Reception
In March 2007, Gary Kamiya of Salon.com 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.”[36]
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."[37]
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.”[38]
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."[39]
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.”[40]
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".[41]
Between 2010 and 2011, Tablet magazine published three articles,[42][43][44] in which Mondoweiss, along with some other blogs, were thoroughly criticized. These articles characterized Weiss as a "Jew-baiter" & "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.[45] 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."[46]
In 2012, The Algemeiner Journal characterized Mondoweiss as "Purveyors of Anti-Semitic Material".[47] 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."[48]
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."[49] James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic concurred with Wright's response to Rosen.[50] 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."[51]
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”.[52]
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".[53] Later in the year Commentary magazine accused Mondoweiss of being complicit in an "effort to delegitimize Jewish rights".[54]
Journalist Bradley Burston writing in Haaretz described Mondoweiss as "avowedly anti-Israel" in reference to its coverage of the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers.[55] Haaretz itself describes Mondoweiss as a 'progressive Jewish newspaper'.[56]
In 2015, David Bernstein of the Washington Post called the website a hate site, and listed quotes from Weiss that he claims 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,"[57] which Bernstein likened to a belief in an "Elders of Zion type group
