Zahran - Antisemitism in the Media: The Tip of the Iceberg?

Mudar Zahran..
Stonegate Institute..
14 February '12..

Helen Thomas, dubbed the " First Lady of the Press", was a renowned veteran reporter, "a trusted source" on White House politics, and for decades, considered a public opinion-maker, when on May 27, 2010, she made anti-Semitic remarks: she wanted Jews to simply "get the hell out of Palestine" and return "Home to Poland, Germany" or "America."

How had she managed to keep her anti-Semitism out of sight all that time? And to what extent had that affected her reporting, especially on the Arab-Israeli conflict? Also, is Thomas just an isolated case? Or is she just the tip of the iceberg; is there much more of this sentiment prevalent among reporters under the surface? How many anti-Semitic and biased media stars are out there who are more devious than Thomas, and have chosen to keep their anti-Semitism still in the closet?

Thomas went on to claim that Israel treated the Palestinians the way the Nazis had treated the Jews. Thomas, who is of Arab descent, probably knows that this is not true by any means. All she had to do to was check the way her country of heritage, Lebanon, treats the Palestinians versus the way Israel does. As Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are institutionally and systematically discriminated against by both the Lebanese society and the Lebanese state, how come Thomas never mentioned that? Was Thomas actually concerned with the welfare of the Palestinians or with hating Jews?

Helen Thomas, Keynote Speaker at Anti-Israel Protests

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
17 April '11

http://blog.camera.org/archives/2011/04/helen_thomas_keynote_speaker_a.html

Ha'aretz reports today:

A series of protests against Israeli policy and its support by AIPAC are planned in May to coincide with the AIPAC conference in the U.S. capital and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech there. The protests, under the heading "Move over AIPAC," will include demonstrations opposite the building where Netanyahu will speak and Congress, and a series of lectures and meetings with critics of Israel, including veteran journalist Helen Thomas who lost her place in the White House press room after saying Jews should leave Palestine and go back to Poland, Germany and the United States. Thomas will give the keynote address at the Move Over AIPAC conference, and will receive an award from the women's pacifist organization Code Pink, one of the hundred left-wing American organizations behind the conference.

Also, Thomas is very "happy" that she just received U.S. government press credentials, which gives her access to the Senate and House press galleries, as well as other Capitol Hill events, including some White House press briefings.

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Two Helen Thomas Farces: What She Says and How She's Ridiculed

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
26 March '11

http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/03/two-helen-thomas-farces-what-she-says.html

It's amazing how bad the public discussion of issues is nowadays. Here's a tiny example. Helen Thomas was fired for her anti-Jewish statements and was recently interviewed in Playboy where she made more such remarks that are--correctly--being interpreted as antisemitic.

But why does Thomas hate Israel so much, a hatred that spills over into antisemitism? I haven't seen a single person who's gotten it right. She's no neo-Nazi or nut case. Thomas is of Lebanese descent, albeit Christian, and basically views herself on this issue at least as an Arab. The important factor is not her eccentricity but her typicality.

What Thomas is doing, then, and has done for many years, is to express ideas common in the Arabic-speaking world which are becoming increasingly common in the West. That's why she's significant and that's where she's coming from. Her blend of anti-Zionism and antisemitism--using traditional anti-Jewish themes, sometimes applied to Israel and at times to all Jews--is just like what exists in a high percentage of households in the Arabic-speaking and Muslim-majority worlds.

We're not talking about a funny old lady but about a worldview held by millions of people in a lot of countries, by revolutionary Islamists and terrorists, and by a growing number of people on Western college campuses and in elite circles. This is not some joke but rather a "craziness" that kills and shapes the fate of whole nations and continents.

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Shorts: 1) Helen Thomas, playmate; 2) Who the Hell is Martin Raffel?

Fresnozionism.org
18 March '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/03/shorts-1-helen-thomas-playmate-2-who-the-hell-is-martin-raffel/

Playmate of the month

Helen Thomas has done an interview for Playboy magazine (no, I will not make centerfold jokes here) in which she claims that she was misunderstood:

Nobody asked me to explain myself. Nobody said, ‘What did you really mean?’”

said Thomas, who was widely called antisemitic for telling Israeli Jews to “go home” to Poland, etc. So she sets the record straight:

[The Jews are] using their power, and they have power in every direction…Power over the White House, power over Congress…Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies, which are funded by wealthy supporters, including those from Hollywood. Same thing with the financial markets. There’s total control…It isn’t the two percent. It’s real power when you own the White House, when you own these other places in terms of your political persuasion. Of course they have power. [To the interviewer] You don’t deny that. You’re Jewish, aren’t you?

She said a lot of other things, about the Palestinian Arabs, etc., but you know …who cares?

Who the Hell is Martin Raffel?

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA, not to be confused with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) calls itself “the representative voice of the organized American Jewish community.” It is affiliated with the JFNA, formerly the UJC and before that the UJA, the umbrella organization of the Jewish Federations in the US and Canada.

Confused yet? What’s important to know is that the Jewish Federations raise large sums of money. Some of it is spent for charitable purposes in local communities (despite what Helen Thomas thinks, there are poor Jews) and some of it goes to support the Jewish Agency in Israel and the Joint Distribution Committee, which helps Jews in difficult situations around the world.

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.”

(Read full "Who Still Publishes and Reads Helen Thomas?")

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Ray Hanania a bit unclear on the concept of "free speech"

Elder of Ziyon
06 December '10

From UPI:

Journalist Helen Thomas ripped Wayne State University in Michigan for ending a diversity award in her name, saying the school mocked the First Amendment.

The university ended the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity Award last week after she made controversial remarks in Dearborn, Mich., about what she saw as Zionist control of American institutions. When announcing the end of the annual award, Wayne State said it pulled the prize and "strongly condemns the anti-Semitic remarks made by Helen Thomas."

Thomas told the Detroit Free Press in an article published Monday the leaders of Wayne State University "have made a mockery of the First Amendment and disgraced their understanding of its inherent freedom of speech and the press."

Thomas, 90, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, added, "The university also has betrayed academic freedom -- a sad day for its students."

Some Arab-American leaders joined in criticizing Wayne State's decision to pull the award named after Thomas, who grew up in Detroit and graduated from Wayne.

Who are the Arab American leaders who criticized the decision? The only one I can find so far by name is our old pal Ray Hanania, who called this blog an "often racistly anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate site" and accused me of hypocrisy.

Let's talk about hypocrisy, Ray.

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Helen Thomas: stuff your slanders where they belong

Fresnozionism.org
03 December '10

Wacko former White House correspondent Helen Thomas made a speech in Detroit the other day in which she said, among other things,

Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where there mouth is…We’re being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.

She defended herself against charges of antisemitism by saying that she herself was a ‘Semite’. Yes, she really said that!

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. She also said this:

I can call a president of the United States anything in the book but I can’t touch Israel, which has Jewish-only roads in the West Bank … No American would tolerate that — white-only roads.

Time to take this particular slander and stuff it where it belongs.

There are no ‘Jewish only roads’. Here is the actual story:

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CAIR appreciates Helen Thomas

Fresnozionism.org
18 September '10

News item:

The longtime White House correspondent who resigned from Hearst newspaper in June in the wake of comments she made about Israel will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR is honoring Thomas, who is of Lebanese descent and now 90 years old, at its Leadership Conference and 16th Annual Fundraising Banquet on Oct. 9 in Arlington, Va. Speakers will also include Oxford Islamic studies scholar Tariq Ramadan.



Thomas started at the White House as a reporter during the Kennedy administration. In a video interview captured at a White House Jewish heritage event for RabbiLIVE.com that spread quickly across the Internet, Thomas advised Israeli Jews to get the hell out of Palestine and go home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.

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Israel and the Surrender of the West

One of the world's oldest stories is playing out before our eyes: The Jews are being scapegoated again.


Shelby Steele
Wall Street Journal
21 June '10

The most interesting voice in all the fallout surrounding the Gaza flotilla incident is that sanctimonious and meddling voice known as "world opinion." At every turn "world opinion," like a school marm, takes offense and condemns Israel for yet another infraction of the world's moral sensibility. And this voice has achieved an international political legitimacy so that even the silliest condemnation of Israel is an opportunity for self-congratulation.

Rock bands now find moral imprimatur in canceling their summer tour stops in Israel (Elvis Costello, the Pixies, the Gorillaz, the Klaxons). A demonstrator at an anti-Israel rally in New York carries a sign depicting the skull and crossbones drawn over the word "Israel." White House correspondent Helen Thomas, in one of the ugliest incarnations of this voice, calls on Jews to move back to Poland. And of course the United Nations and other international organizations smugly pass one condemnatory resolution after another against Israel while the Obama administration either joins in or demurs with a wink.

This is something new in the world, this almost complete segregation of Israel in the community of nations. And if Helen Thomas's remarks were pathetic and ugly, didn't they also point to the end game of this isolation effort: the nullification of Israel's legitimacy as a nation? There is a chilling familiarity in all this. One of the world's oldest stories is playing out before our eyes: The Jews are being scapegoated again.

"World opinion" labors mightily to make Israel look like South Africa looked in its apartheid era—a nation beyond the moral pale. And it projects onto Israel the same sin that made apartheid South Africa so untouchable: white supremacy. Somehow "world opinion" has moved away from the old 20th century view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a complicated territorial dispute between two long-suffering peoples. Today the world puts its thumb on the scale for the Palestinians by demonizing the stronger and whiter Israel as essentially a colonial power committed to the "occupation" of a beleaguered Third World people.

This is now—figuratively in some quarters and literally in others—the moral template through which Israel is seen. It doesn't matter that much of the world may actually know better. This template has become propriety itself, a form of good manners, a political correctness. Thus it is good manners to be outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza, and it is bad manners to be outraged at Hamas's recent attack on a school because it educated girls, or at the thousands of rockets Hamas has fired into Israeli towns—or even at the fact that Hamas is armed and funded by Iran. The world wants independent investigations of Israel, not of Hamas.

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Israel's Right to Exist Bubble

Yoel Meltzer
American Thinker
20 June '10

Of all the implications following the Gaza "peace flotilla" episode, perhaps the most important for Israel is that the existence of a growing challenge to Israel's very right to exist has finally been fully exposed. Whether it was the provocation by the flotilla itself, or the subsequent challenge to Israel by the Rachel Corrie ship, or the anti-Semitic remarks by veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, the feeling is that Israel's right to exist is no longer a given amongst the international community. Therefore, it should have come as no surprise when in the aftermath of the incident, Israeli leaders repeatedly stressed that Israel has the right to exist and therefore the right to defend itself. This mounting challenge, which has been downplayed for quite some time, can no longer be denied.

The truth is that the writing has been on the wall for several years already. During the heyday of Oslo, the acceptance by the world of our right to exist was something that Israel desperately strove for, and in many ways, it even guided our policies. Time and again we were told of the importance of Israel's "acceptance" by various Arab countries, while concomitantly constant demands were made of Yasser Arafat to publicly express his acceptance of Israel's right to exist. The fact that his gestures were only in English for the international audience -- while in Arabic he continued with his denial and hatred of Israel -- should have caused more than just the "extreme right" in Israel to question his authenticity. However, the show was allowed to go on.

Eventually Israel removed all of its soldiers from Lebanon, but instead of receiving the hoped-for acceptance of its right to exist, rockets eventually reached Haifa. Continuing right along, Israel removed all of its citizens from Gaza, and once again thousands of rockets, rather than the elusive acceptance of its right to exist, was all that Israel could show for its undertaking. Then, after subjecting some of its southern residents to years of rocket attacks, Israel finally reentered Gaza to clamp down on Hamas and stop the rockets. The result, of course, was more international condemnations and the heavily biased Goldstone Report. Finally, there is the ongoing explicit threat by Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel off the the map. In light of the above, it should be clear that any future Israeli withdrawal from all or parts of Judea and Samaria would be just as futile in changing the trend.

Thus, the challenge to Israel's right to exist is certainly not new.

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I asked Helen Thomas about Israel. Her answer revealed more than you think.

David F. Nesenoff
The Washington Post
20 June '10

On the night of May 26, I drove down to Washington from New York with my son, Adam, and his friend Daniel. We arrived at 2:30 a.m. and crashed in a hotel. A few hours later, we woke up and coaxed each other to prepare for a day at the White House. The president was hosting a Jewish heritage celebration, and we'd been able to get media credentials to cover the event. We were exhausted, but thrilled.

The day began with security checks. Then to the press room. A glimpse of former president Bill Clinton scurrying by with Vice President Biden. A press conference in the East Room with President Obama. An impromptu interview with the White House's mashgiach, the supervisor of the kosher kitchen preparation. Adam and Daniel were documenting the events for their Jewish teen Web site, ShmoozePOINT.com. I was interviewing people about Israel for a feature on my Web site, RabbiLIVE.com.

I thought that if I could create videos of short anecdotes about Israel -- the food, archeology, history and personal experiences -- they might go viral on the Internet and be a nice promo campaign for the country. I had started the project just a few weeks before.

Even as a rabbi, I did not count on divine intervention.

We were on the White House front lawn when I told the teenagers that approaching us was the most famous reporter in the world -- Helen Thomas, a veteran who had covered presidents from Kennedy to Obama. We stopped her. I told Thomas that the young men were starting out in the press corps and hoped to be reporters. She kindly shared notes about journalism with us. "You'll always keep learning," she said. It was an honor.

Then I asked: "Any comments on Israel? We're asking everybody today." Like saying a password to enter a new, secret place. "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," she replied, and "go home" to Poland and Germany. We were in.

The gentle give and take has now been broadcast, transcribed and thoroughly dissected. However, a strict transcription misses the accuracy of the audiovisual. Only in the director's cut, the video, are the nonwords, the sound, the noise, the true reaction. And that was my "oooh."

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A great example of the media's willful blindness

Elder of Ziyon
14 June '10

From Newsweek's Eleanor Clift: (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

Google “good riddance to Helen Thomas,” and you get 41,700 results, more than enough to get the gist of the blogosphere’s general disdain for the 89-year-old doyenne who was a fixture in the White House press room going back to the Kennedy administration. Much of the commentary reflects revulsion at Thomas’s characterization of the Palestinian issue as something that could be solved if Jews left the Palestine territories and went back to where they came from.

She was talking about the settlers, and if she had said they should go back to Brooklyn, where many of them are from, she probably wouldn’t have made news. But suggesting they return to Germany and Poland touched a nerve that led to an abrupt ending of Thomas’s storied career. She apologized, saying “I made a mistake.” But there was no forgiveness

Was Thomas only speaking about "settlers"? Let's look at Thomas' words:

"Any comments on Israel?"

HT "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not Germany, not Poland."

"So where should they go?"

HT "Home. Poland. Germany. America. And everywhere else.

Exactly what percentage of "settlers" have immigrated to Israel from Poland and Germany? Oh, approximately zero.

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Thank You, Helen

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
09 June '10

From a Rabbi I know:-

...I am quite sure that you regret having said those words because you would rather continue to pretend that you are a nice person and that only the Jews are "oppressors" and bad people. Now the mean, unforgiving and biased Helen Thomas has been revealed to us in full. It certainly is not flattering to you but it is the true self and we appreciate your allowing us to see the true Helen Thomas at last. This is not to deny your right to your opinions. You have every right to defend the Arab claims--I certainly do not begrudge you this--but to do it in such an ignorant and hateful manner reveals that under the patina of courteous speech and elegant demeanor, there lies beneath the skin of every sympathizer with the Arab cause a measure of hatred, a desire for revenge and a meanness of spirit. Your position is not just anti-Semitic; it is anti-human. If all people spoke as you did, the world would be a horrible place to be, "in Germany, Poland and everywhere else."

It is not pure coincidence that the passengers of the Gaza flotilla were more interested in fighting and turning themselves into shahids, than in the promotion of welfare for their brethren in Gaza. You fit their mold: it is better to destroy than to build. This sadly has been the legacy of those "Palestinians" you defend. In Gaza, after the enterprising Jews left behind beautiful fields of growing fruits and vegetables, your protégés proceeded to destroy them with a glee and a gusto that, in other civilized societies, are usually reserved for festivities. Normal people rejoice when they build, not when they tear down. Of course, the celebrations and the distribution of candy by the proud mothers of the "martyrs" responsible for the deaths of innocent people, are also festive and joyful.

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What about Mizrahi Jews, Helen Thomas?

Bataween
Point of No Return
11June '10

Ignorant and hurtful: those two adjectives just about sum up Helen Thomas's notorious remarks. Has she ever heard of Mizrahi Jews? Read my post on Comment is Free Watch.

If you still haven’t heard of Helen Thomas, you have not been reading The Guardian. Ever since the grande dame of the Washington DC press corps told Jews to ‘get the hell out of Palestine’ and ‘back home to Germany and Poland’ our favourite newspaper has run no less than seven pieces or blogs about her.

With an exquisite sense of timing, the veteran journalist made her ignorant and hurtful remarks to a rabbi with a video camera at a reception hosted by President Obama to celebrate Jewish Heritage Day.

We are told that Helen Thomas, who will soon be 90, shares a birthday with President Obama. Let’s hope he also does not share her antisemitic views. Although Thomas, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, did apologise, she was forced to resign her post with Hearst Newspapers. Critics were particularly stung at her reference to Germany and Poland. She could not have picked two places where Jews have suffered more in Europe. (Besides, as Richard Cohen pointed out in the Washington Post, 1,500 Jews did try to ‘go home’ to Poland after the Second World War, only to be murdered.)

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Helen Thomas, Turkey, and the Liberation of Israel

The world cares deeply about refugees, disputed territory, and divided cities — when Israel is involved. Otherwise, otherwise.


Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
11 June '10

It is hard to become much more influential than the doyen of the White House press corps, who is given a ceremonial front-rows seat at press briefings and press conferences. So when Helen Thomas suggested that the Israelis should leave their country and “go home” to Poland and Germany, this was not some obscure, eccentric anti-Semite, but a liberal insider who has come to enjoy iconic status and a sense of exemption from criticism.

Note that Ms. Thomas did not call for just a West Bank free of Jews. And she did not just wish for the elimination of the nation of Israel itself. Rather, Thomas envisions the departure of Israelis to the sites of the major death camps seven decades ago where six million Jews were gassed.

Turkey’s role in aiding and abetting the flotilla, and its subsequent anti-Israeli outbursts, were excessive even by the often sick standards of the Middle East — but not exactly new. State-run Turkish television has aired virulent anti-Semitic dramas like the 2006 Valley of the Wolves, in which a Jewish doctor harvests organs from captured Iraqi civilians. Former Turkish prime minister Necmettin Erbakan once claimed that the Jews had instigated World War I in order to create Israel. Israel, Erbakan further asserted, in full-blown Hitlerian prose, was a “disease” and a “bacteria” that needed to be eradicated. The current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, talks of sending in the Turkish fleet to confront the Israeli blockade, says he is sick of Israeli lies, and warns that his new Turkey is not “a young and rootless nation,” as Israel presumably is (note the code word “rootless”). So speaks our NATO partner and EU wannabe. This week, in reaction to criticism from the West, Erdogan labeled such concerns “dirty propaganda” — note well, not just propaganda but a “dirty” sort.

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The 1,2,3 of anti-Semitic bigotry in Europe: White washing Helen Thomas

Robin Shepherd
robinshepherdonline.com
10 June '10
Posted before Shabbat

Roy Greenslade is a professor of journalism at City University in London. In the 1990s, he edited the Daily Mirror, a top selling Leftist tabloid. Now he is one of Britain’s most respected media commentators. He writes for the Guardian. He is an establishment man.

In yesterday’s edition of that paper he turned his attention to Helen Thomas, the veteran White House reporter who recently advocated the annihilation of the State of Israel via the transfer of its Jewish inhabitants “home” to Germany and Poland: vicious, bigoted, anti-Semitic and, in the current international climate, not far short of incitement to genocide.

America was appalled. Europe too — not by what she said, of course, but by the “disproportionate” response, as Greenslade put it, that her remarks have elicited. I will come to the details in a moment (in all their shocking glory), but the nub of the matter is this: in a west European political culture gripped by a kind of anti-Israeli group hysteria, Helen Thomas’s views seem unremarkable. The notion that the Jews are imposters who took advantage of Holocaust guilt to get a state they never had a legitimate claim to is commonplace. It informs the prevailing narrative. Thomas might have been a little crass, but as to her substantive point, what’s to get excited about?

Guardian blogger Michael Tomasky,displaying an astute knowledge of his readership, was quite explicit in making precisely that point a couple of days ago:

“Now I know a lot of you are going to say well, she only said what’s factually true about the land,” he said “but she didn’t only say that. It’s that Germany and Poland business. Without that, these remarks wouldn’t have been nearly as controversial as they are. And those were really terrible things to say (while kind of laughing, as if it were a joke; check out the video).”

In other words, if she hadn’t made an oblique reference to the Holocaust, her remarks about the total illegitimacy of a Jewish state in the Middle East would have been perfectly acceptable.

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The Jews Won’t Go Back Because They’re in Their Own Country

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
10 June '10

Despite Helen Thomas’s apology and resignation, the controversy over her call for Israel’s Jews to be thrown out of their country and “go back” to Germany and Poland isn’t quite over. Not to be outdone by the anti-Semitic octogenarian scribe, radio talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell defended or at the very least rationalized Thomas’s slur on her radio show, the audio of which can be heard on YouTube. The comedian and her “friends” on the show think Thomas’s remarks are merely “politically incorrect.” O’Donnell claims that in 2010, no one could possibly believe that Thomas thinks Jews should go back to Auschwitz (as one of the Gaza flotilla “humanitarians” allegedly told the Israeli navy) and that her main point was justified because “What she was saying was, the homeland was originally Palestinian and it’s now occupied by Israel.”

O’Donnell’s rants are not particularly significant, but her assertion about whose land the Israelis currently occupy is important because it represents a common misconception about the Middle East conflict that often goes without contradiction.

Indeed, even those pundits that reacted appropriately to Thomas’s remarks, such as the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, who wrote an admirable column about what happened when some Jews did, in fact, attempt to go back to Poland after the Holocaust, failed to point out that Jewish rights to historic Palestine predate the tragic events of the 1940s. Cohen described the Kielce massacre, in which Poles slaughtered returning Jews, as well as the hostility of even some Americans, such as General George Patton, toward displaced survivors. He rightly noted that the plight of these homeless Jews helped galvanize support for Zionism at that crucial moment in history in the years leading up to Israel’s independence.

But as with President Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech to the Muslim world, which posed a false moral equivalence between the sufferings of Jews in the Holocaust and the displacement of Palestinian Arab refugees, the idea that Jewish rights to the land are merely a matter of compensation for events in Europe is a pernicious myth that must be refuted at every opportunity. Jews need not be required to leave Israel for Europe not only because to do so would be insensitive but also because the place Arabs call Palestine is the historic homeland of the Jewish people. Despite the dispersion of the Jews, the Jewish presence in the land was never eradicated. For example, Jerusalem had a Jewish majority in the 1840s. Palestinian nationalism grew not as an attempt to reconstitute an ancient people or to solidify an existing political culture but strictly as a negative reaction to the return of the Jews and does not exist outside the context of trying to deny the country to the Zionists. That is why even moderate Palestinians find it impossible to sign a peace agreement legitimizing a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn.

The idea of Jews as colonists in the Middle East is a staple of anti-Zionist hatred, but it surfaces even in respectable forums and in the work of writers who are nominally sympathetic to Israel.

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Helen Thomas gets a D in History

Fresnozionism.org
07 June '10

The interesting thing about Helen Thomas’ widely quoted remarks (video here) is not that she has been revealed as an anti-Semite (or not). And the appropriate reply, much as it may seem unsatisfying to some, is not to bring up the Holocaust.

Why did she say that the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?

The implication is that the Jews came and ‘occupied’ Palestinian land, dispossessing the former owners. The implication is that Israel is illegitimate and the Jews do not have the right to be there. Probably she would also say that “Palestinians should not have to suffer for European crimes,” suggesting that Israel was created to assuage European guilt for the Holocaust. This is a common theme in statements by Hamas and Iranian leaders too.

But a journalist of experience and reputation, as Thomas was, should have a better understanding of history. To coin a phrase, “she who doesn’t understand history is doomed to not understand current events either.”

Did she know that the majority of today’s ‘Palestinians’ are descended from Arabs of Syria and Egypt that migrated to the region in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many in the latter period, when the Zionist presence created economic opportunity? Was she aware that the father of Palestinian nationalism, Yasser Arafat, was born in Cairo, Egypt?

Did she sleep through the class where she could have learned that there were several hundred thousand Jews in ‘Palestine’ at the time of the Muslim conquest in the Seventh Century (Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, Chapter 1)? True, this number was significantly lower until the 1880’s — thanks to the friendly Muslims — but Jews have been there since biblical times.

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The plain truth about Israel

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
07 June '10


In other times, Hearst Newspapers White House Correspondent Helen Thomas's demand that the Jews "get the hell out of Palestine," and go back to Poland, Germany and America would have been front page news in every newspaper in the US the day after the story broke.

In other times, had the dean of the White House Correspondents Association expressed such hatred for the Jews, the White House would have immediately removed her accreditation rather than wait three days to criticize her.

In other times, the White House Correspondents Association would have expelled her. In other times, her employer - Hearst Newspapers - would have fired her.

But in our times, it took days for anyone other than Jews and conservatives to condemn Thomas's vile statements to Rabbi David Nesenoff. And she was not fired. She was allowed to retire. Our times are times of Jew hatred. Our times are times where hatred breeds strategic madness. Our times are times when we need to recall basic truths about Israel and the Jewish people. Specifically, we must remember that the US is privileged to count Israel as an ally - whether Americans like Jews and our state or hate us.

This week, Anthony Cordesman from respected Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies joined the bandwagon of Israel bashers. In an article titled, "Israel as a Strategic Liability?"

Cordesman asserted that Israel "is a tertiary US strategic interest." And given its alleged insignificance, Israel must "become far more careful about the extent to which it test[s] the limits of US patience and exploits the support of American Jews." Cordesman argued that Israel is only an asset to the US when it is giving its land away to its neighbors. He called for Israel to constrain its military actions and demanded that Israel "not conduct a high-risk attack on Iran in the face of the clear US 'red light' from both the Bush and Obama administrations."

The fact that Cordesman's article reflects an increasingly popular school of thought in the US is not testimony to its accuracy. Indeed, his arguments are completely wrong. The plain truth is that Israel is the US's greatest strategic asset in the Middle East. Indeed, given the strategic importance of the Middle East to the US national security, Israel is arguably the US's greatest strategic asset outside the US military.

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A good question

Elder of Ziyon
07 June '10

(Hearst newspapers has just announced the retirement of Helen Thomas, effective immediately:In spite of that it's still "A good question".

Soccer Dad asks:

I was unaware of the story behind Helen Thomas's outburst against Jews. But I wonder what was wrong about what she said.

As he points out, Thomas' comments - that the Jews should get out of "Palestine" because, presumably, they have no legitimate history there - is the exact same position held by Palestinian "moderates." They still refuse to consider Israel a Jewish state (as opposed to the old days in 1948, when they made a bit more explicit their feelings that their entire problem with Israel was that it was a Jewish state.)

Thomas' feelings are widespread in the Arab world. No one in the West expresses disgust, or even astonishment, when Palestinian Arabs say that the Temples never existed or that the Western Wall was built by the Umayyad Muslim dynasty and is a part of the Waqf. The strong reaction to Thomas' statements could not be because those who are now so offended find the statements themselves offensive. It must be something else:

Helen Thomas, then, didn't say anything offensive. The belief she espoused isn't the problem, it's that she's a Westerner who did. For some arbitrary reason, denying Jewish history is offensive for her to do; had she been a Palestinian politician there'd have been nothing wrong with her statement.

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