On the evening of the 1st of February 1948, a stolen British police car loaded with half a ton of TNT pulled up in front of the Jerusalem office of The Palestine Post on Solel Street. The driver of a second car arrived a few minutes later, lit the fuse and drove off, detonating a bomb that destroyed the printing press and killed four people, including three Post employees. This attack was not merely an act of violence but a pivotal moment that defined the newspaper's identity before Israel even existed. The building also housed the British press censor, the Jewish settlement police, and a Haganah post with a cache of weapons, making the destruction of the facility a strategic blow to the Zionist cause. Arab leader Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni claimed responsibility for the bombing, but historian Uri Milstein reported that the bomb had been prepared by the Nazi-trained Fawzi el-Kutub, known as the engineer, with the involvement of two British army deserters, Cpl. Peter Mersden and Capt. Eddie Brown. The morning paper came out in a reduced format of two pages, printed at a small print shop nearby, proving that the spirit of the publication could not be extinguished by explosives.
From Bulletin To Post
The direct journalistic ancestry of The Jerusalem Post can be traced to The Palestine Bulletin, which was founded in January 1925 by Jacob Landau of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. It was owned by the Palestine Telegraphic Agency, which was in practice part of the JTA even though it was legally separate. On the 1st of November 1931, editorship of the Bulletin was taken over by Gershon Agronsky, a Jewish journalist who had immigrated to Palestine from the United States. In March 1932, a dispute arose between Landau and Agronsky, which Agronsky resolved to settle by establishing an independent newspaper. Landau and Agronsky instead came to an agreement to transform the Bulletin into a new, jointly owned newspaper. Accordingly, the Palestine Bulletin published its last issue on the 30th of November 1932. The Palestine Post Incorporating The Palestine Bulletin appeared the following day, the 1st of December 1932. On the 25th of April 1933, the masthead was reduced to just The Palestine Post although its founding year still appeared as 1925. It appeared on the 24th of August 1934 but not in the following issue, the 26th of August, or later. During its time as The Palestine Post, the publication supported the struggle for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and openly opposed British policy restricting Jewish immigration during the Mandate period. According to one commentator, Zionist institutions considered the newspaper one of the most effective means of exerting influence on the British authorities.The Political Shift
In 1950, two years after the State of Israel was declared, the paper was renamed The Jerusalem Post. Until 1989, the paper supported the Labor Party, aligning itself with the dominant political force of the early years of the state. In 1989, the paper was purchased by Hollinger Inc., owned by Conrad Black. A number of journalists resigned from the Post after Black's takeover and founded The Jerusalem Report, a weekly magazine eventually sold to the Post. After the acquisition, the Jerusalem Post underwent a noticeable shift to the political right. Under editor-in-chief David Makovsky, from 1999 to 2000, the paper took a centrist position on defense, but began to reject socialism. In 2002, Hollinger hired the politically conservative Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal as editor-in-chief. David Horovitz took over as editor-in-chief on the 1st of October 2004. From 2004 onward, Horovitz moved the paper to the center. On the 16th of November 2004, Hollinger sold the paper to Mirkaei Tikshoret Limited, a Tel Aviv-based publisher of Israeli newspapers owned by Eli Azur. CanWest Global Communications, Canada's biggest media concern, had announced an agreement to take a 50 percent stake in The Jerusalem Post after Mirkaei bought the property, but the deal soured. The two sides went to arbitration, and CanWest lost.