Ayala Hasson quits Kan, saying the broadcaster silences large parts of Israel

Ayala Hasson, a veteran Israeli news anchor, has announced that she is leaving Kan, the country's public broadcaster. Ynet's news alert service carried her statement that she had decided to bring her professional career at the public broadcasting corporation to an end.

Hasson made the announcement in a lengthy post, according to political journalist Amit Segal, who published excerpts on his Telegram channel. In them she accuses the broadcaster of trying to silence large sections of the Israeli public in order to please one political camp. Haaretz gave a different account of what led to her exit: it reported that Hasson chose to go after declining Kan's request that she apologise for comments about Bedouin women, which the paper described as racist.

What Hasson said

In the passages quoted by Segal, translated here from Hebrew, Hasson wrote that she would not be part of a system that seeks to silence whole and large voices among the people of Israel in order to satisfy a particular camp. She argued that public broadcasting is "not the property of any camp" and belongs to all of Israel's citizens, adding that nobody has the right to turn it into a tool for pleasing one side at the expense of the other.

The excerpts do not name the camp she meant, and they do not refer to any request for an apology. Segal described the post as long, so the full text may contain more than the passages that have been circulated.

Two accounts of the departure

The reports agree on the central fact: Hasson is leaving Kan, and she announced it herself. They differ on why.

• Hasson's framing, as quoted by Segal, presents her exit as a protest against what she portrays as political bias at the broadcaster and the silencing of parts of the public.
• Haaretz's framing ties the departure to a specific dispute: Kan, it reported, asked her to apologise for remarks about Bedouin women, and she refused.

These accounts are not necessarily incompatible, since Hasson may regard the apology demand as an example of the silencing she describes. But none of the material reviewed for this article shows her making that link, and Israel.com is reporting both versions rather than choosing between them. The description of her remarks as racist is Haaretz's characterisation.

What Kan is

Kan is Israel's public broadcasting corporation, operating television, radio and digital news services. Israelis often refer to it simply as ha-ta'agid, Hebrew for "the corporation", and both Hebrew reports use a form of that term. As a public body, its claim to serve the entire population rather than any political faction is the ground on which Hasson chose to make her argument.

Who the Bedouin are

The Bedouin are a community of Arab citizens of Israel, traditionally semi-nomadic, many of whom live in the Negev desert in the south of the country. Haaretz filed its report under topics including Bedouin, Arab Israelis, women's rights and Israel's media, indicating how the paper views the story. The reports reviewed here do not quote the remarks Hasson is said to have made, nor say when or where she made them.

How the news emerged

The announcement spread first through Hebrew-language Telegram channels on the evening of Tuesday, November 10 2026. Segal's channel and Ynet's alert service both posted within minutes of each other, each leading with Hasson's own words. Haaretz published its English report later that night, and was the only one of the three outlets to describe the apology dispute.

What the reports do not say

None of the reports includes a response from Kan, either to Hasson's accusation that it silences parts of the public or to Haaretz's account of an apology demand. The remarks about Bedouin women are not quoted or dated in the available material, and Hasson's own reported words do not address them. The reports also do not say when her departure takes effect or what she plans to do next.