Current events, Leadership, Awards & Events
Jewish New Syndicate – Israeli Channel 12’s longtime primetime news anchor Yonit Levi received the Robert St. John Chair in Objective Middle East Reporting Award at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s (BGU) annual Board of Governors meeting on Monday.
Levi has been the primetime news anchor of Channel 12, Israel’s highest-rated television station, for the past 20 years.
Throughout her career she has conducted interviews with a who’s who of world leaders, including numerous U.S. presidents — former President Barack Obama, who called her a “groundbreaking anchor” — along with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former U.S. Secretary of States Mike Pompeo and Hillary Clinton, U.S.
The award’s namesake, Robert St. John, was an unabashed non-Jewish spokesman for Jewish causes. He wrote a dozen books about the Middle East and Judaism, including well-reviewed biographies of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and Israel’s first president, David Ben-Gurion.
Ben-Gurion called him “our goyisher Zionist.”
Robert and Ruth St. John were members of the Ben-Gurion Society of Americans for Ben-Gurion University (A4BGU). The giving society’s members are lifetime contributors of $1 million or more, whose generosity provides the resources to strengthen and expand BGU as it faces the challenges of the 21st century.
“Quality journalism is the hallmark of a robust democracy, so it is our privilege to award Yonit for her professionalism and initiative over the past 20 years and especially the last couple of years, which have been especially challenging,” says BGU President, Professor Daniel Chamovitz.