Words of the Week (Or, Why Nicholas Kristof Has Lost Credibility With Me)

“In his recent columns, [Nicholas] Kristof discusses the occupation as if it came about through Israeli avarice and greed alone. He manages to write about the situation in Gaza with hardly a reference to the rocket attacks that led to the Israeli blockade; he writes about the security barrier as if it wasn’t built to stop a flood of suicide bombers from the West Bank. Kristof is a smart columnist but he undermines himself by refusing to acknowledge what [Thomas] Friedman understands, that the Middle East is maddeningly complicated, and that what appears to be easy-to-understand often isn’t.”

Source: Jeffrey Goldberg

My only disagreement here with the greatness that is Goldblog is in the use of the word “comically” elsewhere in the post, as in: “Read Friedman’s column carefully; it seems to me he’s talking directly to Kristof, whose writing on the Middle East has become a bit comically one-sided.” Emphasis is mine. I find nothing comical about Kristof’s columns about Israel. I find them shameful and infuriating.