In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at Helen Thomas’ descent into garden-variety anti-Semitism — a descent that was many years in the making.
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99 thoughts on “How Helen Thomas blew herself up”
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It was disingenuous then, and it is disingenuous now, to question why Iraq would bomb Israel after the United States attacked them.
Israel is either our “staunchest ally” or they are not, and in war, it is not unusual for an ally to be attacked.
And though I consider myself a vehement supporter of Israel and their right to exist, I often ask myself what they’ve ever done for us.
Points well taken on Thomas.
I’m still waiting for the howls of outrage over Pat Buchanan’s casual anti-semitism, which has continued in a constant trickle for decades. His latest – “too many Jews on the Supreme Court” has been met with deafening silence. He’s still welcome on talk shows and in polite company.
And where’s the outrage over Mike Huckabee’s declaration that the *Palestinians* should get out of Palestine?
Oh, right. They’re conservatives, so no outrage will attend. Your liberal media – still not liberal.
So what I want to know Dan is why is Helen Thomas fair game, but not someone like Marty Peretz? I’ve heard him say more incendiary remarks about Arabs than Helen Thomas ever will. Glenn Greenwald documents Peretz’s “incessant” and “ongoing” anti-Arab bigotry here and here. What about Mike Huckabee?
I think Greenwald also put it aptly here.
Give me a good reason how you’re not applying double-standards for Thomas vs. Peretz and Huckabee. It’s obvious you’re a Zionist Dan and nothing is more anti-Semitic than Zionism.
If readers want to see the other side of the Helen Thomas controversy, I suggest reading Paul Jay’s In Defense of Helen Thomas – On Apologizing to Apologists, Jack Ross’ piece at Mondoweiss and Ann El Khoury, a colleague of mine at PULSE. Glenn Greenwald’s Our hard-core, adversarial press corps is also a piece worth checking out.
@Christian: The “other side” of anti-Semitism. I love it! “Help! Help! I’m trapped in my own paradigm.”
Thanks for your acknowledgement that it is hate speech to demand that one ethnic group or another should be excluded from Israel or Palestine, and that such hate speech shouldn’t be part of our discourse.
As overdue as your acknowledgement was it is still appreciated.
@Bob: Huh?
Before this turns into a pissing match, let me give you some examples.
“We must expel Arabs and take their places.” Ben-Gurion in a letter to his son, 1937
“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.” – David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978:
“‘Disappearing the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist dream, and was also a necessary condition of its realization,” Tom Segev, Israeli journalist and historian
“If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transfered to some other place. We must take over their land,” Menahem Ussishkin, chairman of the JNF, member of the Jewish Agency, 1930
“[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs.” – Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the ‘Beasts,”‘ New Statesman, June 25,1982
“The ‘sole way’ for Jews to deal with Arabs in Palestine was through ‘total avoidance of all attempts to arrive at a settlement’-which Jabotinsky euphemistically termed the ‘iron wall’ approach. Not coincidentally, a picture of Jabotinsky graces Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s desk.” – Ze’ev Jabotinsky, 1923 Source: The Village Voice, “Death Wish in the Holy Land,” Dec. 12, 2001.
“We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters.” – Yitzhak Rabin, New York Times, 23 October 1979
“There is no such thing as a Palestinian,” – Golda Meir
My favorite:
“The Intifada is the Palestinian’s people’s war of national liberation. We [Israel] enthusiastically chose to become a colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the Occupied Territories, engaging in theft and funding justification for all these activities.. we [Israel] established an apartheid regime.” – Michael Ben-Yair, Attorney General of Israel, 1993-1996 (in Ha’aretz)
Of course there’s Plan Dalet and The Nakba. That’s not self-defense. That’s systematic ethnic cleansing, which you don’t seem to have a problem with.
Is that proof for you now?
I’ll end it there.
“I’ll end it there.”
@Christian: Somehow I doubt it.
@Bob: that’s some artfully spoken sarcasm there, sir!
@Brad: Perhaps a bit too artful, since I have no idea what he’s talking about.
@Christian Avard says: What I want to know Dan is why is Helen Thomas fair game, but not someone like Marty Peretz?
Should Marty Peretz get a front-row seat at White House press conferences and the worldwide platform that provides, as opposed to running a magazine read by a thousand people or so, I suspect it would come up.
And most thinking folks recognize Huckabee is simply a religious nut who can’t wait for the Rapture, but needs an intact Israel for that to happen.
BP Myers: The point is they’re not held accountable for their words. Marty Peretz escapes unscathed and Huckabee continues to work at FOX, a station that claims to be “fair and balanced.”
You’re OK with Helen Thomas losing her job? Explain to me why that’s not a double standard? Not to mention Thomas is a woman and it is more likely a woman will be fired over comments like hers than say, David Gregory, Chuck Todd, or some other coward in the White House press corps.
Again, Greenwald says it right. People are going after her because she’s guilty of the wrong kind of bigotry. In America, Israel is off limits.
@Christian: Eleven minutes from the time you wrote “I’ll end it there.” Impressive.
@Christian: Got to your second quote, which has only ever been cited in that one place and has never been confirmed by any of the “General Staff” that must have been there to hear it, and stopped reading.
At any rate, history has decided that Israel has a “right to exist,” just as history decided that America has a right to exist.
Israel has already been kinder to its indigenous peoples than America ever was.
Oh, really BP?
Maybe you should read this, courtesy of a friend of mine, which speaks volumes.
@Christian Avard says: The point is they’re not held accountable for their words. Marty Peretz escapes unscathed and Huckabee continues to work at FOX, a station that claims to be “fair and balanced.”
They are certainly held accountable, and the day they say something their bosses or their readers find offensive, they’ll be gone too.
But who reads The New Republic or watches Huckabee who doesn’t already agree with them?
I’d further point out that Helen Thomas resigned.
@Dan Yeah, I know. : )
@Christian: Don’t you realize that anyone with a couple hours of free time on his hands could come up with a long list of blood-curdling quotes from Arab leaders about Jews?
@Christian Avard says: Oh, really BP?
Oh really what?
Not sure how you got from my acknowledging indigenous people in Palestine prior to an Israeli state to “pretending that nobody lived there.”
Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest . . .
@ Dan, quotes are one thing. Having a devised program in place to remove Palestinians from the Mideast is another. You’re shifting the blame away from the real problem. I realize there are many Arabs who say dumb things about Israel. You’re right, we can find a lot of quotes. But truth be told, there are racist Palestinians and racist Israelis. But even that is besides the point. The real problem is that an enforced Jewish superiority is intrinsic to the very fabric of a Zionist state. Ethnic and religious exclusivity are written into Israeli laws and expressed “every time the bulldozer blade cuts into a Palestinian home” according to Ben White, author of “Israeli Apartheid.” It’s much deeper than you think.
@ BP *** They are certainly held accountable, and the day they say something their bosses or their readers find offensive, they’ll be gone too.***
But Peretz and Huckabee already said something incredibly offensive and they’re still at their jobs. If their bosses don’t think their comments are offensive, then what does that tell you about their bosses? It’s not a matter of who reads The New Republic or who watches Fox News. Their bosses should know the difference what is considered racist and/or anti-semitic. I think they gave both of them a pass, as is Dan.
@ BP *** Not sure how you got from my acknowledging indigenous people in Palestine prior to an Israeli state to “pretending that nobody lived there.” ***
You didn’t. All you said was “Israel has the right to exist.” As an apartheid state? Really? Because that’s what it is. Even Bishop Desmond Tutu thinks that. How do you feel to be on the opposite side of Tutu? He must not know anything about apartheid. After all, he lived it. You probably think he’s just as senile as Thomas.
@ BP ***Israel has already been kinder to its indigenous peoples than America ever was. ***
How much do you want me to pay you to go tell that to all of those living in refugee camps? That was one of the most absurd statements I’ve ever heard.
@ BP *** I’d further point out that Helen Thomas resigned.***
My hunch is they said if you don’t take this resignation, we’ll fire you. That happens a lot, yoy know.
Former Senator James Abourzek, of South Dakota, gave Thomas’ quotes some much needed context on Democracy Now! today.
@Christian: Good grief, let me explain it to you. Marty Peretz owns the goddamn magazine. There is no one to fire him. Mike Huckabee is a hate-spewing nutbag. He also doesn’t have a front-row seat in the White House press room. He plays bass on Fox News on Saturday nights, when no one is watching. No one cares what he says.
@Dan,
What part don’t you understand?
1) it is hate speech to demand that one ethnic group or another should be excluded from Israel or Palestine,
2) such hate speech shouldn’t be part of our discourse.
I thought that was the plain sense of what you were saying.
If I was wrong and you were being artful, please dumb it down for me.
“As overdue as your acknowledgement was it is still appreciated.”
@Bob: That’s the part I didn’t get. Still don’t. I genuinely don’t know what you’re referring to. Some past statement I made?
@ Bob: I’m just as confused as Dan is 🙂
@ Dan: OK, I thought he was editor and publisher. But that’s still not the point. I think you’re still applying double standards for them. Just because he’s the owner and Huckabee is a nut bag doesn’t cut it. They are public figures, just like Thomas, and they deserve the same amount of pressure and/or scrutiny. They aren’t.
Kennedy wants to show the justice of Helen Thomas’ ouster.
He too is a journalist and wants the rules journalists must play by to be fair and reasonable so he delves into Thomas’ history, finds evidence of her antisemitism, and concludes she deserved to be fired … because she hates Jews.
Here’s the exchange Helen Thomas had with the interviewer:
What’s is clear to me is that Thomas is standing up for the land rights of Palestinians, rights that were superseded by land rights assigned to the state of Israel by colonial empire Great Britain in 1948. To most of us, that is a settled question but to people in the middle east it is the source of great conflict and regrettably, a significant threat to US national security.
I detect no antisemitism in Thomas’ words, anti-ZIONISM yes but antisemitism no. And even if I did, I don’t see how she deserves to lose her livelihood for saying that she thinks the Jewish people should stop occupying Palestine, whether she means all of Palestine or the west bank that is currently (under international law) Palestinian land settled and occupied by Israel.
Ari Fleischer, who runs his own PR business for clients in politics, professional sports etc, is the one who amplified the issue and first called for Thomas’ ouster.
Watch the CNN Video and ask yourself, is Ari speaking for himself or representing the interests of a client? We know BP is spending millions to manage it financial liabilities in the PR battle over the spill in the gulf. Is Ari Fleischer representing AIPAC or the State of Israel in its PR battle for American hearts and minds in the wake of the Mediterranean blockade and PR disaster of the IDF commandeering an aid flotilla and killing nine civilians including a US citizen (with 4 shots to the head)? I don’t know if Ari is acting in his capacity as a paid flack regarding his demand for Helen Thomas’ ouster but I do know that’s what he does for a living-represent his clients’ public relations interests.
Really Ari? Horrific?
Here Ari doubles down on hyperbole and introduces violence into the debate. “Religious cleansing” is ethnically-motivated violence, ranging from murder to rape. Helen calls for repatriation of Jews to their homelands in the context of having peace in the middle east, as unreasonable and insensitive as that approach would be. Ari raises the specter of violence in the conversation where it did not occur in what Helen Thomas said. Why does he want her words to strike the public as more inflammatory than they were on their own merit?
It’s more inflammatory hyperbole from Ari. She did not call for genocide, she called for Jews to leave Palestine. Her’s is an anti-zionist position, not an antisemitic position.
Helen Thomas’ public apology.
Jews lived in Palestine before 1948 and Palestinians did not exclude them.
The state of Israel does exclude Muslims as citizens. One must be a Jew to be a citizen.
Ari is quick to call Thomas discriminatory but slow to recognize that Israel discriminates against everyone except Jews. While Israel is a democracy it is not an open democracy like ours. It discriminates who it will have as a citizen based on religion. Israel is built on a piece of land that 62 years ago was Palestine and that colonial power Great Britain assigned to Zionists.
What bothers me most about what happened to Helen Thomas is how quickly normally reasonable journalists and opinion writers were to throw her under the bus when the accusation of antisemitism was leveled.
Dan wasn’t quick about it but he came to the wrong conclusion nonetheless.
@Christian said: That was one of the most absurd statements I’ve ever heard.
The truth often sounds absurd.
@Christain said: You didn’t. All you said was “Israel has the right to exist.”
Hmm. You first say my statement that “Israel has already been kinder to its indigenous people than America ever was” was one of the most absurd statements you ever heard, then go on to say that I didn’t acknowledge there were indigenous people in what became the Israeli state.
Think you need to read what people post in its entirety.
@Christian said: My hunch is they said if you don’t take this resignation, we’ll fire you.
Your hunch notwithstanding, she resigned.
@BP: And can we stop kidding ourselves about Thomas’ “job”? She was an 89-year-old hood ornament for Hearst. No one carried her column. I did a LexisNexis search last night and could find only two bylines at small papers during the past year. Her sole function was to perform at news conferences. And her sole value to Hearst was to serve as a goodwill ambassador for the company — a role she clearly could no longer fill.
Until today I was not aware that one shouldn’t criticize someone for expressing racial, ethnic or religious hatred without also criticizing everyone else who had also said offensive things. I imagine my Guardian column would have been a little longer than my editors wanted — I’m thinking maybe a 25-volume compendium as compared to my usual 600 to 900 words. But at least I’ve been set straight.
According to Dan Kennedy, only journalists with a front row seat in the WH briefing room should be held accountable for allegedly racists statements. All others must comply with a different standard becuase 1) they have small audiences, 2) are known nut jobs or 3) own the publication.
It would be nice if Dan would recognize that using a standard as a principle to evaluate inherent justice in Thomas’ ouster implies that testing that standard in other situations lends merit or demerit to the original analysis. In fact I think Dan does recognize this.
@Neil: “The state of Israel does exclude Muslims as citizens. One must be a Jew to be a citizen.”
This is not true. The population of Israel is about 20% Arab Muslim. The legislature of Israel has several Arab Muslim members.
Muslims are exempt from conscription in Israel, but are in all other senses citizens of the state.
@Dan: Agreed. Thought @thejoelstein captured it perfectly with his tweet:
Helen Thomas retires…. from what? Sitting through White House press conferences? Has anyone ever read a Helen Thomas story?
There is no doubt people are held to different standards depending on the platform. Last I checked, Pat Robertson still hosted the 700 Club every day.
But folks like Neal and Christian ARE holding these folks accountable for what they say, by reminding people about it.
And the fact is, to her credit, Helen Thomas held herself accountable by resigning. It was the honorable thing to do.
@BP: Ah, Pat Robertson … a pro-Israel, anti-Semitic, homophobic loon. They just don’t make them like that anymore. Have you ever seen the kid host? Smarmy and unctuous. Give me the father any day. I enjoy watching him try to keep the smoldering anger under control.
@ Dan: Just to clarify what I said earlier, while it’s true Peretz owns The New Republic and Huckabee is a “nut-job” analyst on Fox, they still deserve scrutiny because they are public figures making public comments and presenting information that’s “supposed” to be in the public interest.
@ BP, truth to whom? Again, how much do you want me to pay you to go into the refugee camps and make those same remarks you made here?
*** You first say my statement that “Israel has already been kinder to its indigenous people than America ever was” was one of the most absurd statements you ever heard, then go on to say that I didn’t acknowledge there were indigenous people in what became the Israeli state. ***
OK, I get it. Now let me clarify. “‘Jews’ have been kinder to its indigenous people than America ever was.” The state of Israel is a different story. The Israelis that treat Palestinians justly today belong to groups such as Rabbis for Human Rights, B’Tselem, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, Yesh-Gvul, Ta’ayush, the Refusniks (those who refuse to serve in the IDF) and other Jewish anti-occupation groups. Why aren’t you supporting these groups? They need all the support they can get.
“to assert, as Thomas did, that Israeli commandos landed on the deck of the Mavi Marmara with the express intent of shedding Muslim blood is to deny Israel’s very legitimacy as a state.”
Why the hyperbole Dan? And why are we not to consider the legitimacy of the Israeli state? It 61 years old and it was assigned by colonial power Great Britain. Was that their right? I accept the formation of Israel as settled but that does not mean people who do not are wrong to say so they don’t. It’s not the difference of opinion we abhor, it the use of violence as a means to an end that we reject as progressives.
The people who challenge the legitimacy of the Israeli state do not necessarily hate the Jews, they just hate the loss of their land and inherent injustice. At least acknowledge that there are people who were alive whose land was taken.
I agree, it’s a serious accusation (express intent of shedding Muslim blood) and one that should be made with evidence not causally, but is a non-rigorous accusation about intent just reason to call for someone’s outster? What if its true? Do you have evidence to the contrary?
What do we know about the incident? We know that Israeli commandos landed on the deck with the express intent to commandeer the aid flotilla, hold the passengers captive, and use lethal force to accomplish these goals.
An American citizen was shot four times in the head at close range. Was he a lethal threat or just collateral damage in meeting their objective on the high seas? Was he armed with a lead pipe?
I think that Helen Thomas’ language, comments she made in May, were seized upon in a PR gambit to change to news from he PR disaster in the Mediterranean to the antisemitism of Helen Thomas and to set an example of what happens to people in the US when they speak out against Israel. My only evidence is that it was a professional PR flack who took umbrage and called for the ouster, not the JDL etc. I want to know who hired Ari Fleischer.
Thank you Steve. I stand corrected.
Without taking a side on Helen Thomas’ comments, I recommend reading J.J. Goldberg’s essay in CJR from May/June 2009. http://www.cjr.org/feature/a_matter_of_trust.php?page=all&print=true
If you aren’t a subscriber, in summary, Goldberg reflects on the Israeli nation’s and world’s distinctly different approaches to reporting accusations of Israeli military abuses during the 2008-09 Gaza conflict. What he determines is that, “Whom you turn to [for news] is a function of whom you trust more. And that depends on your point of view.”
That statement likely also applies to how one sees Thomas’ comments: anti-Zionist, anti-semetic, or just the plain truth.
Dan – to leave the issue per se and return to jounalism…
I read the AP story by Jim Kuhnhenn and David Bauder this morning, and they were able to write about the entire incident without using the word ‘Jews’. Their opening paragraph says she called for ‘Israelis’ to get out of Palestine. Even the quotes are excerpted in such a way as to avoid the J-word. If you relied on newspapers and hadn’t seen the videotape, the story is nonsensical, as MANY people think that Israel should leave Palestine and they don’t lose their jobs.
Why the fastidiousness? Cover up or correctness?
I wish the interviewer had followed up and asked her if Soviet Jews should return to the gulag as well.
@Christian Avard says: Why aren’t you supporting these groups? They need all the support they can get.
I do support those groups. Continued Israeli occupation of, and settlements in, the future nation of Palestine is unconscionable. I support any approach to dissuade Israel from their continued sanctioning of this behavior.
But looking backward (as so many of your posts do) does nobody any good.
My own people were forced from their land by Cromwell, and many of my ancestors died via England’s strategy of famine in the land of my ancestors. But what’s done is done.
@ BP OK, but as I told Dan this via Twitter the evocation of past evils in America, England, or wherever is not an excuse to commit new ones. That is happening in Israel today with the settlements.
As far as Thomas goes, I don’t think she should have lost her job (or pressured to resigned). She apologized, learned her mistake, and moved on. We all do that. But for overzealous Zionists, it wasn’t enough. They got the best of her and her bosses and now we just saw what happened. It was unnecessary. Was it offensive? Sure! She made a poor choice in words. But it wasn’t hate speech, nor was it anti-Semitic as Paul Jay, CEO and senior editor of The Real News Network, wrote.
In 2002 or 2003, Bob Ryan said something shocking. Remember when he said on camera “I’d like to smack (Jason Kidd’s) wife?” He was promptly suspended by The Boston Globe. I supported the suspension, but I didn’t think he had to lose his job over it, especially what he’s contributed to the Globe over the years. Luckily, he didn’t.
Thomas on the other hand contributed SO MUCH to the White House press corps. She’s the only one that asks difficult questions and does a good job at it. Ryan learned from the incident, moved on, and kept his job. Thomas learned form the incident, was willing to move on, and was asked/forced to resign. Words are words, folks. If someone can show they’re willing to learn and move forward, then give them another chance. That goes for Imus, D & C, or anyone else I can’t stand. They got second chances, I support that. Thomas deserves one too. Maybe she can report for some other outlet in the future… and still ask great questions to presidents.
@Christian Avard said: She made a poor choice in words . . . Thomas learned [from] the incident
Think both those statements above are another one of your “hunches.” Nowhere in her statement does she acknowledge any such thing.
But we can agree to disagree.
@BP: I think it was her invocation of Poland and Germany that did it. She said it twice. Then, as if she realized what she’d done, she quickly threw in “America, and everywhere else.” As Rachel Sklar notes (link in my Guardian piece), you just can’t listen to that without thinking about the Nazi death camps. And Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen today writes that some Jews actually attempted to return to Poland right after World War II, only to be massacred by the Poles. It was a bit of history with which I was unfamiliar.
@ BP: Well, obviously I can’t mind read what she really means. But seriously, I think Helen’s smart enough to learn from BIG mistakes, especially this one. I suppose it would help us all if she said she learned from this incident, but why should she? I’m sure the people that matter to her in the professional world know she’s genuinely sorry; that she’s moving on from it; and she is someone who learns from her mistakes. She didn’t make it as far as she did in her job/career for nothing.
It’s overzealous twits with axes to grind who don’t want to let go of it/her.
@Christian: I am baffled by all this talk about mind-reading. Just listen to the woman. She is as clear as can be.
@Dan: Read the Sklar piece as well as Cohen’s (caught your tweet) and think they both got it more than right.
I confess when I saw Thomas’ video the first time last Friday night, I was sure she was talking about settlements. I only wish she were.
Now THAT would have been constructive.
“Don’t you realize that anyone with a couple hours of free time on his hands could come up with a long list of blood-curdling quotes from Arab leaders about Jews?” — Dan Kennedy
It would take a lot less than a couple of hours.
Any serious student of the region knows that the Arab nations, with the possible exception of Jordan, are as culpable for the Palestinian’s plight as the the Israelis. It was the Arab world, after all that isolated them in the Gaza strip and the West Bank.
Ms. Thomas’s tirade is an echo of the Arab sentiment that they do not want to deal seriously with the Palestinian issue because it is messy and would upset the delicate balance of their less-than democratic regimes.
I would never have thought that an academic like yourself would deride, label and pronounce judgement on someone who commented about Israel without producing any references and shreds of evidence whatsoever. Hastening towards hounding and demonizing somebody with an evil ideology is no better than a thug spewing out ‘four letter words’ from a platform of sheer ignorance. Would an academic not think before opening his or her mouth?
I watched the Youtube video and was completely dismayed that not one bit of comment from Helen Thomas pertained to anti-Semitism. By any stretch of the imagination, and by the proper definitions of antisemitism, your risible remark about ‘Garden variety of antisemite’ is way off the mark, utterly ludricous, emanating from callous calculations that anti-Semite accusations will fell any rightful, legal, historically justified criticism of that dispossessing, ethnic-cleansing, war criminal, militaristic and militant racist and religio-racist state.
One would have thought better of an academic. Either out of sheer malignant ignorance or in fearful trepidation of a witch-hunt in the US of detractors of Israel, your article would never ‘make the grade’ according to academic standards.
Helen Thomas is historically accurrate. By the start of the 20th century, around 83 % of Jews in the world lived in slavic lands. Their origins are purely slavic and, to a much lesser extent, central European/Germanic. They are converts to Judaism, much like the other Slavs converted to Orthodox Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages.
What moral right to you have to say that millions of Jews were gassed, therefore the immigrant settler foreign colonialist Jews to Palestine are automatically granted with a ludicrous moral and even so-called ‘God given right’ – unacceptable by modern day human rights law – to invade, settle, takeover, ethnically cleanse, destroy, steal the entire land, massacre and unleash many devastating militaristic fascist wars against the indigenous people of the Middle East. Most of the Israeli Jews have been in Palestine for the last 30 to 40 years, and to even less time.
These immigrant foreign Jews self-righteously and on flimsy Biblical grounds – a ‘sacred book or books replete with war crimes, in which the Canaanites are massacred by the Israelites in their takeover of the Land Canaan – , which would be thrown out of the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights, as Zionism intrinsically rides rough shod over, crushing, negating and deligimising the indigenous native population as ‘mere Arabs’ or the religio-racist denigrating term of ‘goyim’ or ‘Arabishim’.
You use the word “loathsome” to describe her comments. Yet, Israel’s invasions, ethnic cleansing, annexation, mass plundering, occupation, devastation of indigenous Middle Eastern lands has gone unchecked, never held to account, never the recipient of devastating sanctions, blockades, of overkill on a massive, calculating and deliberate scale, left as the darling bloodied, murderous watchdog, dismissive and contemptuous of Arab peoples. This is loathsomeness at a sickening level. The commiting of genocide of the people of the Gaza Strip – a siege to bring about the slow death of an entire society (56 % of the Gaza Strip’s population are children). Read the human rights reports! Who is Hamas, who the PLO, who is Fatah and all the other Palestinian groupings? If you do care to know, their binding ethos is ‘resistance’ to the Zionist immigrant Jews bent, bloodily, on wresting all the land that belongs to the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the Syrians and the Egyptians.
Helen Thomas is an immigrant from Lebanon to the US. But, she is not part of a fascist extreme ideology determined to dispossess. That is the big difference between Helen Thomas and all these immigrant, colonialist, settler foreign, non-native Jews to Palestine.
“A tragic miscalculation” amounts to ‘whitewashing and a cover up’, a no doubt very endearing tactic. How remiss of yourself to cast aside the forensic reports of hospital doctors in Ankara, Turkey, who very much point out that they were shot in the back, in the head and at close range, all unarmed huminatarian aid civilians, and a number of analysts who strongly suggest that these murders were perpetrated in ‘execution’ style’. Your ignominious, short-sighted fraudulent conclusions put to shame academia and what it should really stand for.
Poorly unsubstantiated confusing mini paragraphs, conflacting one thing with another, baffling the reader, as well as demonising Helen Thomas as a Hizbullah afficionado ridicules yourself and your profession. How unacademic to use a Lebanese popular resistance movement as some form of demon and bogeyman to spook others nonsensically is beyond comprehension.
“ …reveal they aren’t interested in peace or a two-state solution so much as they are indulging romantic notions about Palestine and Hamas.” So Mr Know-it-all, how do you know? What about the millions of Palestinians who have paid an enormous price over 62 years at the hands of this rapacious state? So much for the naïve Americans who more than indulge, to gratifying levels, cosy sacred Biblical romantic notions of a very nasty Rottwheiler indeed.
Denigrating others seems to the aim of your article. Denigrate not, as ye shall in turn be denigrated. Assume and presume nothing, as that is the fount of careful contemplation, lest this mere mortal spews, gushingly, self-serving vacuous statements.
@David Sanders says: Helen Thomas is an immigrant from Lebanon to the US.
Helen Thomas was born in Kentucky.
@David Sanders: “They are converts to Judaism, much like the other Slavs converted to Orthodox Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages.”
Cite?
If this were the case, then how would you explain the “Cohen gene” which occurs in Jews of diverse geographic heritage (Eastern European, Sfardim, even the Lemba Bantu tribe of southern Africa)?
@Steve Stein asks: Cite?
http://tinyurl.com/2ty2w
@BP: Godwin’s law in action! Although, in this case, it fits.
@Dan: Heh. Wasn’t sure you’d let me get away with it. Appreciate it that you did. Hope at least it brought a smile.
I think Helen Thomas is the daughter of Lebanese immigrants.
Anyone who cuts and pastes the text of her comments and doesn’t note the venom with which they are said is being disingenous or just plain dishonest.
I think some of the commenters here are just dying to trot out their “authentic version” of the “Protocols of Zion.” Just give them time.
@ Dan: It’s clear you’re going after Helen Thomas because she’s an easy target (for a lack of a better term) and she says things you disagree with politically. I still can’t fathom why you identify with oppressors. It’s hardly self-defense to have policies in place to punish and humiliate civilians, but that’s a whole other story. That has nothing to do with “Israeli security.”
The other thing is titles do not matter. You say Marty Peretz and Huckabee do not count because he’s the owner of The New Republic and that Huckabee is a nut-job. I’ll say it again, it’s not about their titles. It’s about calling out their comments for what they are and that includes people who make derogatory comments on policies or people or cultures you agree/disagree with. And the other thing is they are people who are responsible for presenting “accurate” information and opinions that are supposed to be in the public interest, just like Helen Thomas. Therefore, they’re equally as culpable; they’re equally accountable; and they should be scrutinized.
I can assure you if Peretz or Huckabee said anything derogatory about dwarfism, you’d be on their case in a heartbeat. I don’t think you’d be playing “the owner” or “the nut-job” card. But these cards are perfectly acceptable when it comes to commenting on Palestinians. It’s a convenient excuse for not calling out Peretz and Huckabee. It’s clear that you’re practicing double-standards.
I’ll say it again. It was offensive. She made a poor choice in words. They were in really bad taste. We all make those, including you. I’m sure you’ve said offensive things you wish you could take back. But you learned from your mistakes, you moved on, and I’m sure you’ve had second chances. Probably because you’re an accomplished journalist and a male. As for me, I apologize when I say something I later regret. I learn from my mistakes, I move on, and I’ve had second chances. Thomas learned from it and apologized. But instead, the mob mentality, which you chose to participate in, cost the best WH press corps journalist in the last 50 years her job.
I’ll end it with Robert Scheer, of Truthdig, because he’s probably got the best big picture perspective out there.
That was responsibly put and I think his comments speak to you perfectly.
@Christian: Hilarious that you closed with Robert Scheer. There is no more predictable a left-wing hack than he. He and I have tangled previously.
You keep trying to put me in hypothetical situations for reasons that escape me. So let me turn the tables. I cannot imagine you would run to anyone’s defense for uttering hate speech unless that hate speech were directed at Israel.
When you slyly invoke the Holocaust with references to Poland and Germany, as Thomas did, you can apologize, but you can’t take it back.
@Christian: One other thing I should point out about your incessant comments on this topic. If you actually read my Guardian commentary, you will see that I have nothing good to say about the Netanyahu government or its attack on the flotilla. I defend Israel only against the charge that it engaged in “a deliberate massacre,” the blood libel that flowed so easily from Helen Thomas’ lips. I linked approvingly to essays by Leon Wieseltier and Christopher Hitchens that were, if anything, even harsher on Netanyahu than I was. I was appalled by Netanyahu’s return to office, but not surprised. The Israelis were clearly exhausted by years of terrorism and the condemnation of the world whenever they try to defend themselves.
Given those facts, I don’t see how you can be so animated by this topic except that you don’t believe Israel even has a right to exist — something you clearly don’t believe, given your condemnation of Israel’s founding fathers, like Ben-Gurion. And given that Thomas did not criticize Israel so much as she consigned it to the Third Circle of Hell, your repeated defenses of her are revealing in a mighty damn unattractive way.
“Blood libel,” Dan?
I thought we were staying away from loosely using inflammatory phrases with specific historical definitions.
What word do you quibble with? “Deliberate” or “massacre”? If it’s the former, you’re going to have to explain how four bullets in the head of an American citizen shot down in international waters do not qualify as “deliberate” acts. As to “massacre,” well, maybe that’s just a matter of numbers.
And saying that Thomas’s deplorable comments “so much as” condemned Israel to “the third circle of hell” is almost Peretzian in its fundamental irrationality. Get a grip, son.
@Christian Avard said: But instead, the mob mentality, which you chose to participate in, cost the best WH press corps journalist in the last 50 years her job.
If you’ll forgive me my own hunches, Christian, I suspect you haven’t read a column of hers in years, if ever. I further suspect you’ve never read a single one of her books.
PS: Dan did not “participate” in the mob mentality that brought her down. Near as I can tell, all his public comments occurred after she resigned.
@BP: @Christian thinks her job was popping off at news conferences. He may have a point — what else did she do?
THE TRUTH:
“if Peretz or Huckabee said anything derogatory about dwarfism, you’d be on their case in a heartbeat … It’s clear that you’re practicing double-standards.”
@Dan: My point exactly.
I consider myself pretty well read and informed . . . and I don’t recall a thing she’s done recently. She certainly wasn’t on my must read list.
Dan Kennedy says:
June 9, 2010 at 10:58 am
@Christian: One other thing I should point out about your incessant comments on this topic.
Dan, you wrote the article and you made the entry here on Media Nation, a post about the article. Now your readers are commenting. It’s hardly fair for you to express the notion that Christian’s comments are too many and/or too frequent as if that’s the problem.
Be a mensch; face the issue and stop making it personal (stop making it about Christian) Christian is not the issue.
. . . and I don’t recall a thing she’s done recently. She certainly wasn’t on my must read list.
Then it would save been perfectly reasonable for her employer to terminate her for non-performance but that’s not what happened. What happened is that Ari Fleischer went on a PR blitz on CNN calling her comments “horrific”, and falsely claiming that she was calling for “religious-cleansing.” There was nothing in Thomas words that evoked rape or murder but there was in Fleischer’s characterization of Thomas’ words.
Just becuase you don’t know the value Thomas’ employer realized through her employment is no reason to claim that it’s just she was forced to resign becuase she’s antisemetic.
If you cannot recognize you’re own rationalizations than you’re not as smart as you’d like to think.
@Neil Sagan says: It’s hardly fair for you to express the notion that Christian’s comments are too many and/or too frequent as if that’s the problem.
I took it to mean something akin to Christian “doth protesting too much,” not a derisive comment on the sheer number of posts. It does almost seem like Christian is trying to convince mostly, himself.
And I just don’t get the dwarfism / double-standard comment. I suspect too that if Huckabee or Peretz said something negative about dwarfism, Dan would comment on it. Is he not allowed also to comment on (what he and many others see as) anti-semitism?
In what way is that a double-standard?
Christian, from Dummerston VT, how perfect…said to Dan, “I still can’t fathom why you identify with oppressors.”
Many of us are wondering about anti-Semites like yourself…
Why do you identify with people who target and kill civilians with indiscriminately fired rockets?
Why do you identify with people who kill innocent women and children through the use suicide bombers on the bus, in the sub shop and nightclubs?
Why do you identify with people who use women and children as human shields?
Why do you identify with people who can’t even bring themselves to see Israel’s right to draw a breath, to exist?
Why do you identify with people who have shown no interest in peace?
Why do you identify with people who use their religion as a basis for killing thousands of innocents around the world?
Why do you identify with people who remember the Holocaust like it was Woodstock, a magical event?
Why do you identify with people who are funded and supported by enemies of your country, like Iran?
Why do you identify with people who export terrorism around the world?
Why?
Because you are unwilling or unable to apply rational, critical thinking, to see right from wrong. You, and everyone in America like you, are the worst kind of sheep. Useful idiots to enemies of America and freedom loving people everywhere.
Most sincerely,
Kevin
Christian inquires about what’s behind Dan position that he doesn’t hold Huckabee or Peretz to the same standard as Thomas, and as a point of reference, Christian posulates that Dan would hold Huckabee and Peretz to the same standard if the subject was derogatory comments about dwarfs, thus illustrating Dan’s inconsistency and bias.
I hope Dan never makes a comment about Israel that gets him in hot water with defenders of Israel; Dan’s drawn the line (his line) between what a person can and cannot say and then be forced to resign from their job in a very narrow way with a very low tolerance for free expression.
If there is more to this interview, please share it.
Dan Kennedy has nothing on Kevin Whalen.
Moreover, the thread is about whether Thomas deserved to be forced to resign and whether what she said was so egregious, she should lose her job, her well stated apology notwithstanding.
@ BP: ***PS: Dan did not “participate” in the mob mentality that brought her down. Near as I can tell, all his public comments occurred after she resigned. ***
So that’s great. Beat up on someone some more after she’s already down. Classy.
@ Dan: *** If you actually read my Guardian commentary, you will see that I have nothing good to say about the Netanyahu government or its attack on the flotilla. ***
Great, you win a cookie. Now when will you condemn the oppressive occupation of Palestine? That’s the more important point.
*** I cannot imagine you would run to anyone’s defense for uttering hate speech ***
That’s an assumption.
*** I don’t see how you can be so animated by this topic except that you don’t believe Israel even has a right to exist ***
Yeah, and by your rationale I must want to destroy Israel too. Let me clarify. I don’t support Israel today because it resembles an apartheid state. Bishop Desmond Tutu agrees with the observation. So at least I’m in good company.
The other thing is only I’m only questioning its right to exist because Israel was created on Palestinian land cleansed of its indigenous population. It is therefore illogical to expect the Palestinians to recognise that this is “right,” or that Israel had a “right” to do this.
*** The Israelis were clearly exhausted by years of terrorism and the condemnation of the world whenever they try to defend themselves. ***
Enforcing Jewish superiority is not defending a nation. Nor is using a plan in place to wipe Palestinians out. That was clear from the beginning and history backs this up.
*** And given that Thomas did not criticize Israel so much as she consigned it to the Third Circle of Hell ***
That’s blowing it way out of proportion. That’s a trick/tool right out of the Israeli lobby’s plan book and quite frankly, that’s weak. Your polemic suits your rhetoric.
***When you slyly invoke the Holocaust with references to Poland and Germany, as Thomas did, you can apologize, but you can’t take it back. ***
Ditto. Except you don’t want to take it back. That’s your call. But reasonable people (and there are plenty) who can forgive. If you can’t, what does that say about you?
Can we end this now? Apparently, it’s starting to attract irrational and overzealous Zionists who hate Thomas and anyone who questions the Israeli occupation. You are the company you keep, Dan.
@Christian: Let me point out a significant discrepancy that you have not clarified in all your many comments and tweets on this subject. The discrepancy arises in two consecutive paragraphs:
“Yeah, and by your rationale I must want to destroy Israel too. Let me clarify. I don’t support Israel today because it resembles an apartheid state. Bishop Desmond Tutu agrees with the observation. So at least I’m in good company.” So you support Israel’s right to exist, maybe within something like the 1967 borders.
“The other thing is only I’m only questioning its right to exist because Israel was created on Palestinian land cleansed of its indigenous population. It is therefore illogical to expect the Palestinians to recognise that this is “right,” or that Israel had a “right” to do this.” So you don’t support Israel’s right to exist, since you define even pre-1967 Israel as “created on Palestinian land cleansed of its indigenous population.”
By the way, it’s generally considered poor form to write a long list of attacks and then close with, “Can we end this now?”
Dan refers to Thomas’ “garden variety” antisemitism, which is to say, her brand of antisemitism is common (a fallacy in terms of argumentation and logic because it assumes the answer) and which is to say perhaps that antisemitism in general is common.
Dan, would you be willing to say in one, two, three, four, etc. sentences what Thomas said that constitutes antisemitism and place it on a scale of offensiveness from 0 to 5 where 0 is not antisemitic and 5 is most egregious? Seriously, would you take a shot at it?
@Neil: I’m not going to get into it point by point. Overall, I would argue that Helen Thomas’ comments were anti-Semitic because of her statement that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine”; that she then made clear she defines Palestine as the whole enchilada, including pre-1967 Israel, by invoking the Polish and German Jews (among others) who moved there, especially after World War II; and that she was grotesquely and uniquely insensitive in her invocation of Poland and Germany because of their well-known association with the Holocaust. She knew she’d stepped in it, which is why she threw in “America and everywhere else” at the end of her fun little rant.
Wow, usually it takes a good Bronson Arroyo debate to stir up this much chatter. Color me impressed.
@Mike: Looks like Arroyo’s having a pretty good year following a very good 2009. Any idea what Wily Mo Peña’s up to?
DK@2:22
Fair enough and thank you for that.
I would say her reference to Germany and Poland had more to do with the fact that many Israeli settlers in the 40s and early 50s came from those countries and that, in her opinion, those countries are their home more than Palestine is their home.
I think its a stretch to attribute hostile intentions when she cited Poland & Germany. Nonetheless, as you point out, she realized the in artfulness of her answer and so cited “America and everywhere else” because Israeli citizens have come from all over the world to live in Israel and on the West Bank and formerly in Gaza.
If her citing Poland and Germany was insensitive because its brings up the holocaust, then why is it not also insensitive when people of all stripes say “We must never forget the holocaust lest it happen again?” Context perhaps? I just cant imagine Helen Thomas citing Poland and Germany to inflict pain and that is what you’re claiming. There are no death camps in Poland and Germany now, wanting Israelis to return to those lands poses no threat to life of limb. It’s simply an argument about the rightful owners of Palestine. That is all.
I understand how even that argument – go back to where you came from – is hostile to Israel but it does not amount to antisemitism, which is hating Jews becuase they’re Jews.
I also think its fair to conclude that in her opinion Palestine is the rightful home of Palestinians. I can see how that opinion is clearly anti-Zionist but not how it is clearly antisemitic.
Did she refer to blacks as nappy-heeded hoes? Or Jews using equal contempt for stereotyped characteristics meant to demean and belittle? No.
How little it takes to lose ones job when talking about Israel in the USA.
@Neil: Since @Christian loves to bring up Gandhi and Tutu, let me cite Martin Luther King Jr.: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.” Not always. But usually.
You can own choosing the King quote on its own merit. Christian had little to do with your choice.
When people criticize official actions of the Israeli state, they mean official actions of the Israeli state. Oftentimes, defenders of Israel call these critics antisemites, without merit.
In the case of Helen Thomas, her words were not so clear that her intent was obvious and yet the punishment meant the end of her career …but only on the heels of the accusation: Antisemite.
She was advocating for the land rights of Palestinians, and chided Jewish transplants from elsewhere as the interlopers, an extreme view in the context of the western world which granted the land to Israel in ’48 but not extreme in the context of the middle east in the countries surrounding Israel such as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. If, for a moment, I thought she was advocating the Hamas position, I would agree with you but I know her to be anti-war and anti-violence. Her statement is only about land rights and not about Jews. Only by virtue of an uncompelling argument is Helen Thomas antisemetic.
Fleischer thought so too, that’s why he characterized her words as “religious-cleansing” an outrageous and inaccurate mischaracterization of what she said. Why would Ari want to fan the flames? Was he acting in his capacity as a PR representative? If so, who was he working for?
How little it takes to lose ones job when talking about Israel in the USA.
@Neil: I think you have to keep in mind that she didn’t really have a job. Hearst was paying her merely for symbolic reasons. If she had been a productive columnist (probably beyond her abilities at 89, and this time I am not being critical of her, just acknowledging reality), I doubt very much she would have been forced out.
@Neil Sagan says: How little it takes to lose ones job when talking about Israel in the USA.
Have there been others?
None come readily to mind.
@Dan: It’s probably the steroids. (ha ha)
I’m going to regret getting back into this, but I only want to respond to Dan’s MLK Jr. quote which a lot of people like to use.
Fadi Kiblawi & Will Youmans wrote the following in The Electronic Intifada, January 19, 2004
For more on the story click here.
Nice try Dan, but no dice.
@Christian: Congressman John Lewis says you’re wrong. And he’s got lots of other good stuff from King, too. Here’s a taste:
@Christian: Whether or not the quote was used in a “hoax” letter, the most rudimentary of Internet searching reveals the quote originated in a 1969 article in Encounter Magazine by Dr. Seymour Martin Lipset.
In fact, even Tim Wise acknowledges as much, facts which you conveniently left out of your post. He said:
“In 1968, according to Seymour Martin Lipset, King was in Boston and attended a dinner in Cambridge along with Lipset himself and a number of black students. After the dinner, a young man apparently made a fairly harsh remark attacking Zionists as people, to which King responded: “Don’t talk like that. When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking Anti-Semitism.” Assuming this quote to be genuine, it is still far from the ideological endorsement of Zionism as theory or practice that was evidenced in the phony letter.”
http://tinyurl.com/2agefoj
The fact you conveniently left out these facts, leaving only the “hoax” letter as the sole source of the quote, reveals much.
Christian – Would it be too much to ask of you to tell things straight?
Here’s a link to the CAMERA statement. They write:
@Christian: Looks like you were right on the mark when you wrote that you were going to regret getting back into this.
@Dan, I’m hoping at some point you will reply to the comments and question raised by Charles Pierce earlier today. That would be an interesting discussion.
@Melissa: Charlie’s a friend, but I don’t really see anything to respond to. We disagree on this — vociferously — and have discussed it at greater length on his Facebook page. I’ll say this about “blood libel”: Thomas’ words come pretty damn close to the classic definition. Even if an Israeli commando deliberately took someone out, assassination-style (hardly unusual in such situations), that does not remotely add up to the “deliberate massacre” that Thomas accused the Israeli government of carrying out.
Let’s not forget that the Israelis landed on five boats in the flotilla without incident.
@Neil: I agree that “anti-Semite” and “racist” are so toxic that they should only be used in the most egregious, obvious cases.
What Helen Thomas said – the whole of it, most definitely including her twice invoking Poland and Germany, and then only tossing in America as an afterthought – was a once-in-a-decade expression of pure anti-Semitism.
It’s nice to see someone above it all and this gentleman delivers it right on the money.
The title of this article and the quote below sums up the issue best.
Dan, you’re a smart guy and I’ve admired you over the years, but you’re mischaracterizing and misinforming people about Thomas and the plight of Palestinians. Palestinians are people of peace and Thomas never got a chance to clarify what she really meant. This “ambush Rabbi” was not interested putting her words into context, nor was he interested in helping people learn more about the issues. It was Fox News gotcha-esque journalism and a cowardly attempt to make someone he disagreed with look bad. Whether you agree or disagree with Thomas, his actions were unhelpful and they did not serve the public interest at all. It was a lose-lose situation for everyone.
Happy now?
@Christian said: Jews can be safe in all countries and do not need a religious state to protect themselves
History shows anything but.
Christian Avard – Your endorsement of a highly simplistic distillation of the history of this region “…Jews from European countries have been occupying a land that already had inhabitants, Palestinians” manages to be both laughable and offensive at the same time.
Has anyone seen the unedited version of the of the video released by by the Israeli government? Has anyone seen any of the videos shot by any of the people whose cameras, cellphones, etc. were confisticated?
I’m reminded of the Wikileaks video, only two months ago, when DK wrote “I think it’s only right that all of us hold off before offering any judgments on the astonishing video published by WikiLeaks . . . . What this calls for is further investigation.”
Let’s see all of the evidence before we judge that “even if an Israeli commando deliberately took someone out, assassination-style (hardly unusual in such situations), that does not remotely add up to the ‘deliberate massacre’. . . .”.
“hardly unusual in such situations”. What situations are those, Dan?
This thread is beginning to look like a race to victim status.
I am surprised that her age or medical condition has been mentioned. Is there any sign of memory deficits?
Uzi Dayan, Former Deputy Chief-of-Staff of the IDF, Threatens to Kill NATO Member Prime Minister:
The aptly named Uzi Dayan, the former Deputy Chief-of-Staff of the IDF stated yesterday, in response to the possibility of the Turkish Prime Minister accompanying a June Gaza relief flotilla :
So, our “greatest ally in the Middle East,” the country that within the past two weeks has placed dozens of nuclear-armed cruise missiles in waters of the Persian Gulf within a few miles of some of the most valuable vessels in the U.S. Navy, is prepared to declare war against one of NATO’s longest standing members.
Jason Ditz, writing about Dayan’s statement, observed:
The Israelis are acting more provocatively by the day. Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal, who is now in Israel, may be uncovering more lies right now. Max, perhaps more than any other individual, is tearing apart the IDF’s blatantly untrue narrative of the seizing of the Memorial Day relief convoy. Max is also urging American colleges and communities to more seriously consider seeking BDS moves against the apartheid state.
link
Filmmaker and activist Iara Lee was one of the few Americans on-board the Mavi Marmara. Her equipment was confiscated but she managed to smuggle out an hour’s worth of footage.
link to video
Helen Thomas is not the only person who claims the IDF came to kill. Should Iara Lee be fired for being antisemitic? Maybe we should wait and ask Ari Fleischer.
Gaza Freedom Flotilla Participants
http://vimeo.com/12188461
source.
What What Helen Thomas said, and what she meant, in a 1 minute video clip, should be examined alongside the public record of what she has said, and written, about the Arab-Israeli conflict over the course of her long career in journalism.
There has been an appalling rush to judgment here; a judgment that those few recent off-hand, isolated remarks on Palestine are indicative of a core antisemitism. Yet, no credible authority can claim that there is any other corroborating evidence of antisemitism in her 50+ years of reportage and commentary — if there were, Helen Thomas’s career would have ended long before June 07/10.
What Thomas’s record does reveal is a resolute, long-standing critique of Israeli political leadership and its U.S. enablers. More particularly, the ongoing encroachment of Israeli settlements into the Palestinian territories (condemned by the UN); the Israeli Defense Forces’s increasingly brutal treatment of the Palestinian civilian population (condemned by the UN); the inhumanity of the Israeli blockade preventing food and basic necessities of life from entering Gaza (condemned by the UN); and of course most recently, the IDF raid on the Gaza Humanitarian Aid Flotilla, which resulted in dozens of injuries to the people on the flotilla — and nine deaths, including one American citizen, shot at close-range, four times in the head and once in the chest (condemned by the UN).
The political establishment, and the mainstream press — the servile Fourth Estate — have wanted Helen Thomas’s head on a platter for as long as she’s had a head on her shoulders. On May 27/10, an heretofore unknown individual, Rabbi David Nessenoff, stuck a flip-cam into Helen Thomas’s face and asked her if she “had any comments about Israel”. What the good rabbi captured on video, in 1:58 minutes, was not particularly remarkable, within the context of what Helen Thomas has been saying, albeit in more diplomatic terms, for her entire life as a journalist. But, Rabbi Nessenoff tucked it away for a rainy day nonetheless — evidently, the foreseeable rainy day of May 31, when Israel had forecast the use of military force against the Gaza Humanitarian Aid Flotilla.
On Tuesday June 1st, Thomas confronted White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs for the administration’s unwillingness to condemn the homicidal actions of the IDF. On Wednesday June 3rd, Rabbi Nessenoff carpeid the rainy diem and posted a 1:03 minute clip of his ‘interview’ with Helen Thomas on his website. (Apparently, the Rabbi felt that the interview, in its 1:58 minute entirety, was not sufficiently damning to Thomas — whose manner is quite jovial and kind in the deleted portion.) Still, the video failed to sell itself — even within the incendiary context of world-wide uproar over the IDF raid. According to mid-level right-wing blogger Jeff Dunetz, Nessenoff contacted him on the morning of June 4th, asking for assistance with getting some publicity for the video that was still refusing to go viral. Dunetz applied himself mightily. He posted the video clip and his commentary on his own website The LId; he enlisted the assistance of high-level right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart; and he sent out a slew of tweets and emails. Dunetz gloated in the afterglow:
[Within five hours] the video was posted on the Big sites on the net. By the end of the day it was on radio and TV and the calls for Thomas’ head were all over the place.
Dunetz wisely failed to give credit to former GW Bush White House Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, who is widely reported to have shopped the story to numerous entities over the June 4th weekend. Firedoglake adroitly discusses Ari’s role and his motives in this story, from June 8th: Who hired Ari Fleischer to take out “antisemite” Helen Thomas?
The Firedoglake story correctly surmises that Helen Thomas’s recent remarks are reflective of ” anti-ZIONISM” — the presumed divine right of Israelis to occupy increasingly larger swathes of Palestine. American public opinion may be turning — in the wake of IDF violence against the Gaza flotilla; and the subsequent firing of its most vocal critic. Last night, Stephen Colbert interviewed the unsurprisingly belligerent Israeli Ambassador to the UN. At one point, Stephen ironically suggested that the Arab-Israeli conflict would be resolved if all the Palestinians “went back to where they came from”. For a moment reality was turned on its head. The audience, and the ambassador went silent as the tomb, as they collectively grasped that the Palestinians “came from” the place that became the state of Israel in 1948. Nobody is saying the clock can, or should, be turned all the way back; but there has been an undeniable wake-up call to the plight of the Palestinian people.
Peace.
Sara Says: June 11th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
1000 killed…accorded to B’Tselem, there have been 490 Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians since 2000. Not 1000.
And 932 Palestinian minors (children) killed by Israeli forces. Twice as many Palestinian kids have been killed by Israel as all Israelis killed by Palestinians. http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp That does not include the Gaza War…which not only killed numerous children, but also maimed them, burned them, etc.
When we look at total Palestinians killed, the number is much greater. Nearly 5000 (4,791) killed by Israeli forces. That only goes through mid-2008 too. Does not include the Gaza War which added around 1500 more to the tally.
BTW, the population of Israel is 7.3 million. The population of the Gaza Strip is 1.6 million. Population of West Bank? 2.5 million. So the Palestinians, have roughly half the population, yet have suffered around 10x the deaths… not to mention all of the other suffering from being occupied/prisoners.