Jeffrey Goldberg - Tag Search

Jeffrey Goldberg has been blogging a lot this week about an anti-Semitic outburst on C-SPAN. The network was interviewing Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, and a caller spouted off about how Jewish neoconservatives "Jewed us into Iraq." Scheuer replied with some intemperate analysis of how America's relationship with Israel fuels terrorism.

Speaking of Iran, Jeffrey Goldberg, already in a ditch over his comments about Trita Parsi, keeps on digging.

On the larger question of whether Trita Parsi functions as a lobbyist for the Iranian regime, based on what I know, I'd have to say yes: He has argued consistently against any sanctions against Iran, and an end to sanctions is obviously what the Iranian regime wants. So he is working on behalf of a stated interest of the Iranian government.

To illustrate how bad this argument is, let's consider another example: Jeffrey Goldberg is on the record as opposing an Israeli attack on Iran. The Iranian government also (presumably) does not want Israel to attack Iran. Does that mean Goldberg is "working on behalf of a stated interest of the Iranian government"?

Parsi has argued against sanctions, in part, because he thinks they would strengthen the regime's grip on power. It's hard to see how that makes him a lobbyist for Khamenei.

The Israeli embassy in Norway has filed an official protest about an academic seminar at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Embassies don't often file complaints over something as trivial as a university conference.

So it seems rather petty and thin-skinned. It's not like the university hosted a conference of Holocaust deniers; this was just a group of professors deemed too critical of Israel.

Stephen Walt was one of the panelists, so I look forward to an angry Jeffrey Goldberg blog post announcing a lutefisk boycott.

I'm telling you, if Finnish state television decides to screen Paradise Now, Scandinavia's going to find itself labeled the new axis of evil.

An Israeli foreign ministry official, Yossi Gal, held a meeting with 26 European ambassadors today and asked them to renounce the Goldstone Report.

Gal told the EU envoys that the report submitted by the Goldstone committee, which looked into the Israeli operation in Gaza, "must be a source of concern for democratic countries fighting terror, and contradicts the basic principle of countries' self-defense."

I've read a lot of criticism of the report, mostly from people who think Goldstone was too hard on Israel. And I'm struck by how little of the criticism points out specific flaws in the report. Critics aren't saying that Goldstone got his facts wrong, that Israel did not in fact use white phosphorus on a hospital or destroy Gaza's only working flour mill.

I disagree with at least 90 percent of what Jeffrey Goldberg writes (except for this!), but I usually enjoy how he writes it. He's a good writer...

... except when the subject is Walt and Mearsheimer. Goldberg is apparently incapable of making a coherent argument about their work; instead, he resorts to ad hominem attacks, name-calling, straw men, and other sophisticated lines of argument. His anti-anti-Israel Lobby screeds read like the pompous missives of a high school newspaper columnist.

Here's today's installment, in which he discusses bin Laden's endorsement of Walt and Mearsheimer's book and argues... hell, I'm not exactly sure what he's arguing.

Also, I am instituting a new Majlis editorial policy. Whenever we post about Jeffrey Goldberg, we are going to link to this article.

Human Rights Watch has an insightful report out today about Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism program.

The report found that Saudi Arabia's domestic security police, the mabahith, often detain suspects without charges and then ignore court orders to release them.

Human Rights Watch spoke to over two dozen families of mabahith detainees in 2006 and 2007, only two of whom reported that their relatives had received trials. According to the families, these two men had completed their sentences but remained in detention. One former detainee of the mabahith prison in the northern Juf province, arrested for his dissident views, said in November 2006, "There is a group of about 20 persons in Juf, arrested for acts of violence [related to national security], whose sentence has expired, but they have not been released."

The Daily Star has a summary if you don't feel like reading the whole report. The Saudi counterterrorism program is run in close collaboration with the U.S. and U.K. governments, by the way.

I've read a lot of dire pronouncements about a recent Pew report on international opinion of America. The report found American popularity up in 24 of 25 countries since Obama took office -- Israel being the lone exception. Joe Klein dubbed that disappointing. Jeffrey Goldberg went further, calling it disturbing.

So today I decided to find the actual poll numbers. Want to guess what percentage of Israelis have a favorable opinion of the U.S.?

71 percent!

Yes, that's down 7 percentage points from the last survey, in 2007. But nearly three-quarters of Israelis still think favorably of the United States -- and this is a crisis?

Michael Totten has an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg on his Web site. It's occasionally a bit simpatico, since both men seem to have a similar ideology about the region -- but they're both knowledgeable and the interview makes an interesting read.

That said, I'm going to engage in the great blogospheric tradition of ignoring 99 percent of the interview and focusing on one paragraph. This is from Goldberg:

This is the central question. The settlements aren't the central question. They're a tragedy in part because they obscure the central question of this conflict. The only question is: can the world of Arab Islam accept the idea of Jewish national equality? That's the question, and I don't know the answer to that.

Broadly speaking, he's right: The Jewish state of Israel will always be a minority in the Arab Muslim Middle East, and there won't really be peace unless the Arab world accepts a Jewish minority in its midst.

Israel officials are putting pressure on the U.S. to do something about Iran's nuclear program -- though it's not clear to me what they want done.

Industry and Trade minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said yesterday he's worried about U.S. "appeasement" towards Iran.

And Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., said the "clock [is] ticking" towards an Iranian nuclear bomb that could "wipe Israel off the map." Oren made his comments during a "conversation" with Jeffrey Goldberg, whose main role at The Atlantic appears to be copying down statements from his friends in the Israeli government. (You can view some video of the conversation here, but the parts about Iran are mysteriously missing.)

But what do they want done? More economic sanctions? The John Bolton solution? I don't see any constructive ideas here -- just criticism.