Barbara Sofer critiques a recent article in The New Yorker by Jeffrey Goldberg, entitled ‘Among the Settlers: Will they destroy Israel?’:
A more important problem is the writer’s obvious dislike of his subjects. This from a reporter who interviewed Ahmed Yassin and Hizbullah leaders in Lebanon without expressing antipathy. Let it suffice to say that I doubt he would have remarked on the unkempt fingernails of a working mother with 10 children had she lived in Beirut, Bombay, or Belfast.
But in Hebron, the rules are different. The same mother of 10, claims Goldberg, suffers from a “Moriah complex.” The traditional site of the binding of Isaac, says Goldberg, “symbolizes a Jew’s absolute devotion to even the most inexplicable and cruel demands of God. The Moriah complex is characterized by a desire to match Abraham’s devotion to God, even at the price of a child’s life.”
The suggestion that she – or, by extension, all of us who live here – values her children less than he does and would welcome the sacrifice of a child is an obscenity, not to mention his misuse of a seminal story of Jewish tradition.
See also the response to the article from David Wilder, spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron. Wilder claims Goldberg both misrepresented the tone he intended to use in the article (in order to gain access to interviews), and fabricated elements of the story. Your classic ‘charm and betray’ reporter’s M.O.
