An event was held at the University of Pennsylvania on October 17, 2013 featuring Ian Lustick and Blumenthal discussing "Goliath". Blumenthal objected to what he saw as "Israel's attempt to engineer and maintain a Jewish, non-indigenous majority", the Jewish population he alleged having an "attraction to Europe" (The "Mizrahi", who constitute about half of Israel's Jewish population, have lived in the Middle East and North Africa since before the arrival of Islam.) Blumenthal said: "there is absolutely no way for Jewish people in Israel/Palestine to become indigenized under the present order. And that's what really has to happen." Consequently, they should be "willing to be a part of the Arab world." A "choice needs to be placed to the Israeli Jewish population" (which he also referred to as the "settler-colonial population") "and it can only be placed to them through external pressure." "The maintenance and engineering of a non-indigenous demographic majority is non-negotiable", he said. Philip Weiss of the "Mondoweiss" website responded to Blumenthal's comments saying that "similar attitudes about indigenous culture have been used in intolerant ways in our society. I see some intolerance in that answer." In the Acknowledgements to "Goliath", Blumenthal wrote that websites such as "Electronic Intifada" and "Mondoweiss" had "provided essential outlets for much of the reporting" contained in the book. Petra Marquardt-Bigman wrote that the "single-minded effort in "Goliath" to portray Israel in an extremely biased way in order to promote comparisons to Nazi Germany that would justify political campaigns aimed at eliminating the Jewish state qualifies even under the most stringent criteria" as being antisemitic.