| Co-Editors | Philip Weiss Adam Horowitz |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Website | Official Site |
Mondoweiss is "a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective".[1] It was founded in 2006 by journalist Philip Weiss and is currently co-edited by Weiss and journalist Adam Horowitz. [2]
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In a 2010 interview with The Link, the magazine published by Americans for Middle East Understanding, Weiss described the evolution of Mondoweiss:
In 2011, Wess and Horowitz introduced Mondoweiss 3.0. a redesign of the website and "the continuing evolution of the site away from being simply a blog, to an interactive website that delivers news, hosts thought-provoking analysis and spurs debate."[5] In addition, for the first time staffers joined Mondoweiss.[6][7]
Weiss and Horowitz list the four aims of the Mondoweiss as:
In March 2007, Gary Kamiya of Salon.com argued 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."[8] A few years later 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."[9] By February 2010, The Christian Science Monitor described Mondoweiss as a "popular" website. "[10] 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."[11]
Lee Smith, in the American Jewish online periodical Tablet Magazine, accused Phil Weiss, Stephen Walt, Glenn Greenwald, and Andrew Sullivan in July, 2010 of being part of an "anti-Israel blogosphere." He also suggests that they are "obsessed with Israel and the machinations of the U.S. Israel lobby"[12] and labels them "Jew-baiter[s]."[12]
Weiss responded to Smith by stating that "yesterday Tablet smeared me and several other bloggers as Jew-baiters."[13] Others have also responded to Smith's article. Harvard professor Stephen Walt, who is also mentioned by Smith, questions the article's premise by stating that "the first thing to observe about Smith's screed is that even though he accuses me and my fellow bloggers of being anti-Semites and 'Jew-baiters,' his article contains not a scintilla of evidence that Sullivan, Greenwald, 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."[14] Journalist Max Blumenthal negated Smith's argument, commenting that he "read the piece twice and could not find any instances of 'Jew baiting' by Smith’s targets. Smith couldn’t either, so he instead highlighted a few screeds by semi-literate and mostly anonymous comment trolls."[15]
In 2011 at the same time that The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (by Mondoweiss editors Philip Weiss, Adam Horowitz and Lizzy Ratner) [16] was published, Michelle Goldberg wrote an article for Tablet Magazine[17] in which she referred to Mondoweiss as "fulsomely, intensely anti-Israel."[18]