Jeffrey Goldberg joins the ‘Haaretz’-bashing club

American columnist’s liberalism stops at Ben-Gurion Airport. But then again, we already knew that.

For many years there was a running joke at Haaretz is that if every person who called to cancel their subscription actually had one, the paper wouldn’t have suffered a financial crisis. The latest to join the club is Jeffrey Goldbreg, who tweeted earlier today:

 

What made Goldberg jump was an article by Palestinian columnist Salman Masalha criticizing the policy of racial profiling policy at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport. Unlike almost every other place in the world, racial profiling is part of the protocol for Israeli citizens while traveling through their own country’s airports; if you are a Palestinian – which is the case for one in every five Israelis – you are likely to spend way more time in security, and suffer a long questioning and body searches, both of which can often times be humiliating. There has been tons of writing on this issue, from many angles.

Goldberg’s take, however, is unique: he actually prefers Israel’s security procedures (i.e. racial profiling) to the U.S. system of random screenings, or something that pretends to be random. Dump your political correctness and let the Jew through, was Goldberg’s message last time he visited the issue.

In the Twitter conversation that followed, Goldberg tried to explain his anger by citing a racist comment Masalha used to describe one of the security personnel in the airport; but that is just silly. If Goldberg were to stop reading every Israeli news outlet that at some point published a racist remark, I wonder where he is going to get his news from. (UPDATE: reading the Hebrew original, I think Masalha’s comment was ironic, not racist. Goldberg simply missed it).

The bottom line is simple. Goldbreg’s own liberalism literally stops at Ben Gurion, and not for the first time. When Haaretz – Israel’s liberal paper – runs an op-ed from the perspective of a Palestinian citizen, Goldberg is so insulted by his tone, that he abandons the paper altogether. Well, he is in good company.

Related:
Jeffrey Goldberg: TLV airport security should ask me if I’m Jewish
Racial profiling is just racism: A response to Goldberg
Regularly confronting discrimination at Ben Gurion Airport
When racial profiling is a national policy