Established in October 1990, The Jerusalem Report under the editorship of Hirsh Goodman quickly established itself as a lively and reliable guide to topics mostly Middle Eastern (though with some forays into Jewish affairs outside the region). In addition, it provided the English-language Labor Party foil to the Likud orientation of The Jerusalem Post. The Report has put the texts (though hardly any pictures, cartoons, or graphics, and no ads) of its first five years on a CD-ROM.
A biweekly since April 1992 (and until then a weekly), the Report provides a well-written and surprisingly complete overview of the Israeli experience of the 1990s. The magazine's contents can be approached in three main ways: looking up a complete issue as it came out; using the index to find information on a topic; or boolean searching by word. The last, of course, is the least linear and the most interesting. Want to know about the Satmar hassids? They are in 27 stories, while Yemeni Jews appear in 34, and Hasan at-Turabi in 11. But the CD-ROM is most useful for Israeli politics-the ascent of Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu, the kulturkampf between secular and religious, the Oslo process, and so forth. Israel has the world's highest per capita newsworthiness and The Jerusalem Report's fine reportage helps justify this international fascination.
