Jeffrey Goldberg

Jeffrey Mark Goldberg (born 1965) is a writer for the New Yorker. He is a dual Israeli-American citizen. He began his career as a police reporter for the Washington Post. Goldberg joined the staff of The New Yorker in 2000. Before that, he was a writer for The New York Times Magazine, covering the Middle East and Africa. He has also covered the mafia for New York Magazine, and served as the New York bureau chief of the Forward. He was also a columnist for the Jerusalem Post.

He migrated to Israel in 1980, Goldberg served in the Israeli military and was a camp guard at the notorious Ketziot concentration camp in the Negev during the first intifada (1987-1993).

Critical Assessment
Alexander Cockburn, the co-editor of CounterPunch, commented in CounterPunch (17 Sept 2010):


 * Jeffrey Goldberg is an appalling journalist, whose most notable achievement was to run an enormous piece in the New Yorker in the run-up to the attack on Iraq in 2003, which was one of the most effective exercises in disinformation designed to stoke up the Congress and public opinion in favor of the war. The piece was billed as containing disclosures of "Saddam Hussein's possible ties to al Qaeda." This was at a moment when the FBI and CIA had just shot down the war party's claim of a meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague before the 9/11 attacks. Goldberg saved the day for the Bush crowd. At the core of his rambling, 16,000-word article was an interview in the Kurdish-held Iraqi town of Sulaimaniya with Mohammed Mansour Shahab, who offered the eager Goldberg a wealth of detail about his activities as a link between Osama bin Laden and the Iraqis, shuttling arms and other equipment.

Ray McGovern on Goldberg (12 August 2010):
 * I guess I was naïve in thinking that The Atlantic and its American-Israeli writer Jeffrey Goldberg might shy away from arguing for yet another war — this one with Iran — while the cauldrons are still boiling in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s worth remembering how Goldberg helped to make the case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. For instance, on Oct. 3, 2002, as America’s war fever was building, Goldberg wrote in Slate, the online magazine:
 * “The [Bush] administration is planning … to launch what many people would undoubtedly call a short-sighted and inexcusable act of aggression. In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.”

Roger Cohen on Goldberg:
 * A smart friend points out that Roger Cohen described Jeffrey Goldberg as Netanyahu's stenographer (days after I, less memorably, called him Netanyahu's amanuensis; shows you shouldn't use pretentious words), and then continues with this analysis of Goldberg on the Times Op-Ed page:
 * A boy-man with no real journalistic conscience--the piece is pure propaganda, on the eve of Netanyahu's visit, all for the sake of pre-legitimating Obama's approval of Israeli bombing of Iran. Done in the form of a history lesson that takes in the Hebrew Bible, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust; nothing else and nothing less. The words "Palestinian state" occur in his second sentence, and in 1500 words they never re-appear. Impressive and revealing that the Times would print this piece alone the Sunday before Netanyahu's arrival; no "balance," no "other view."

Justin Raimondo on Goldberg (14 May 2008):
 * ...Jeffrey Goldberg – a male Judy Miller who retailed Ahmed Chalabi's tall tales of Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" and other fables while still managing to keep his job and his reputation.

External resources

 * Goldberg's website biography
 * Alexander Cockburn, Meet the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg, CounterPunch, 28 February 2003.
 * Powerbase: J. Goldberg profile
 * Nathan Thrall, Do we understand each other?, Jerusalem Post, 2 November 2006.
 * Ray McGovern, A Neocon Preps US for War with Iran, ConsortiumNews, 12 August 2010. (In depth profile of Goldberg)
 * Philip Weiss, Long predicted, Goldberg’s eclipse finally begins, MondoWeiss, 27 June 2010.
 * Glenn Greenwald, The Jeffrey Goldberg Media, Salon, 27 June 2010.
 * Adam Shatz, Short Cuts, London Review of Books, volume 32, issue 18, 23 September 2010.
 * RightWeb: profile

Contact

 * email: contactATjeffreygoldberg.net (replace "AT" with an @ sign)