First, another sucker punch via email example. Goldberg was owed money by a California supporter of ZOA. Goldberg repeatedly badgered the man, whom we’ll call X, during a time of personal crisis when X had considered suicide. X confided what he had considered doing to Goldberg. Some time later, Goldberg sent an email to X, which his brother shared with ZOA. This is what Goldberg wrote in his email to X:
From: [email protected] To: X CC: Brother of X Sent:8/18/2011 Subj: Re
Are you still considering suicide? If you can overcome your fear, you can finally put an end to your pain. You know it’s what you want to do.
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Goldberg has subjected hard core supporters of the Zionist vision to abuse, including the recipients of the two emails, above, and certainly his former mentor, Mort Klein. But Goldberg is an equal opportunity offender. And someone who expects to lead a major organization must control their temper in public, even when talking about people whose views are anathema to the cause.
This past fall, on November 17, Goldberg was one of many speakers at an event in a synagogue at the West Side Institutional Synagogue, on W. 76th Street in Manhattan. Goldberg spoke, in his role as ZOA national vice president. When referring to anti-Greater Israel protesters who were gathered outside the synagogue, Goldberg referred to them as “mutants,” and suggested they ‘should have been aborted.’
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Whoever leads the Zionist Organization of America has to be someone who can maintain civil relations even – perhaps especially – with other national and international organizational heads, members of governments, and media personalities who are primed to be antagonistic to ZOA’s positions. Because this is so, the pro-Israel world cannot afford to have as the leader of that organization, someone who has repeatedly displayed vicious responses to those with whom he disagrees.
While both Klein and Goldberg would unquestionably continue the organization’s hard-core embrace of the Zionist vision – Goldberg claims he is “further to the right” even than Klein – embracing and advancing that vision is not enough. What is also essential is the ability to maintain a level of credibility that requires all those others on the national and international playing field who disagree with those views to continue to include ZOA when major decisions must be made, or at least discussions must be held. It is the only quality that will ensure ZOA continues to be a “major American Jewish organization” and not just a random outlier.
Goldberg has demonstrated a propensity towards viewing disagreement on principles as an invitation to unleash unspeakably poisonous vitriol, even to other Zionists. ZOA cannot afford to be led by someone like that.
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This article contains two emails written by Steve Goldberg to people other than the author. While, as a general matter, there is no legally recognized right to privacy in emails, it is unseemly to share publicly what was written in private. However, in an email exchange this author had with Goldberg in August of 2012 regarding the Shangri-la episode, he wrote: “Lori, You are naive if you think anything you write on the internet, even in a private e-mail, is ‘off the record.'” Later in the exchange he also wrote: “I never write anything ‘off the record.'”
Lori Lowenthal Marcus was once the president of the Philadelphia district of the Zionist Organization of America