The magazine was founded in 1937 under the name Tesha BaErev (Hebrew: תשע בערב, Nine in the Evening) but was renamed HaOlam HaZeh in 1946.

Its news focussed on investigative reports, often presented in sensationalist fashion, which provoked anger from the Israeli establishment and disdain from Israel's mainstream press.

For a few years, the government even secretly financed a rival magazine, Rimon, in a failed attempt to counter HaOlam HaZeh's popularity.

Jacob Shavit writes that "from 1957 on, Ha-Olam ha-Zeh became the main forum" for advocacy of a Palestinian state.

Stories in which HaOlam HaZeh's reporting played an important part included the 1965 massacre at Qibya (after which Avnery and Cohen were allegedly beaten up by members of the IDF unit that had conducted the raid),[4] the Kasztner libel trial, the Kafr Qasim massacre, and Ben Dunkelman's story about the aborted attempt to expel the inhabitants of Nazareth (in HaOlam HaZeh's July 1980 edition).