Prominent American journalist decries anti-Semitism at Haaretz

Veteran American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg sparked a social media firestorm Monday when he said he was considering no longer reading the Israeli newspaper Haaretz due to its increasingly anti-Jewish views.

Goldberg, a prominent writer at The Atlantic, was reacting to a Haaretz opinion piece titled, "We're American Jewish historians. This is why we've left Zionism behind." In response, Goldberg tweeted, "I think I'm getting ready to leave Haaretz behind, actually" along with a link to the article.

Correspondents at Haaretz were quick to criticize Goldberg for his tweet. Haaretz's diplomatic correspondent Barak Ravid asked Goldberg if his remark was meant as a threat. Goldberg replied that although he likes Ravid, he was tired of constantly reading about evil Jews in the newspaper's opinion pages. "There's a lot of good journalism in Haaretz, however. Mixed in with the nutty stuff," he said.

Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken said that although he didn't agree with everything in the aforementioned opinion piece, and that it ignored the history of the Jewish people, he would not call it crazy. Schocken argued that the issues the historians cited in their article needed to be discussed at a time when Israel is under attack at American universities. Goldberg responded, "Amos, what you don't understand is that the problems on campus are caused in part by crap like this."

Goldberg, who is Jewish and often writes about Israel and American Jewry, has been critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the past. In another tweet, he further explained his position. "I like a lot of the people at Haaretz, and many of its positions, but the cartoonish anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism can be grating," he said.

Haaretz journalist Anshel Pfeffer also voiced his displeasure at the criticism on Twitter, saying, "Another round of Haaretz-bashing from Jeffrey Goldberg and others who should know better."

To this, Goldberg responded, "Come on, Anshel Pfeffer, take responsibility for what's in your newspaper. Haaretz, like anything, is not above criticism."

Referring to a piece by Gideon Levy, titled, "Stop living in denial, Israel is an evil state," Goldberg said, "Look, when neo-Nazis are emailing me links to Haaretz op-eds declaring Israel to be evil, I’m going to take a break, sorry.”

At one point, even Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan joined the fray, retweeting Goldberg's neo-Nazi tweet and commenting, "Wow. There are no words," To which Goldberg retorted, "Thanks for the retweet, but I'd prefer it if you spent more time protecting democracy in Israel."

Erdan replied "I can do both. Criticizing Haaretz is part of it."

In Goldberg's final tweet on the subject, he wrote, "The inability of Haaretz journalists to even imagine that they've ever published subpar material is unusual."