Asking the Wrong Questions About Jeffrey Goldberg

Liberal media huffing about a titan of Hasbara being included in a war-planning chat should instead consider how the story connects with their traditional role in selling U.S. wars

Sorry, Jeff (not that you’ll read this, because you, being the thin-skinned fellow you are, blocked me even following you on Twitter 14 years ago after I pointed out the many holes in your shabby case for America to go to war with Iran on Israel’s behalf)… Sorry, but no, they didn’t “get lucky” by adding you rather than some journalist who may have been less sympathetic to their strategy for dealing with Yemen to that WhatsApp chat ; you know very well why you were there. You’re a trusted Israel hack who can be relied on to do your bit in persuading liberals to support whatever new adventures the U.S. military is planning against Israel’s adversaries in the Middle East. Lines like “If they were going to pick an errant phone number, I mean at least it wasn't somebody who supported the Houthis” are some pretty puerile chaff, don’t you think? The reason they may have added you to the wrong group, but had you in mind and in their WhatsApps nonetheless, is because of your track record.

We’ve not forgotten how you spun those fables linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda in order to persuade the New Yorker crowd to support the cataclysmic and criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq. Because, you know, that’s how you roll. Then there was the bogus attempt to stampede Obama into striking Iran because Israel was about to (link in opening). Of course that story also proved to be utter rubbish, and any knowledgeable reader could see that. But rubbish in the service of Israel’s agenda, as we know, enjoys an enduring waiver from scrutiny, never mind consequences.

The thing is, Jeff, it’s not just you — if it was, the liberal media establishment would have kicked you to the curb as a serial fabulist. The sort of fakery in which you indulge in support of wars waged by the U.S. and Israel is fairly common among liberal media stalwarts. Consider the New York Times’ master of prolific mediocrity, Tom Friedman: Like you, he championed the Iraq invasion, telling Iraqis to “suck on this". He had previously told us that no two countries that had McDonalds franchises on their territory would ever fight a war (you know, like NATO and Serbia, or Israel and Lebanon - awkward…), that Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed Bin Sultan would be the great liberalizing force who would transform the Middle East, and continues to insist that an Israel-Saudi “normalization” deal would somehow end Palestinians’ struggle against Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism. For the low-down on Friedman, always good to read Belén Fernández.

The point is, there’s a pattern here. Indeed, President George W. Bush knew all too well that when you want to take America to war, it was good to have Cold War-liberal media on board — and his people knew who to call. That’s why so many leading liberal-media figures advocated for the disastrous invasion.

So, yes, the liberal establishment media today are “shocked, shocked!” that the Administration is sharing its war plans with trusted hacks. But we all know that it’s the track record of that same liberal media establishment that established the Administration’s trust in those media figures who can be relied on to popularize their latest military campaign in the Middle East. Plus ca change…