Israel Hayom has partnered up with Emirati newspaper Al-Ittihad to create a bilingual interaction platform where readers will be able to read news and comment in Hebrew or Arabic.
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Building on the historic Abraham Accords, the two websites would simultaneously feature pre-selected articles, in Hebrew on Israel Hayom and in Arabic on Al-Ittihad, including a commenting component with automated translation. Comments by Israel Hayom users in Hebrew will be read in Arabic by Al-Ittihad users, and vice versa.
In late June, Google announced the joint project was selected for partial funding as part of its initiative to support product development in news organizations.
Al-Ittihad is one of the biggest dailies in the United Arab Emirates and is also distributed in other Gulf states. The paper's online version remains one of the most visited in the country. In turn, Israel Hayom is Israel's biggest newspaper, and one of the country's leading news websites. Two of its products were selected for funding by Google in the past, a reader loyalty program and a mobile-based data insights system.
The collaboration was selected for funding by Google alongside 33 others, out of 425 proposals filed in the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. It is the first-ever bilingual Arabic-Hebrew project selected for funding by the company.
"The collaboration between Al-Ittihad and Israel Hayom paves the way to the hearts of readers in both countries. Journalism has the potential to build bridges between cultures and between people," Omer Lachmanovitch, Editor-in-Chief of Israel Hayom," said.
Al-Ittihad Editor-in-Chief Mr. Hamad Al-Kaabi concurred, saying the partnership was an opportunity to strengthen his paper's "role in spreading the culture of coexistence and the positive relationship between the nations, to establish its centrality in conveying messages of brotherhood and encouragement for rapprochement between the nations, and to take advantage of the momentum of the Abraham Accords to promote unique media initiatives."
Our "editors believe in the role of the media to push and promote pioneering initiatives that rely on the activities of the United Arab Emirates to strengthen and encourage peace, dialogue, and growth in the region and the world," he said.
Lachmanovitch and Al-Kaabi met this week to discuss the project.
Israel and the United Arab Emirates normalized ties in 2020 under the Abraham Accords and have since signed various cooperation agreements. In the first year alone following the normalization, trade between the two countries grew nearly five-fold.
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