Malcolm Gladwell on his former roommate Jeffrey Goldberg’s 2006 book Prisoners, which is about Goldberg’s experience as a prison guard at Ktzi’ot, Israel’s largest detention camp for Palestinian political prisoners:
“Jeffrey Goldberg has done the impossible—found some hope in the rubble of the Middle East. Prisoners will bring you to tears.”
—Malcolm Gladwell
Bring tears? Gladwell’s spent the last two decades shilling for an industry involved in the largest mass-murder campaign in the history of mankind, so you know Prisoners got some powerful stuff. And it does:
Ktzi’ot has long been criticized for its inhumane conditions, including frequent beatings, lack of drinking water and forced labor. Among the hundreds of books forbidden to prisoners at Ktzi’ot have been The Lord of the Rings and Hamlet. In the book, Goldberg describes a scene from Ktzi’ot in which his friend repeatedly hit a Palestinian prisoner in the head with a with a heavy, sharp-edged army radio, beating him to a bloody pulp, a beating that Goldberg “deduced was prompted by something [the prisoner] said.”
It was in February 1991, in the Wilderness of Zin, at a place called Ketziot, not far from Kadesh-Barnea, that a friend of mine named Yoram tried, in my presence, to beat senseless an Arab by the name of Abu Firas. Abu Firas was a disagreeable and smug man, but his sourness was not a mortal sin Yoram, whom I knew to be gentle but at that moment had blood in his face, was beating Abu Firas on the head with the handset of an army radio. The handset weighed five or six pounds, and it was sharp-edged. Abu Firas was hurt.
. . . Yoram was a religious Jew, and his kippah, knit and multicolored in the style of the modern Orthodox, stayed pinned to his head through his exertions It was quite a sight—a yeshiva Jew, a God-fearer, delivering a bloody beating.
. . . Abu Firas was on his knees, grabbing at his head. His hair shone with blood. He was barely coherent. He pleaded for water. Yoram tried to jack Abu Firas up onto his feet, but he couldn’t move.
Later in the book Goldberg admits that he lied to cover up the crime: “I found another military policeman, and handed off the wobbling prisoner, who was by now bleeding on me. ‘He fell,’ I lied.” Goldberg also took part in beatings of Palestinian prisoners, but justified it this way: “Unlike [Goldberg’s camp-guard friend], I never hit a Palestinian who wasn’t already hitting me.”
This isn’t the first time Malcolm Gladwell has helped his old buddy out. In fact, Malcolm and Jeffrey have a long, rich history that goes back to when they were just two young conservatives trying to make it as media hacks in the big cruel media world of D.C. They roomed together in the 80s, and both of them started off their careers in mainstream news at The Washington Post—Malcolm worked the business beat, while Jeffrey was a police reporter. Later on the two buddies reunited again at The New Yorker. Editor-in-chief David Remnick, also a Washington Post alum, hired Malcolm in 1996, and brought Jeffrey on board in 2000. Somewhere along the way, Malcolm Gladwell introduced Jeffrey Goldberg to the man’s future wife. “[Gladwell’s] responsible for the existence of my three children,” blushed Goldberg.
As a token of respect and appreciation, Jeffrey Goldberg included his buddy Malcolm on a list of “Top 50 Philo-Semites,” helping promote his Judeophilic buddy’s newest book Outliers with a link to Amazon just as Outliers was hitting bookstores in November 2008:
Malcolm Gladwell’s Top 50 Philo-Semites
NOV 20 2008, 2:39 PM ETSo, as you have undoubtedly heard, the Forward has chosen me as one of its 50 most influential American Jews. Me, Rahm Emanuel, Sarah Silverman, and Lipa Schmeltzer, among others.
This honor has changed my life, especially the magnificent gift of 1,000 shares of AIG stock from the finance committee of the Elders of Zion. It has also caused heartache. Friends are envious, even non-Jewish friends. For instance, Malcolm Gladwell is very upset. When we were roommates a very long time ago, Malcolm used to listen to the klezmer stylings of Giora Feidman on his record player. He is, in other words, very Jewy. He is also deeply wounded. “I am so jealous,” he wrote. “Shouldn’t there be a parallel list for wanna-bes?”
Yes, there should. If the Forward can publish a list of the top 50 Jews, then Goldblog can publish a list of the top 50 philo-Semites. I don’t have a philosophical problem with this, by the way: I dissent from the line, first passed on to me by Frank Foer, who, tragically, is not a top-50 Jew (though his mother is!), that philo-Semites are anti-Semites who like Jews. So, a list, and one loyal readers can help me assemble. I already asked Malcolm to provide me names of other philo-Semites, but he said: “How do I know philo-Semites? I’m such a philo-Semite I only associate with the real thing.”
Here are a few names, just to get us going:
READ MORE about Malcolm Gladwell and Jeffrey Goldberg at the S.H.A.M.E. Project:
Read more: hack scratching, israel, jeffrey goldberg, malcolm gladwell, palestine, prisoner, s.h.a.m.e., shill, Yasha Levine, S.H.A.M.E.
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25 Comments
Add your own1. G.G. Allin | July 13th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Malcolm Gladwell being included on a list that includes George Eliot and Emile Zola. *Shivers*
2. Hannibal | July 13th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
Goldberg has such a fucking fat, bloated head that it’s disconcerting.
3. Brad Pitt | July 14th, 2012 at 5:03 am
Poetic justice that they are both hideously ugly. Thank you, Yahwey.
4. YankeeFrank | July 14th, 2012 at 5:26 am
The idea that the fat, bloat-headed Goldberg has spawn fills me with loathing. And he and Gladwell’s mutual dick-suck is just sad and petty. But what’s also sad and petty is the New Yorker, and indeed any media outlet that would host these two shallow hacks.
5. Lou | July 14th, 2012 at 5:08 pm
So where’s the hope story in his prison adventures? He helped beat a few Arabs silly and claimed it was all “self-defensive?”
Reading this doesn’t make me anymore positive about “things improving” in Israel. Shit, Ames, you should do a feature on what Muslims think will happen to the Jews during the end times! Some of the crap’s crazy like talking trees and rocks warning Muslims that Jews are hiding behind them, there’s a reason for the endless fighting and a lot of it’s religious based on things Mohammed preached and claimed.
6. Epsilon | July 14th, 2012 at 6:20 pm
Hey, whores have to stick together, you know.
Heh.
Israel vs. Palestine aka Jews vs. Muslims is just the oldest turf fight stil existent on the history of mankind.
I say: Let them go at each other, with no help. Even if it means *gasp* Israel losing. And let Christians and Mormons win? The AEC won’t abide.
7. Ozinator | July 15th, 2012 at 2:24 am
#5 and #6,
It’s not religious based fighting or long standing turf fighting at all. Euro Zionist Jews came in, cleansed it of locals and claimed that they-through a religion they adopted in the 8th century, had a right to the land. So the real “Jews” as a race, ARE the Muslims and Christians (and some Jews) living there BEFORE Zionists showed up. Saying this has been going on forever is taking what has happened in the last 100 years and skipping the 1500 years before then to marry it to an ancient past. If Palestine were a nation of Atheists, they would also have a problem with what Zionists did. But hey, reaching for courage, all peoples tend to focus on their religious bonding glue…doesn’t mean that whatever supposed intolerance they have is part of the problem. Fuckers killed them and stole their land
8. zhubajie | July 15th, 2012 at 3:22 pm
The present-day problems of the Middle East mostly stem from Britain and France splitting up the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s. I suspect the British Empire founded a Jewish Homeland to use Euro Jews to be middle men in their new Middle Eastern empire, much as Indians in Africa. For most of the last 1500 years, it was definitely safer to be a Jew or a minority Christian in Middle East than in Europe.
9. Jamal "Pimp Hand" Washington | July 15th, 2012 at 4:05 pm
@6
Sup, devils? This is ya boy Pimp Hand comin’ up in this comments section to correct a few “factual errors” that y’all been makin’ about my best two bottom bitches.
Now, when I put my hoes through Hoein’ School, I try n teach ’em the valuable lesson that these bitches ain’t got nobody but each other to look out for them while they on the streets makin’ me them dollas. I hand pick these hoes, they got the best dick suckin’ mouths in all the East Coast, and I don’t need to tell y’all that shit is worth a grip in the pimp game.
So when my bitches get together to help each other make it easier and safer to put money in they purses (and my wallet), it pains me to my very soul to hear you devils sayin’ shit like “Oh, them hoes be colludin’,” or, “it ain’t right for these bitches to be workin’ together to turn these valuable ass tricks,” an shit. They workin’ hard, swallowin’ crazy ass amounts of sperms an shit, helpin’ me by helpin’ themselves.
Working together, for me. That’s how you turn out a valuable ass ho, and they graduated with straight As at my school. So I ain’t wanna hear no more badmouthin’ of my most valuable, dick-suckinest bitches on the street right now. My pimp hand is strong as hell, and it knocks the teeth outta bad hoes and trash talkin’ devils the same.
Sincerely,
PH
10. Vendetta | July 15th, 2012 at 7:39 pm
As I’m sure the War Nerd could correct you, were he making his biannual update, Israelis vs. Palestinians is far, far from the world’s longest running gang fight, and the actual text of the Koran has nothing to do with it.
11. Derp | July 15th, 2012 at 10:04 pm
@9 A real-life pimp? Ah shit, wassup mah nigger!
Whiteboy from Pimps Up was one of my favorite icons growing up! I always wanted to be a pimp but the niggers all said I was too damn white and country and they were going to kill me if I called em a nigger again, derp!
12. Cum | July 16th, 2012 at 8:24 am
“The Inside Game is where the political sausage-making happens.”
13. Dhomochevky | July 16th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
There’s a “dick” in my political “ass”, if you know what I’m saying.
14. Punjabi From Karachi | July 17th, 2012 at 2:04 am
Dear Exiled Online,
I just came across a book by Jim Goad. This worries me. A promising young man I know looks like he might take that direction from his mid-20’s and turn into a Pakistani version of Jim Goad. He’s a good writer, 98% of people around him tell him so, but my buddy seems more reactive than usual. What do I do? I don’t want him to embarrass himself further or strain our friendship.
Sincerely
Punjabi From Karachi
15. haha | July 17th, 2012 at 10:30 am
what the FUCK is wrong with Malcom Gladwell … why does he look like such a FREAK??
16. Ozinator | July 17th, 2012 at 7:36 pm
Hey AEC, whatever it may be worth to you guys, Richard Haass, President of the CFR really pushes “Gladwell’s tipping point” to make a point about anything. What an important book…I guess I should read it?
Here he is in 2008 talking to Tony Blair about Israel
HAASS: “Do you also feel a sense of urgency that if we don’t make real progress in the — I won’t ask for time limits, but soon, that the chance of ever coming up with a viable two-state reality will essentially have been lost? Are we getting close to a — what Malcolm Gladwell would call a tipping point”?
Here he is in 2011 referring to an economic crisis question posed by George Stephanopoulos,
“The answer is none of the experts know when it’s going to come. I think there is no consensus that if and when it does come, it could come quite quickly at that point, a little bit almost like a Malcolm Gladwell scenario that you reach a tipping point”.
And last week, he did it again on the Morning Joe in relation to Syrian regime change,
“This thing is beginning to take on momentum. One day we will see Martin Gladwell’s tipping point.” I heard Haas say it on a clip from the Jimmy Dore Show-where from I transcribed the quote. The quote didn’t get any google results for the morning show…I was only looking for this quote when I found the other two . Not sure how many times he’s said it about how many different topics.
17. Chris | July 17th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
@15 That is so immature! Making attacks based on one’s appearance to score cheap political points! That’s what Limbaugh does, you should have more pride.
Still, I will concede that Malcolm’s head looks like a large, hairy penis, but I won’t say that to score cheap political points!
18. John Galt | July 18th, 2012 at 12:38 pm
15: He looks like a freak because he tried to gloriously shitbugger the ravishing Ann Coulter while s/he was in her pre-op stage, and s/he smashed his head with a copy of my love’s “Fountainhead.” Ayn and I used to laugh about the title of her book while we mutually masturbated to images of starving children.
19. Epsilon | July 19th, 2012 at 7:16 am
@7
Your argument assumes that Zionists simply came out of nowhere, which is not the case.
20. Deb Matheson | July 19th, 2012 at 11:12 am
Oh. My. God. A friend who I respect and love told me I should read this blog. When I see him tonight, he’s going to have to explain how and when he had his brain removed. What a load of biased bollocks … and what a shower of irrelevant shite these comments are.
21. Mason C | July 19th, 2012 at 11:15 am
The edit wars at Wikipedia continue, with some junior-varsity Goebbels trying to deviously massage Gladwell’s heinous record. I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘Jacobesau’ was His Royal Shitstain himself.
22. Ozinator | July 19th, 2012 at 2:27 pm
#19,
I thought I was clear…though some (or any of us) can claim some bloodline crossing that region of the world, a distant different place is where the bloodline goes back to if it’s traced back that far. A bit of a red herring though because as ludicrous as it is that partial descendants of 8th century converts are claiming a religion as a race tied to a particular part of the world, the bigger point is that the people living there lived there before they were kicked out in the past 70 years. Maybe I miss your point?
23. Ozinator | July 19th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
#20, if he explains to you, will he get laid?
24. helplesscase | July 20th, 2012 at 2:28 pm
If Jeff Goldberg loves Israel so much…why isn’t he, uh, there?
25. AA+ Bonds | July 20th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
What’s fucked is how he notes that a philo-Semite is just another kind of anti-Semitic bigot, and then tries to laugh it off.
Goldberg is the equivalent of a black guy who only hangs out with the sort of white people who automatically assume he’s a basketball superstar.
Fucked up, man.
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