Jeffrey Goldberg

Jeffrey Mark Goldberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Ellen and Daniel Goldberg.^[2] His grandfather was from the shtetl of Leova, Moldova.^[3] He grew up in suburban Malverne on Long Island, a predominately Catholic neighborhood he once called "a wasteland of Irish pogromists."^[4] Goldberg attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was editor-in-chief of The Daily Pennsylvanian.^[5] At Penn he worked at the Hillel kitchen serving lunch to students.

Goldberg, who is Jewish,^[6] dropped out of college and worked for a time at The Washington Post.^[7] He then moved to Israel and served in the Israel Defense Forces during the First Intifada as a prison guard at Ktzi'ot Prison, where Palestinian participants arrested in the uprising were held. There he met Rafiq Hijazi, a Palestine Liberation Organization leader, college math teacher, and devout Muslim from a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, whom Goldberg called "the only Palestinian I could find in Ketziot who understood the moral justification for Zionism".^[5][8]

Many years after his first trip to Israel as a 13-year-old, he became a dual Israeli citizen. Goldberg recalled the sense of empowerment he felt Israel embodied.^[9] In a 2013 interview with the Washingtonian, he said he had decided to give up his Israeli citizenship, saying that "If Israel goes much further down the road I think it’s on and becomes more of a theocratic, totalitarian-style state [...] how could the liberal-minded American Jew support that?"^[7]

Goldberg returned to the United States and began his career as a reporter at The Washington Post, where he worked the police beat. While in Israel, he worked as a columnist for The Jerusalem Post. Upon his return to the U.S., he was the New York bureau chief of The Forward, a contributing editor at New York magazine, and a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine.^[10][11][12] In 2000, Goldberg joined The New Yorker.^[10]

In 2003, "In the Party of God" won the National Magazine Award for reporting.^[13][14]

In 2007, David G. Bradley hired Goldberg to write for The Atlantic. Bradley had tried for nearly two years to convince him to work for The Atlantic, and was finally successful after renting ponies for Goldberg's children.^[15]

During his time at The Atlantic, Goldberg has conducted interviews with Barack Obama (five times),^{[16][17][18][19][20][16]} Fidel Castro,^[21] Hillary Clinton,^[22] David Cameron,^[23] John Kerry,^[24] Benjamin Netanyahu,^[25] Isaac Herzog,^[26] Marco Rubio,^[27] Chris Christie,^[28] Ashton Carter,^[29] Ben Rhodes,^[30] Yair Lapid,^[31] Michael Oren,^[32] King Abdullah of Jordan,^[33] Ta-Nehisi Coates,^[34] David Gregory,^[35] and Tom Cotton.^[36]

In 2011, Goldberg joined Bloomberg View as a columnist.^[37] He left Bloomberg in 2014.^[38]

Goldberg joined The Atlantic and became editor-in-chief in 2016.^[12] He mainly wrote on foreign affairs, with a focus on the Middle East and Africa.^[10]

In September 2020, Goldberg published "Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are 'Losers' and 'Suckers'" in The Atlantic. According to Goldberg's article, in cancelling a 2018 visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in France, which contains the remains of 2,289 U.S. service members killed in combat in World War I, President Donald Trump is alleged to have privately said, "Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers." He also reputedly referred to the more than 1,800 U.S. Marines who lost their lives at the Battle of Belleau Wood as "suckers" for getting killed.^[39]

CNN reported that Goldberg's article "immediately became a massive story, with Democrats—including Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden—rushing to condemn Trump for his alleged behavior and the White House rallying an aggressive pushback against the article, including the President himself." Trump tweeted, "The Atlantic ... is dying, like most magazines, so they make up a fake story in order to gain some relevance. Story already refuted ..."^[40]

Referring to Goldberg's "blockbuster revelation," the Intelligencer said "The scope and intensity of the pushback was nuclear." It added, "While it's impossible to directly prove any of these allegations, there is an impressive amount of corroborating evidence. Almost all of it supports Goldberg's reporting," which the Associated Press, The New York Times, Fox News, and The Washington Post "quickly confirmed."^[41]

Trump immediately denied making the comments, tweeting, "This is more made up Fake News given by disgusting & jealous failures in a disgraceful attempt to influence the 2020 Election!"^[42] Numerous Trump officials present that day also rebutted Goldberg's reporting, including United States ambassador to France Jamie McCourt, stating "In my presence, POTUS has NEVER denigrated any member of the U.S. military or anyone in service to our country. And he certainly did not that day, either." Also denying the report was national security adviser turned Trump-critic John Bolton and deputy chief of staff Zach Fuentes, who was close to former chief of staff John Kelly. Speaking to Breitbart News, Fuentes said, "Honestly, do you think General Kelly would have stood by and let ANYONE call fallen Marines losers?"^[43]

In October 2023, John Kelly told CNN that Goldberg's reporting was correct.^[44]

In August 2023, Goldberg became the moderator of the PBS program Washington Week, which added "with The Atlantic" to its title as an editorial partnership between the program and the magazine was initiated.^[45][46]

Glenn Greenwald called Goldberg "one of the leading media cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq", saying Goldberg had "compiled a record of humiliating falsehood-dissemination in the run-up to the war that rivaled Judy Miller's both in terms of recklessness and destructive impact".^[50] In his 2008 article in Slate titled "How Did I Get Iraq Wrong?", Goldberg explained why he initially supported the Iraq War and wrote that he "didn't realize how incompetent the Bush administration could be."^[51]

Michael Massing, an editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, called Goldberg "the most influential journalist/blogger on matters related to Israel",^[52] and David Rothkopf, former editor and CEO of the FP Group, called him "one of the most incisive, respected foreign policy journalists around."^[53] He has been described by critics as a liberal,^[54] a Zionist^[55] and a "frequent critic of Israel".^[56] The New York Times reported that he "shaped" The Atlantic's endorsement of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 United States presidential election, only the third endorsement in the magazine's 160-year history.^[12]

Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide (New York: Knopf, 2006), describes Goldberg's experiences in Israel working at the Ketziot military prison camp as well as his dialogue with Rafiq, a prisoner whom Goldberg would later befriend in Washington, DC.^[57][58][59]

The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times named it one of the best books of 2006.^[60][61][62]

The Los Angeles Times critic wrote, "Realization of the humanity of the 'other' is at the heart of New Yorker magazine correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg's sharply observed and beautifully written memoir."^[63] The New York Times critic wrote,

Mr. Goldberg, a talented and ambitious writer for the New Yorker ... takes an engagingly personal approach to the issue in his story of a quest for mutual understanding with a Palestinian activist who had been his prisoner... For the bittersweet complexity of that moment, offered in the context of all that has preceded it, this is a genuinely admirable book.^[64]

The Washington Post review of the book noted, "Prisoners is Jeffrey Goldberg's sensitive, forthright and perceptive account of his years as a soldier and journalist in Israel—and of his long-running conversation with a Palestinian whom he once kept under lock and key. It is a forceful reminder of how rewarding, and how difficult, discourse between Israelis and Palestinians can be."^[65] CBS News critic wrote,

There is no shortage of histories, polemics and policy manuals about the Middle East. An honest but complex story, from what happens to be a personal perspective that many Americans can at least conjure, is a rarer opportunity for insight. And that is what Jeffrey Goldberg, a reporter for The New Yorker, delivers in Prisoners. To those of us who have followed Jeffrey Goldberg's reporting on the Muslim world, the publication of his first book is cause for real pleasure... because his writing on the subject has always been exceptional: wise, unpretentious, and at times, unexpectedly funny.^[66]

Boris Kachka, a contributing editor for New York magazine, interviewed Goldberg in October 2006 about Prisoners in addition to other issues pertaining to journalism and the Middle East.^[67]

Goldberg lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Pamela (née Ress) Reeves. They have three children.^[2][68]