It wasn’t easy pinning Bari Weiss down for a chat. Despite our fond regard for each other – we are both Jewesses of the same age, both keen on defending Israel in the media – the American journalist and editor was always frenetically busy, as her profile has gone stratospheric since we last met.
When we met in 2021, in a sweltering New York summer, she had half a million Twitter followers and a Substack newsletter (Common Sense) that was rapidly gathering readers and revenue. The previous year, she had resigned from her job as an op-ed editor and writer at the New York Times with a 1,500-word resignation letter that went viral. “Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor,” she wrote, accusing the paper of a culture of bullying writers with slightly right-of-woke views.
