Who Still Publishes and Reads Helen Thomas?

Eric Rozenman
CAMERA Media Analysis
14 January '11

Who needs Helen Thomas? The discredited former dean of White House reporters has returned, if in small type at a small publication. Her re-emergence tells us something about those who still have use for Thomas, a self-exposed antisemite.

Last spring, Thomas, then 89, experienced a videotaped meltdown at the Executive Mansion. For more than half a century she had been first United Press International's White House correspondent, then Hearst Newspapers' Washington columnist. In recent decades she'd become a journalistic embarrassment, a hectoring presence at White House press briefings who didn't ask questions so much as vent her biases.

Among other things, she repeatedly badgered U.S. presidents about Israel's “occupation of Palestine,” sometimes dating it to the 1967 Six-Day War, sometimes to 1948, when the Jewish state declared its independence. Last May 27, during a White House celebration of American Jewish heritage, Rabbi David Nesenoff asked Thomas for her comments on Israel. “Tell ‘em to get the hell out of Palestine,” she asserted. “ .... Remember these people [Arabs] are occupied and it's their land. It's not German; it's not Poland.”

Where should the Jews go, Nesnoff asked. “They can go home,” Thomas replied. To “Poland, Germany .... and America and everywhere else.” As if Jew is not the English derivative of Judean, Latin for Yehudi, the Hebrew for those from the land of the Jews. By definition, Jews in Israel are home.

The video became public June 4. Under pressure, Thomas apologized, said her remarks did not reflect her true feelings, and called for mutual tolerance in the Middle East.

Her apology didn't fool Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement. On June 6, the organization — designated a terrorist group by the U.S., Israeli, Canadian, Australian, and Japanese governments, among others — approved of Thomas's Juden raus sentiment. She resigned from Hearst on June 7.

On December 2, speaking in Detroit, Thomas disowned her apology. The Detroit News reported that, talking with reporters, she said “I stand by it. I told the truth” with her “Jews to Germany” declaration. “I paid a price but it's worth it to speak the truth.” According to The News, she then “took her remarks further.” In a speech to an Arab American audience Thomas reiterated the hoary antisemitic canard of Jewish control:

“‘We are owned by the propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that,” she said, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is.”

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