The Press and Politics in Israel

This book [documents] the interaction between the performance of a newspaper and the [...] political conduct of a society. Perhaps the telling of such a story might be a small step toward the larger understanding of press and politics that still eludes us. The political society at the center of this story is Israel the press is the Israeli press and the newspaper is The Jerusalem Post. The story traces the decline of Israels liberal-secular ethos which paradoxically was accompanied by the rise of a more assertive and irreverent press. It is a paradox within another: the decline of a centralized party system dominated by an oligarchic elite committed to parliamentary democracy and its displacement by a free-wheeling system of factions that pulls to the political Right. Erwin Frenkel Preface to The Press and Politics in Israel: The Jerusalem Post from 1932 to the PresentThis elegantly written thoughtful book manages to be history philosophy and personal document at the same time. As a clear-eyed observer (he worked for the Jerusalem Post for almost 30 years and served as its editor for 13 of them) Erwin Frenkel gives us an informal account of this English-language newspaper from its founding in 1932 to the early 1990s against a background of the transformation of Zionism and Israel during these years and the changing relationship between press politics and public opinion in a free society. This is a touching memoir by an acute unassuming highly intelligent man. Congress Monthly