Tone-deaf NY Times op-ed argues attacks on US Jews ‘a gift to the right’

There’s ridiculous. There’s ludicrous. 

And then there’s this doozy from New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. “Attacks on Jews Over Israel Are a Gift to the Right,” read the original headline on her recent op-ed. The headline was later changed to something more benign.

Violence in the Middle East often leads to spikes in anti-Semitism. But a wave of assaults on Jews, sometimes in broad daylight, are something new in this country, writes @michelleinbklyn. https://t.co/SAxW0g9TJ8

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) May 25, 2021

A gift to the right? Seriously — does everything have to be presented through a lens of political wins and losses, of which party or group benefits the most? 

Attacks on American Jews and antisemitism in all its forms should be condemned by Democrats. By Republicans. By independents and libertarians. By the apolitical. The beating of innocents is something we can all be against, just like “puppy mills” or cancer. 

Instead, Goldberg laments what the recent street attacks will do to Democrats’ efforts to “denounce Israel’s entrenched occupation and human rights abuses.” 

“This violence also threatens to undermine progress that’s been made in getting American politicians to take Palestinian rights more seriously,” she wrote. “Right-wing Zionists and anti-Semitic anti-Zionists have something fundamental in common: Both conflate the Jewish people with the Israeli state. Israel’s government and its American allies benefit when they can shut down criticism of the country as anti-Semitic.”

And, she continued, “Many progressives, particularly progressive Jews, have worked hard to break this automatic identification and to open up space in the Democratic Party to denounce Israel’s entrenched occupation and human rights abuses. This wave of anti-Semitic violence will increase the difficulty of that work. The Zionist right claims that to assail Israel is to assail all Jews. Those who terrorize Jews out of rage at Israel seem to make their point for them.”

The backlash over the column was profound, even by Twitter standards, including by former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. 

In this idiotic piece, Michelle Goldberg pines for a world in which Israel can be called an apartheid state without Jews being assaulted. Sorry, no such “utopia” exists because 1) the accusation is a vile lie, and 2) antisemites don’t discriminate in their hatred. https://t.co/nxq7qLyBq9

— David M Friedman (@DavidM_Friedman) May 25, 2021

Michelle Goldberg’s column is routinely a steaming pile of horseshit. This one, however, is the Mt. Everest of steaming piles of horseshit. pic.twitter.com/XGd2kLvsup

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 25, 2021

Simply vile. pic.twitter.com/peHlL7foFz

— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) May 25, 2021

Didn’t think they could “Republicans pounce!” Jews being beaten in the streets, but they did it pic.twitter.com/zxLcbVWDZg

— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) May 25, 2021

Michelle Goldberg has always been so hateful and unhinged, but this might be her worst take yet. https://t.co/sMC2Duec1B

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 25, 2021

“…flagrant public assaults on Jews — sometimes in broad daylight — motivated by anti-Zionism.”

By saying that attacks on Jews are because of anti-Zionism, *not* anti-Semitism, you’re the one conflating “the Jewish people with the Israeli state”https://t.co/m4ulMGCQeH

— Eric Lieberman (@_EricLieberman_) May 25, 2021

Perhaps that was why the Times decided to rewrite the headline — and it wasn’t a subtle change of a couple of words, either. Headline changes can be fine, of course, and they occur on many media sites for various reasons — accuracy, for example, or better searchability on the web. But this change was a complete 180-degree turn from the original premise about an attack on Jews being “a gift to the right.” 

Liz Spayd was the Times’ last public editor, a kind of watchdog for in-house journalistic ethics. She wrote a great column in 2016, a few months before her position was eliminated. In it, she detailed and criticized how often stealth edits like this one occur at the paper. “Times editors have thus far rejected appeals to flag readers when stories are reworked, unless it’s a correction,” she wrote. “They argue that making such edits are a routine part of digital publishing — you edit a piece, publish it, then report more or add more context, then republish it again, on through the news cycle.”

Fortunately, more than a few folks serving as “public editors” in their own right on social media saved the virtual receipts in this instance and took note of the revised headline:

Wow… the New York Times quietly changes their abhorrent headline a day later. pic.twitter.com/ZU8t40MZBH

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) May 26, 2021

The real issue, though, isn’t the headline. It’s what Goldberg wrote in her column. 

Brazen attacks on American Jews have erupted from New York to Los Angeles and several towns and cities in between. Why the rise in antisemitism? According to Goldberg, Donald Trump – who hasn’t been in office and has been relatively out of the public eye for four months – is to blame. “These apparent hate crimes are, first and foremost, a catastrophe for Jewish people in the United States, who’ve just endured four years of spiking anti-Semitism that started around the time Republicans nominated Donald Trump in 2016,” she argued. 

Yup, the guy who moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, who oversaw the Abraham Accords, and who has Jewish grandchildren, is the reason Jews are being attacked on American streets. 

You honestly can’t make this stuff up. 

At a time when American Jews have targets on their backs and tensions are running high, a prominent Times opinion writer laments that such attacks only help the pro-Israel argument.  

This shouldn’t be about who wins or loses politically. Antisemitism is something people of any party, or even the totally apolitical, should speak out against. Full stop. 

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist for The Hill.