Dan Margalit, a veteran Israeli journalist and TV news host, has died, his family announced Thursday. He passed away at age 87 after a months-long battle with cancer.
The longtime reporter was a towering figure in Israeli news media and was known for pulling the curtain on a secret US bank account held by former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and his wife, Leah, which led to his 1977 resignation and the collapse of the Labor party’s decades-long hold on power.
“Our father passed away in the arms of his family in his home in Tel Aviv following an illness. A family man, lover of humanity, journalist and man of books, a Zionist who loves Israel with every fiber of his being,” his daughter Shira Margalit wrote on X.
Margalit was born in 1938 in Tel Aviv. He got his start in journalism while studying modern Jewish history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, after writing a one-off article for maverick newspaper HaOlam HaZeh (‘This World’), known for its stinging, sometimes sensationalist criticism of government figures.
“My life’s dream was to start at HaOlam HaZeh, which was the big enemy of the government,” Margalit said in a 2025 interview with Channel 12. After three years at the paper, he left at the behest of his father, due to the publication’s ties to “an anti-Zionist crowd,” he told the news channel.
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Margalit went on to write for Haaretz over the span of nearly three decades, focusing on politics and diplomacy from 1964 to 1991, while simultaneously hosting TV news programs for Channel 1 and Educational Television.
While working as Haaretz’s Washington correspondent in 1977, Margalit stumbled upon the existence of a secret US bank account illegally held by Rabin and his wife, Leah. The couple had opened the account when he had been serving as Israel’s ambassador to the US, but never closed it upon returning to Israel.
Yitzhak Rabin speaking at the Mt. Scopus medical center rededication in 1976. Also pictured is Hadassah Women’s National President Rose Matzkin, who held the post from 1972-76. (Hadassah)
He reported on the scandal — which came to be known as the “Dollar Account Affair”– with trepidation, as recounted in his 1997 memoir. “I felt reluctant… It was clear to me that this meant a direct journalistic confrontation with the prime minister,” he wrote in his book “I Saw Them.”
“I feared the information, yet I longed to reveal it to the public.”
His choice to report on the undisclosed bank account led to the prosecution of Rabin’s wife, pressuring him to resign as Labor chairman in the lead-up to the 1977 elections. His abrupt resignation paved the way for Menachem Begin’s victory, marking the downfall of Labor’s previously unshakeable monopoly on Israel’s founding institutions.
Menachem Begin, center, speaks to supporters at his party headquarters in Tel Aviv, on May 18, 1977, as they celebrate the Likud Bloc’s election to government after 29 years of Israeli Labor party rule. (AP Photo)
From 1982 onwards, Margalit hosted the popular news program “New Evening” until it was taken off the air in 2018. The show became a subject of controversy in 1989, when the entrance to his Jerusalem residence was set on fire by right-wing extremists opposed to an interview he conducted on the show with Palestinian Authority official Faisal Husseini, then a prominent political figure in East Jerusalem.
In 1996, Margalit hosted a televised debate between prime ministerial candidates Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu would go on to win the race, marking the start of his first term as premier.
Prime minister and head of the Labor party Shimon Peres, left, and Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the opposition Likud party, right, sit in a Tel Aviv studio between mediator Dan Margalit, center, as they wait for the beginning of a televised electoral debate, Sunday, May 26, 1996. (AP PHOTO/Yisrael Hadari/pool)
After leaving Haaretz in 1992, Margalit continued working as a news presenter while hopping from outlet to outlet. After a brief stint as Maariv’s editor-in-chief, he returned to Haaretz, only to leave again in 2001.
He eventually joined Israel Hayom when it was first founded in 2007. He was one of the few voices at the outlet, founded by US media mogul Sheldon Adelson, who was critical of Netanyahu.
Margalit was fired after a decade at the paper by the editor-in-chief at the time, Boaz Bismuth, now a Likud lawmaker, for reasons he claimed were ideological.
“Boaz Bismuth, who is now running with Bibi, has fired me from Israel Hayom. This wasn’t financial, because he didn’t suggest lowering my salary… I am proud and also sad,” he tweeted at the time. He returned to writing opinion pieces for Haaretz.
But Margalit soon left Haaretz after five women came forward accusing him of sexual harassment, as detailed in a 2018 investigation published by the daily. Two of the women had been early in their journalistic careers at the time of the alleged assaults.
He denied the allegations but took a step back from his work for all but two years. He later began hosting his own news program on the online DemocratTV outlet, then returned once again to Israel Hayom.
Margalit was married twice and has three daughters from his first marriage, Shira, Keren and Noya. He later remarried to Dana Margalit, an Ariel University professor who heads the institution’s department for rehabilitation psychology.
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