As a former staff member of the English News Department at Israel Radio, I am not in the least surprised at recent media reports that the English-language radio and television news operations might be closed down. Nobody outside our department has ever been in the least bit interested in this very important operation on behalf of the State of Israel. Cabinet ministers, Knesset members, public figures and senior executives of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) itself were all equally indifferent.

In view of the fact that these illustrious people naturally listened to (and viewed) the news in Hebrew - and were always very anxious about how they were portrayed there - they virtually ignored the English broadcasts. The director of English news and his staff carried out their work with a clear sense of mission, but with next to no encouragement from above.

In vain did we try to impress upon our superiors that the diplomatic corps, the neighboring Arab nations, the large foreign media contingent and listeners in the United States, Britain, South Africa, Australia and other locations around the world tuned in to every broadcast. We pointed out that the dissemination of intelligent, objective and credible news about Israel was a vital element of the nation's information effort. They could not have cared less. The same politicians and public figures, who sniveled and whined about the "lack of effective Israeli public relations, hasbara," were willfully ignorant of our highly competent operation. As they didn't listen to us - and consequently didn't hear about themselves in our broadcasts - they remained apathetic and uninterested.

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At one point I prepared a proposal for us to operate 24 hours a day, so that we could broadcast live to the United States during the daytime over there. It would have involved taking on only two extra employees, which would have cost comparatively very little, in return for a notable gain in effectiveness. The response was a huge yawn.

In fairness, I should record that, when Yosef (Tommy) Lapid was the director of the IBA and Gideon Lev-Ari served as the head of Israel Radio, they convened two long meetings to discuss the matter with us, and showed some understanding of what we were doing and how we did it, but ultimately even they didn't come through.

"I'm a Zionist," stated Tommy, as he turned down our request for more broadcasts. "After Hebrew and Arabic, my next priority is Russian." This, one week after a report in Newsweek to the effect that the Jews of the Soviet Union preferred listening to the "objective" English broadcasts of Israel Radio, rather than to those in Russian, which they judged to be more in the realm of "propaganda."

Of course, the neglect did have its advantages. When the ban on talking to members of the PLO in the West Bank and Gaza was introduced, we were able to continue interviewing them whenever we judged it appropriate. Nobody upstairs even noticed. In the mid-1970s, an interview I conducted with Karim Khalaf, just after he won the mayoral election in Ramallah, gained some notoriety when prime minister Golda Meir quoted it at length, but even the English-speaking Meir was unaware that this interview came from the English News Department.

Eventually I became depressed and disillusioned by the juxtaposition of a hard-working, competent and devoted staff opposite an entirely indifferent management, and left for The Jerusalem Post, where the importance of disseminating news from Israel in English was better understood.

In the following years, the number and frequency of English broadcasts were cut, staffers were fired and the news was transferred to the so-called Reka channel, which has weaker transmitters and consequently reaches fewer listeners.

I hope that the current move (reported in Haaretz) to merge the English radio and television departments will lead to an expansion of these vital services, but, if I were still working there, I wouldn't hold my breath. It is more likely that they will be cut down even more. At the end of the day, all the important people involved in making what should be carefully considered decisions that can have a profound effect on Israel's image in the world are only interested in hearing about themselves.

Daniel Gavron was an editor and reporter for Israel Radio's English News Department from 1971 to 1982, and served as acting director for the last two of those years.