Jeffrey Goldberg is an American journalist, who has been National Correspondent for The Atlantic since 2007. Previously, he was Middle East and Washington correspondent, for the New Yorker, and wrote for the New York Times Magazine, and New York Magazine, and the Jewish Daily Forward. He has been a columnist for The Jerusalem Post.[1]
Liberal Jewish blogger Richard Silverstein says of him,
Goldberg is a bellwether Jewish journalist. He buys into what I call the corporate Jewish consensus and has a lot of the bad habits that such Jewish I-P journalists have which I’ve written of here. But he’s sophisticated enough that he sometimes has a trenchant and provocative perspective on issues and takes an independent view of things. So his type of journalist plays a large role in the Jewish community. If he hates you then it gives the radical right a license to kill. If he holds his fire or even speaks favorably, then a whole host of enemies are disempowered.[2]
Awards[edit]
Goldberg is the recipient of the 2003 National Magazine Award for Reporting for his coverage of Islamic terrorism. He is also the winner of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists prize for best international investigative journalist; the Overseas Press Club award for best human rights reporting; and the Abraham Cahan Prize in Journalism. He is also the recipient of 2005's Anti-Defamation League Daniel Pearl Prize.
In 2001, Goldberg was appointed the Syrkin Fellow in Letters of the Jerusalem Foundation and was appointed in 2002 to be a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
Barack Obama[edit]
During the 2008 campaign, he had an extensive conversation with Barack Obama, in which Obama expressed sadness at the loss of a traditional affinity between African Americans and Jewish Americans. He called the "fundamental premise of Israel and the need to preserve a Jewish state that is secure is, I think, a just idea and one that should be supported here in the United States and around the world." The future President recounted talking to Palestinian students in Ramallah, "Look, I am sympathetic to you and the need for you guys to have a country that can function, but understand this: if you’re waiting for America to distance itself from Israel, you are delusional. Because my commitment, our commitment, to Israel’s security is non-negotiable."[3]
Israel and U.S. foreign policy[edit]
He writes, with respect to the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, "I have promised myself never to mention [Stephen] Walt, or his more academically-accomplished though equally-grubby partner, John Mearsheimer, without quoting Walt's Foreign Policy colleague David Rothkopf on their detestable careers: 'They may not be anti-Semites themselves but they made a cynical decision to cash in on anti-Semitism by offering to dress up old hatreds in the dowdy Brooks Brothers suits of the Kennedy School and the University of Chicago.'"[4]
Richard Silverstein, reflecting on Goldberg's column about J Street, in which he interviewed Jeremy Ben Ami, executive director of the new lobbying organization. The Mearsheimer-Walt book was prominent in the discussion. "Jeremy does well refusing to renounce Walt’s support, both Goldberg (who I expected) and Ben-Ami (who I didn’t) seriously mischaracterize the book’s central tenet. Here is Goldberg:
Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer blame the organized American Jewish community for starting the Iraq War and even helping cause 9/11? It’s a statement of fact, it’s in their book.
Silverstein responded,
They blame “Jewish neocons” for the war. That is even overstating it. They blame Jewish neocons for providing some of the key intellectual underpinning for the movement leading to the war. And they claim that the reason for such Jewish neocon support was a sense among them that this would support Israel’s aims in the region. Now, you can argue with this thesis from various angles. But it seems to me that it is at least in part accurate and certainly deserving of serious debate instead of derisive dismissal.
Also, Silverstein accused Goldberg, in the interview, of lazy journalism, characterizing Max Blumenthal and Helena Cobban as anti-Zionists attending a blogger panel at the J Street conference. [2]
"Obsession"[edit]
Commenting on the film "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" he said he had watched a 12-minute version of the film, "but it was enough for to understand that it is the work of hysterics. One of my favorite hysterics, the Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick, is featured prominently, pieces of the sky falling about her head as she rants about the End of Days." He called Aish HaTorah "the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today. Its operatives flourish in the radical belt of Jewish settlements just south of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, and their outposts across the world propagandize on behalf of a particularly sterile, sexist and revanchist brand of Judaism. Which is amusing, of course, because "Obsession" is meant to expose a particularly sterile, sexist and racist brand of Islam." He also excoriated Ronn Torossian for his work with this film and general style.[5]
References[edit]
- ↑ "About Jeffrey Goldberg", The Atlantic
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Richard Silverstein (24 October 2009), "Jeffrey Goldberg on J Street and the Blogger Panel", Tikun Olam
- ↑ Jeffrey Goldberg (12 May 2008), "Obama on Zionism and Hamas", The Atlantic
- ↑ Jeffrey Goldberg (18 Jun 2009), "The Taboo That Won't Shut Up", The Atlantic
- ↑ Jeffrey Goldberg (27 Oct 2008), "The Jewish Extremists Behind "Obsession"", The Atlantic