On Iran, Roger Cohen v. Jeffrey Goldberg
By Gabrielle Birkner
One day after Atlantic writer and blogger Jeffrey Goldberg announced that he would be “checking out for a while” — taking a blogging break to “buy some horseradish, among other things” — Roger Cohen, in a New York Times op-ed that referenced Goldberg’s recent interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, accused Goldberg (a Forward alum) of being the prime minister’s “faithful stenographer.”
Goldberg, who had spoken with Netanyahu on the topic of Iran, isn’t the only one at the receiving end of Cohen’s accusations. Cohen, in the aforementioned op-ed, charges Israel with “crying wolf” and Netanyahu with “fear-mongering” about Iran. The op-ed columnist writes that leaders of the Jewish state have long exaggerated both the timeline of the regime’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, and the likelihood that, when they are acquired, they would be used. He takes issue with Netanyahu’s description, in his conversation with Goldberg, of Iran as a “fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above self-interest” and “a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation” — contending that the mullahs prize self-preservation, above all. Cohen’s evidence: Their regime “has survived 30 years, ushered the country from the penury of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, shrewdly extended its power and influence, cooperated with America on Afghanistan before being consigned to ‘the axis of evil,’ and kept its country at peace in the 21st century while bloody mayhem engulfed neighbors to east and west and Israel fought two wars.”
The accusation Cohen levels against Goldberg is odd. That’s because Cohen, of late, has been taken to task for allegedly parroting in this and other op-eds the Iranian regime’s contentions of its munificent treatment of the Islamic Republic’s remaining Jewish residents. In a February column, Cohen wrote:
Still a mystery hovers over Iran’s Jews. It’s important to decide what’s more significant: the annihilationist anti-Israel ranting, the Holocaust denial and other Iranian provocations — or the fact of a Jewish community living, working and worshipping in relative tranquility.
Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran — its sophistication and culture — than all the inflammatory rhetoric.
That may be because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian TV, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it’s because I’m convinced the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 — a position popular in some American Jewish circles — is misleading and dangerous.
Following the publication of that piece, Cohen visited a Los Angeles synagogue and sparred with Iranian expats — many of whom expressed concern that “Cohen’s evaluation was dangerously naive at best and, at worst, a mockery of their own experiences,” according to a JTA report. At that Los Angeles event, Cohen acknowledged that, during his recent reporting trip to Iran, he had paid $150 a day to an Iranian translator, who was also responsible for filing a report on his activities to Iranian authorities. It’s hard to dig too deep when you’re being tailed by a minder.
This morning, on the heels of his Passover hiatus, Goldberg wrote this “Memo to Roger Cohen” on his Atlantic blog:
Everyone knows that the first rule of writing a New York Times column is: Never attack your critics, particularly in personal terms. Columnists for the Times have scaled the Mt. Olympus of punditry; when they attack their critics they demean their lofty position, and inevitably draw more attention to the criticism than it would otherwise receive. Roger Cohen never learned this rule. Please don’t get me wrong – I’m happy to have gotten under Cohen’s skin. He is a Jewish apologist for an anti-Semitic regime, and he should be reminded often that he has debased himself. But in a way, I’m disappointed that he’s so easily rattled.
January 2, 2009, 7:01pm
Jeffrey Goldberg on the Nizzar Rayyan He Knew
By Daniel Treiman
Atlantic blogger (and brave journalist) Jeffrey Goldberg remembers the now late Hamas leader Nizzar Rayyan, who was killed this week, along with his family, in an Israeli airstrike:
He was one of the more Islamically-learned Hamas leaders I’ve met (Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was learned as well, I think, but he was very hard to understand; Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who was the least pleasant of all the Hamas leaders I’ve known, was not very learned at all). In particular, Rayyan was interested in the hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, with a special interest in hadith that painted Jews in a negative light. Rayyan and I discussed the writing of Ibn Taymiyya, the Muslim scholar who lived seven hundred years ago, and who is the intellectual forefather of Sunni radicalism today (it was Ibn Taymiyya who elevated jihad to a kind-of sixth pillar of Islam). Like Ibn Taymiyya, Rayyan was preoccupied with Muslim apostasy. He never quite said so, but I could sense that he thought of Abu Mazen and the other leaders of the Palestinian Authority as traitors not only to the cause of Palestine, but to Islam itself. “You cannot be loyal to Allah and to the CIA at the same time,” he said of his P.A. enemies.
There are things I didn’t know about Rayyan, such as that he had four wives - a fact that tells you something about the culture of Hamas - but I knew that he was sincere in his devotion to the cause of Israel’s annhilation. The question I wrestle with constantly is whether Hamas is truly, theologically implacable. That is to say, whether the organization can remain true to its understanding of Islamic law and God’s word and yet enter into a long-term non-aggression treaty with Israel. I tend to think not, though I’ve noticed over the years a certain plasticity of belief among some Hamas ideologues. Also, this is the Middle East, so anything is possible.
There was no flexibility with Rayyan. This is what he said when I asked him if he could envision a 50-year hudna (or cease-fire) with Israel: “The only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don’t need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel.” There is no chance, he said, that true Islam would ever allow a Jewish state to survive in the Muslim Middle East. “Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God.”
Goldberg notes that Rayyan did not subscribe to the belief, popular in certain militant Islamist circles, that present-day Jews are literally the descendants of apes and pigs. “Allah changed disobedient Jews into apes and pigs, it is true, but he specifically said these apes and pigs did not have the ability to reproduce,” Rayyan told Goldberg. “So it is not literally true that Jews today are descended from pigs and apes, but it is true that some of the ancestors of Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and it is true that Allah continually makes the Jews pay for their crimes in many different ways. They are a cursed people.”
November 20, 2008, 5:52pm
Forward 50 Honoree Makes Own List: Philosemitic 50
By Daniel Treiman
Atlantic national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg — whom this year’s Forward 50 dubbed “the elite media’s leading Judaic scribe” (much to fellow Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan’s delight) — has responded to his inclusion on our list of estimable individuals by starting a list of his own.
The folks on Goldberg’s list may prove to be an even more estimable bunch because, unlike the Forward 50, his list isn’t limited to the living — and it’s not limited to Jews. Indeed, there likely won’t be any Jews on his list.
Goldberg writes:
If the Forward can publish a list of the top 50 Jews, than Goldblog can publish a list of the top 50 philo-Semites. I don’t have a philosophical problem with this, by the way: I dissent from the line, first passed on to me by Frank Foer, who, tragically, is not a top-50 Jew (though his mother is!), that philo-Semites are anti-Semites who like Jews. So, a list, and one loyal readers can help me assemble.
To get things started, Goldberg has suggested the first five names. Not one of them, however, is Jon Voight, which leads me to question Goldberg’s methodology.
June 26, 2008, 2:18am
Jeffrey Goldberg and Michael Chabon on Sandler’s ‘Zohan’: ‘The Worst Movie’ But Quite Enjoyable
By Daniel Treiman
Not to be too self-referential (as if there’s any such thing), but I’d just like to point out that in my recent paean to Adam Sandler’s (goyish) wit and (Jewish) wisdom, I rendered the following verdict: “‘You Don’t Mess With the Zohan’ is a stupid movie; I couldn’t stop laughing.”
Now, I’m happy to report, actual famous people with actual accomplishments to their names are actually expressing similar sentiments. New Yorker writer turned Atlantic uber-Jew Jeffrey Goldberg reports on his incessantly Jew-y blog:
You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is the worst movie I’ve ever seen, though it was better than Munich.
Okay, I liked it. So what? Who doesn’t like a hummus joke? Or 37 hummus jokes? It turns out that Michael Chabon also thought it was the worst movie he’s ever seen, and he enjoyed it very much as well….
You can enjoy Chabon and Goldberg’s silly e-mail exchange on the topic here.
Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan
Obama Digs Roth, But McCain Prefers Wouk
By Daniel Treiman
A few weeks ago, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg — who has lately established himself as a key contender for the title of Mr. Jewish Journalist — grilled Barack Obama about Israel and other topics of Jewish interest. Now, he covers some of the same ground with John McCain.
Since Obama, in his interview, volunteered that he is a fan of the writers Philip Roth, Leon Uris and David Grossman, Goldberg grills McCain on his Jewish literary tastes. And while the two presidential hopefuls may have very different views on the potential utility of talking to Iran (“you don’t sit down face-to-face with people who are behave the way they do, who are state sponsors of terrorism,” McCain told Goldberg), at least they can agree when it comes to Leon Uris:
Quizzing Obama on the State of Israel — and the State of His Kishkes
By Daniel Treiman
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg (who in the 1990s wrote for this rag) chatted this weekend with Barack Obama about Israel and Jewish issues.
Goldberg, who recently penned a widely discussed article for the Atlantic looking at Israel’s difficult choices through the prism of the tensions between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and writer David Grossman, finds that Obama has done some reading on the topic — from Leon Uris to “The Yellow Wind,” Grossman’s 1987 look at life in the West Bank.
Goldberg poses a smart question — one that has also been raised by another smart Jewish journalist — that cuts to the core of Obama’s challenges in the Jewish community. I’m talking about “the kishke question,” the implications of which Goldberg does a good job of summarizing:
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