You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

Glenn Greenwald Attempts To Process the Obama-Netanyahu Row

Glenn Greenwald has devoted a great deal of energy to painting Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg as a Likudnik shill. Here's a sample of Greenwald's thoughtful commentary on the subject. March 9, 2009:

“[Roger Cohen’s] column prompted all sorts of predictable attacks on Cohen from the standard cast of Israel-centric thought enforcers (Jeffrey Goldberg, National Review, right-wing blogs, etc. etc.)

June 27, 2010:

Goldberg, whose devotion to Israel is so extreme that he served in the IDF as a prison guard over Palestinians and was described last year as "Netanyahu's faithful stenographer" by The New York Times' Roger Cohen,…is indeed very well-"trained" in the sense that establishment journalists mean that term:  i.e., as an obedient dog who spouts establishment-serving falsehoods.

August 12, 2010:

Jeffrey Goldberg is no more of an objective reporter on [Israel-related] matters than Benjamin Netanyahu is.”

June 1, 2010:

Robert Farley highlights a small though typical piece of false Israeli propaganda, this one from supreme propagandist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, which pervades our discourse in unchallenged form.

January 14, 2009:

Friedman's column today appears alongside an Op-Ed from The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the nation's leading (and most deceitful) propagandists for the Iraq War and a vigorous supporter of all of Israel's wars, who explains that Hamas is incorrigibly hateful and radical and cannot be negotiated with.”

Now Goldberg is lambasting Netanyahu, for whom he is supposedly an uncritical mouthpiece. Well, everybody gets it wrong once or twice or constantly. Time to correct yourself, right?

But no, of course, when the facts don't fit into a Glenn Greenwald argument, the facts must be beaten into submission until they do. Here's Greenwald now:

When even Israel-devoted stalwarts such as former IDF Corporal Jeffrey Goldberg and the ADL's Abe Foxman are dismissive of the condemnation of Obama's statements, it's crystal clear that they pose no challenge to the dominant pro-Israel orthodoxy that has shaped American policy (and political discourse) for decades.

Riiight. That's why Netanyahu and his supporters are apoplectic -- because Obama's speech was so insignificant. Is it possible that perhaps Goldberg, while well to the right of Greenwald, also differs significantly with Netanyahu? That's the sort of premise that would make Greenwald's brittle mind shatter if he tried to process it.