You’ve heard from Philip Weiss and Omri Ceren, now it’s Jeffrey Goldberg’s chance to explain what Barack Obama’s presidential victory will mean for Israel and the Jews.
Goldberg is the national correspondent for The Atlantic, the author of “Prisoners” and a veteran of the IDF. He also happens to be one of my favorite journalists.
Much maligned by the left for reporting they say pom-pommed going to war with Iraq, Goldberg has nonetheless struck a balance between progressive and neoconservative and has become a proponent for giving up Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
“What Israel needs is an American president who not only helps defend it against the existential threat posed by Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, but helps it to come to grips with the existential threat from within. A pro-Israel president today would be one who prods the Jewish state — publicly, continuously and vociferously — to create conditions on the West Bank that would allow for the birth of a moderate Palestinian state,” Goldberg wrote in a May op-ed for The New York Times. “Most American Jewish leaders are opposed, not without reason, to negotiations with Hamas, but if the moderates aren’t strengthened, Hamas will be the only party left. And the best way to bring about the birth of a Palestinian state is to reverse — not merely halt, but reverse — the West Bank settlement project.”
Goldberg’s name carries a lot more weight than Greenberg, and instead of interviewing a journalist about the presidential election, he spoke in May with Obama and John McCain. Now that the race is over, I followed up to Goldberg to see what he thought it all meant:
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