A paper whose influence outstrips its circulation

The biggest news story during my stint as editor- in-chief of The Jerusalem Post was undoubtedly 9/11. And I missed it. I was stuck in Berlin, having traveled to the German capital to attend the gala opening of the Jewish Museum two days earlier.

As the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, I was in a taxi on my way to interview then-German foreign minister Joschka Fischer. By the time I made it to his office, all his staff were glued to the television, watching the second plane fly into the South Tower. Fischer briefly stepped out of his office, looked at me, and said in English: “This is a declaration of war,” and then returned to his inner sanctum.

There was never going to be an interview that day.

So there I was, stranded in Berlin with no way of returning to Israel, as all flights into the country had been canceled, the biggest story of the century unfolding, and I didn’t even have an interview with the foreign minister to show for my travels.

It was up to my managing editor, Avi Hoffmann, to produce one of the Post’s iconic front pages.

The reason for mentioning this story in an 85th anniversary celebratory edition of this paper is that it highlights just how highly regarded the Post is within the world of international affairs. I doubt there are any other papers in the world with a daily print circulation of 25,000 (at that time) that could secure an interview – even it if never took place – with the German foreign minister.

The roots of this success go all the way back to the paper’s founder, Gershon Agron, and his vision of The Jerusalem Post being the world’s window to Israel. During the years of the British Mandate, Agron understood the importance to the Zionist cause of having an English-language newspaper providing a daily narrative of life in Palestine, as seen from the Yishuv’s (pre-state Jewish population’s) perspective, aimed at the British civil servants, foreign diplomats and international correspondents working in the country.

When editing this paper many years later, I was always conscious of Agron’s vision and felt very strongly that the paper should attempt to reflect the variety of opinion inside Israeli society and not be strongly partisan to the Left or the Right.

This came in direct contrast to my predecessor in the editor’s chair, the acerbic-with-pen-in-hand and charming-in-person David Bar-Illan, who took the paper sharply to the Right.

The Post’s strength lies in its ability to portray to the outside world, both Jewish and non-Jewish, the vibrancy of daily life in Israel. As the country’s only “organic” (as opposed to translated) English-language newspaper, the Post has a responsibility to represent the full spectrum of political debate within the nation and not simply act as a cheerleader for one side or another. There are plenty of Hebrew-language papers and websites that do that; the Post has a different and more important role to play.

The writer was editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post between 1996 and 2002 (with a sabbatical year during 1999-2000.