Mondoweiss

Staff

Philip Weiss has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, and The New York Observer. He is the author of Cock-a-Doodle-Doo (1996) and American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps (2004).

Adam Horowitz received his master's degree in Near Eastern Studies from New York University. He later served as the Director of the Israel/Palestine Program for the American Friends Service Committee where he gained "extensive on-the-ground experience in Israel/Palestine". In addition to Mondoweiss, Horowitz has written for The Nation, Alternet, The Huffington Post, and The Hill.com. Horowitz wrote the foreword to Rabbi Brant Rosen's book Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi's Path to Palestinian Solidarity. He has spoken frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on campuses and to organizations.

Alex Kane, an assistant editor for Mondoweiss based in New York City, also is the World editor for AlterNet. His work also has appeared in Salon, The Daily Beast, the Electronic Intifada, Extra! and Common Dreams.

Development

In a 2010 interview with The Link, the magazine published by Americans for Middle East Understanding, Philip Weiss described the evolution of Mondoweiss:

In March 2006 I began writing a daily blog on The New York Observer website. My editor, Peter Kaplan, encouraged me to write what was on my mind and it was his idea to call it Mondoweiss. Increasingly what was on my mind were "Jewish issues": the Iraq disaster and my Jewishness, Zionism, neo-conservatism, Israel, Palestine. For many reasons that I detail in "Blogging about Israel and Jewish identity raises Observer hackles" in the spring of 2007 I re-launched my own blog on my own website. It became a collaborative effort a year ago when Adam Horowitz joined Mondoweiss.

In The American Conservative, Weiss detailed his split from The Observer and wrote "Blogging about such matters sometimes made me feel wicked, as though I was betraying my tribe. Shouldn't some thoughts remain private? But I felt that the form demanded transparency about what I cared about, Jewish identity."

Content

In 2008, after the arrest of Ben-Ami Kadish, who allegedly gave Israel stolen United States secrets on nuclear weapons, fighter jets and missiles in the 1980s, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles quoted Mondoweiss as writing about an old Government Accountability Office report stating that Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any U.S. ally".

In 2010 James Wolcott wrote in Vanity Fair quoting Weiss in Mondoweiss regarding an Anti-Defamation League statement regarding the planned Park51 project, an Islamic Center near the World Trade Center site. Wolcott quoted Weiss who had written: "It's happened: the Anti-Defamation League has overplayed its hand (in this case, neoconservative Islamophobia) in such a glaring manner that it is being condemned at every quarter ..."

In 2012 Tablet magazine asserted that the Associated Press had "picked up a story from advocacy blog" Mondoweiss, about Israeli security asking a Palestinian-American to show them her email at Ben-Gurion Airport. The Tablet wrote that the point was "that more news stories—and this story is undoubtedly newsworthy—are going to come to the attention of non-niche journalists and thereby gain wider notice".

In 2012, Mondoweiss revealed that United States Representative Joseph R. Pitts' office had mailed a letter calling on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestine National Authority Chair Yasser Arafat to work toward peace in the Middle East. The blog pointed out that Sharon had been in a coma since 2006 and Arafat had died in 2004. The representative blamed accidental use of an old form letter.

The Goldstone Report

Weiss and Horowitz, along with Lizzy Ratner, co-edited the 2011 book The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict. The Publishers Weekly review noted that the abridged version of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict ("the Goldstone Report"), included an introduction by Naomi Klein and an "eloquent" forward by Bishop Desmond Tutu. The review said the book was "enhanced" by oral testimonies which "inject a harrowing human element to counterbalance the report's dispassionate tone". The review called the book "An essential read for those concerned with accurate documentation of historical events and nations' accountability for their treatment of civilians living in war zones". Kirkus Review called the book "An eye-opening document and an urgent call for accountability".

In a Democracy Now! interview Horowitz discussed Richard Goldstone's later correction of one item in his report, his saying "Civilians were not intentionally targeted [by Israel] as a matter of policy." Horowitz expressed that he views this as a minor issue and "Much larger was the issue of intentionally attacking the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, which he doesn't mention, and the idea of just disproportionate and indiscriminate violence, which he doesn't address and which affects civilians disproportionately."

Reception

In March 2007, Gary Kamiya in an article for the Salon website wrote that Mondoweiss offered "informed and passionate discussions" of what Weiss states are "delicate and controversial matters surrounding American Jewish identity and Israel". Kamiya also states that Weiss, "routinely skewers attempts by mainstream Jewish organizations and pundits to lay down the law on what is acceptable discourse". He gave as an example Weiss exploring "off-limits" topics like dual loyalty, as in an incident regarding the American Jewish Committee. Weiss had written that a Committee piece accusing Jewish intellectuals who did not "toe the party line on Israel" of being "self-haters" only revealed the "anti-intellectual, vicious, omerta practices of the Jewish leadership".

In 2009, Michael Massing, in an article titled "The News About the Internet" for The New York Review of Books, noted that "Weiss is one of several friends I've seen flourish online after enduring years of frustration writing for magazines. With its unrelenting criticism of Israel, his site [Mondoweiss] has angered even some of his fellow doves, but it has given voice to a strain of opinion that in the past had few chances of being heard."

In November 2009 former United States Senator James G. Abourezk praised Weiss and Horowitz for their courage in taking on "what most believe is an unassailable, monolithic pro-Israel Lobby". He wrote that the blog "hits Israel's illegal occupation where it hurts—in the center of the American Jewish community. Mondoweiss is evidence that more and more American Jews are thinking twice about giving Israel their wholehearted, unquestioning support for the crimes it is committing in the territories it illegally occupies."

In September 2010, James Wolcott of Vanity Fair argued that Mondoweiss "is one of the most invaluable sites in the blogosphere, a blast of sanity and moral suasion against the prevailing demonization of anything and anyone perceived as anti-Israel".

In 2012 Arab News wrote that Weiss and Horowitz had "developed an interactive forum that brims with up-to-the-minute news and comment and makes brilliant attention-grabbing use of text and video material" and that "they bring to their work a moral and intellectual verve woefully missing from coverage of Palestine-Israel issues in even the more respected sections of the mainstream media".

While Mondoweiss has received praise for its content, it's also been a frequent target for criticism, much of which has come from people and organizations with opposing views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. This criticism has often included allegations of antisemitism.

In 2010, Mondoweiss was criticized by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs for publishing a series of cartoons which they stated expressed "anti-Israelism, a more recent category of anti-Semitism".

Between 2010 and 2011, Tablet magazine published three articles, in which Mondoweiss, along with some other blogs, were thoroughly criticized. These articles characterized Weiss as a "Jew-baiter" and "intensely anti-Israel", saying his site is "obsessed with Israel and the machinations of the U.S. Israel lobby", and laden with "sweeping and unsubstantiated rhetoric".

Weiss responded to allegations in Tablet, by stating that the magazine had "smeared" him and several other bloggers as Jew-baiters. Walt questioned the article's premise by stating that Smith's article contained "not a scintilla of evidence" that "Weiss, or I have written or said anything that is remotely anti-Semitic, much less that involves 'Jew-baiting'. There's an obvious reason for this omission: None of us has ever written or said anything that supports Smith's outrageous charges."

In 2012, The Algemeiner Journal characterized Mondoweiss as "Purveyors of Anti-Semitic Material". Also, Armin Rosen, a Media Fellow with The Atlantic, criticized Peter Beinart's blog, Open Zion (which appears in The Daily Beast) for publishing an article by Alex Kane because he is Mondoweiss's "Staff Reporter". Rosen wrote that "Mondoweiss often gives the appearance of an anti-Semitic enterprise."

Robert Wright, a Senior Editor at The Atlantic, responded to Rosen's article, writing "This tarring of Kane by virtue of his association with Mondoweiss would be lamentable even if Rosen produced a convincing indictment of Mondoweiss, showing that it indeed evinces anti-Semitism." James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic concurred with Wright's response to Rosen. Alex Kane, Adam Horowitz, and Philip Weiss responded in Mondoweiss arguing that Rosen's article, "is about nothing more than policing the discourse on Israel".

Later that year, The Algemeiner Journal published another article decrying Mondoweiss for its associations with Judith Butler, in light of her recent comments describing Islamist movements, even those of the militant variety, like Hamas and Hezbollah, as "social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left".

In 2013, Peter Beinart, writing for The Daily Beast, accused Mondoweiss of "ignoring human rights abuse unless it can be linked to America or capitalism or the West", and said that "By admitting that they're more interested in human rights violations when Israel commits them than when Hamas does, Horowitz and Roth are implying that they don't really see human rights as universal". Later in the year Commentary magazine accused Mondoweiss of being complicit in an "effort to delegitimize Jewish rights".

Journalist Bradley Burston, writing for Haaretz, described Mondoweiss as "avowedly anti-Israel" in reference to its coverage of the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers. Haaretz itself has described Mondoweiss as a "progressive Jewish website".

In 2015, David Bernstein, writing for The Washington Post, called the website a "hate site", and listed quotes from Weiss that he asserted were anti-Semitic. This included Weiss' claim that "the Israel lobby ... reflected a contract the American establishment had made with Jews to drive the economy in the 1970s", which Bernstein likened to a belief in an "Elders of Zion type group".

According to Elliot Kaufman, the Vice President of Cardinal for Israel, a Stanford University group, writing in The Stanford Review, Mondoweiss "often publishes astonishingly anti-Semitic material, using classic anti-Semitic imagery such as depicting Jews as spiders, cockroaches, or octopuses with tentacles controlling others, and Holocaust inversion. Its hatred of Israel is as deep as it is vicious."