Customer Reviews

Telepopulism: Media and Politics in Israel

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This book describes fundamental transformations in Israeli politics and Israeli political culture. The focus is on the breakdown of the political hegemony of the Labor-led Ashkenazi establishment. Peri explains the destruction of the old order and the failure to produce a stable alternative in relation to dramatic changes in the operation of the media, particularly the news media.
Television's transforming effects in the United States are well known. However, though some of the imperatives and opportunities of "telepopulism" are as applicable to Israel as to America, the two countries are very different. Peri does an outstanding job of showing how the distinctiveness of Israeli democracy combines with the dominant role of television to produce peculiar but understandable outcomes. Of particular interest are his accounts of the six Israeli tribes (Arabs, ultra-orthodox, national religious, southerners, Ashkenazim, and Russian speakers) and of Netanyahu's successes and failures in the media manipulation game, his profound analysis of the deinstitutionalization of the political realm in Israel, and his argument about the effects of economic globalization, marketization, and communalism on the reshaping of Israeli politics.
Peri is a veteran journalist and a top-notch scholar whose book on the Israeli military in politics is still the best of its kind. "Telepopulism" combines insider knowledge with excellent command of the relevant scholarly literatures. It's just a great book.