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For the past two years the Post and the Israeli right have clashed head on, with Jewish settlers in the West Bank (many of whom are im- migrants from the U.S.) blasting the paper for what they regard as sympathetic coverage of the Palestinian uprising. Last year the Post lost 388,000 shekels (about $200,000). Early this year, with the Histadrut facing a financial crisis, its subsidiary decided that it was time to sell 55 percent of the paper's stock, whose value was estimated at around $1.5 million. This proved to be a wildly low estimate as efforts by political and business forces eventually jacked up the price of the control stocks to more than $20 million. The bidding started in December 1988 with Ampal, a New York sub- sidiary of an Israeli bank own- ed by the Histadrut, offering a modest $900,000 for the con- trol stock. Among the 14 suitors were an Australian- Jewish businessman, Richard Pratt ($3 million), and U.S. News publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman ($3.8 million). Three of the most serious suitors were Genger, British press tycoon Robert Maxwell, and Hollinger, Inc., a Canadian-based newspaper chain that owns, among other properties, three conservative British publications, the Dai- ly Telegraph, Encounter, and The Spectator. Its president, David Radler, who conducted the negotiations in Israel, is a member of the Canadian Con- servative party. Since the Post seemed an unlikely source of profit, the assumption in the Post newsroom was that the paper was facing a major political threat. Paradoxically, the most threatening of the three suitors, in the eyes of many, was Maxwell, who calls him- self a Social Democrat and who is a supporter of the British Labour party, and was in fact a Labour member of Parliament from 1964 to 1970. However, when it comes to Israel's foreign policy, Max- well, like many liberal and even left-wing American and West European Jews, tends to be almost as hawkish as Ariel Sharon. Maxwell had already suc- cumbed to the urge to buy in- to the Israeli media market. The paper that had attracted his interest was Ma'ariv, Israel's respected evening newspaper which, after years of being a circulation leader, had fallen far behind Yediot Ahronot, a low-brow tabloid. The 1983 launching of an even lighter-weight tabloid, Hadashot (published by the Shocken family, which owns Ha'aretz and an international publishing house), exacerba- ted Ma'ariv's problems. In 1985 press accounts put the paper's monthly losses at be- tween $100,000 and $200,000; several reporters and editors were fired that year and there For Genger to buy half of "Ha'olam Ha'zeh's" stock was like Jesse Helms buying a half-interest in "The Nation". was speculation that the paper was up for sale. In 1986, a new editor was appointed — Ido Dissentshik, a former Washington correspondent and son of the paper's late editor, Arie Dissentshik. The new man in charge, hoping to revitalize the paper, signaled his interest in new investors. It was Maxwell who, in February 1988, following negotiations with several Israeli and foreign businessmen, emerged as the paper's savior, willing to buy about one-third of Ma'ariv'S stock. It didn't take long for Israelis to gain some insight into Maxwell's management style. Appearing at a press conference with Prime Min- ister Yitzchak Shamir on the occasion of an international Jewish conference, Maxwell was asked for his reaction to a story that had appeared earlier that week in Ma'ariv. The story suggested that Shamir had been advised, in a secret report prepared by the country's military intelligence service, to open discussions with the PLO as a means of dealing with the intifada. (Shamir subsequently denied the existence of any such report.) Maxwell, who made no ef- fort to conceal his anger, re- plied that he would ask the editor not to publish "such rubbish?' In a later interview, Dissentshik said that Max- well had apologized to him for his remark and went on to say that, as the editor, he enjoyed complete editorial indepen- dence. Dissentshik empha-