The ostracism of Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, over her comment that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and elsewhere is revealing in several ways. In spite of an apology, the 89-year-old has been summarily retired by the Hearst newspaper group, dropped by her agent, spurned by the White House, and denounced by long-time friends and colleagues.
Ms Thomas earnt a reputation as a combative journalist, at least by American standards, with a succession of administrations over their Middle East policies, culminating in Bush officials boycotting her for her relentless criticisms of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the reaction to her latest remarks suggest that, if there is one topic in American public life on which the boundaries of what can and cannot be said are still tightly policed, it is Israel.
Undoubtedly, Ms Thomas’ opinions, as she expressed them in an unguarded moment, were inappropriate and required an apology. It is true, as she says, that Palestine was occupied and the land taken from the Palestinians by Jewish immigrants with no right to it barring a Biblical title deed. But 62 years on from Israel’s creation, most Jewish citizens have no home to go to in Poland and Germany – or in Iraq and Yemen, for that matter. There is also an uncomfortable echo in her words of the chauvinism underpinning demands from some Jews – and many Israelis – that Palestinians should “go home to the 22 Arab states”.
But Ms Thomas did apologise and, after that, a line ought to have been drawn under the affair – as it surely would have been had she made any other kind of faux pas. Instead, she has been denounced as an anti-Semite, even by her former friends.
The reasoning of one, Lanny Davis, counsel to the White House in the Clinton administration, was typical. Mr Davis, who said he previously considered himself “a close friend”, asked whether anyone would be “protective of Helen's privileges and honors if she had been asking Blacks to return to Africa, or Native Americans to Asia and South America, from which they came 8,000 or more years ago?”
It is that widely accepted analogy, appropriating the black and Native American experience in a wholly misguided way, that reveals in stark fashion the moral failure of American liberals. In their blindness to the current relations of power in the US, most critics of Ms Thomas contribute to the very intolerance they claim to be challenging.
Ms Thomas is an Arab-American, of Lebanese descent, whose remarks were publicised in the immediate wake of Israel’s lethal commando attack on a flotilla of aid ships trying to break the siege of Gaza. Unlike most Americans, who were half-wakened from their six-decade Middle East slumber by the killing of at least nine Turkish activists, Ms Thomas has been troubled by the Palestinians’ plight for much of her long lifetime.
She was in her late twenties when Israel ethnically cleansed three-quarters of a million Palestinians from most of Palestine, a move endorsed by the fledgling United Nations. She was in her mid-forties when Israel took over the rest of Palestine and parts of Egypt and Syria in a war that dealt a crushing blow to Arab identity and pride and made Israel a favoured ally of the US. In her later years she has witnessed Israel’s repeated destruction of Lebanon, her parents’ homeland, and the slow confinement and erasure of the neighbouring Palestinian people. Both have occurred under a duplicitious American “peace process” while Washington has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Israel’s coffers.
It is therefore entirely understandable if, despite her own personal success, she feels a simmering anger not only at what has taken place throughout her lifetime in the Middle East but also at the silencing of all debate about it in the US by the Washington elites she counted as friends and colleagues.
While she has many long-standing Jewish friends in Washington – making the anti-Semite charge implausible – she has also seen them and others promote injustice in the Middle East. Doubtless she, like many of us, has been exasperated at the toothless performance of the press corps she belongs to in holding the White House to account in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine.
It is with this context in mind that we can draw a more fitting analogy. We should ask instead: How harshly should Ms Thomas be judged were she a black professional who, seeing yet another injustice like the video of Rodney King being beaten to within an inch of his life by white policemen, had said white Americans ought to “go home to Europe”?
This analogy accords more closely with the reality of power relations in the US between Arabs and Jews. Ms Thomas is not a representative of the oppressor white man disrespecting the oppressed black man, as Mr Davis suggests; she is the oppressed black man hitting back at the oppressor. Her comments shocked not least because they denied an image that continues to dominate in modern America of the vulnerable Jew, a myth that persists even as Jews have become the most successful minority in the country.
Ms Thomas let her guard down and her anger and resentment show. She generalised unfairly. She sounded bitter. She needed to – and has – apologised. But she does not deserve to be pilloried and blacklisted.
It is in fact an entirely plausible political demand to ask that colonists leave: it is what happened in French Algeria and it is happening in South Africa as well, where the Afrikaaners and other whites ‘have no home to go to’ but are in fact leaving for Europe, the US and Australia etc as their privileges vis-a-vis the native population are withdrawn. It is also not correct to write that “the land taken from the Palestinians by Jewish immigrants with no right to it barring a Biblical title deed” but much better to say that “the land was taken from the native population by chauvinist colonists backed by European political power, as happened in many other places in Africa, Asia etc”. And there is no “uncomfortable echo in her words of the chauvinism underpinning demands from some Jews – and many Israelis – that Palestinians should “go home to the 22 Arab states” — the latter claims is as if the Apartheid government of South Africa had proposed to expel all black South Africans ‘home’ to the rest of Africa. Asking colonists to leave is very different from demand for the removal of the native population.
In other words, this defence of Helen Thomas is not enough of a defence: asking for the decolonisation of relations between Palestinian arabs and jews, which will inevitable result in many jews leaving as their privileges are withdrawn, is entirely reasonable demand. In fact it is an essential part of any solution.
I don’t think she called for ‘Jews’ to get out of Palestine but for ‘Israel’, ie those engaged in imposing Israeli power on the Palestinians to get out. Perhaps this was reprehensible in itself but it wasn’t the stark anti-Semitism that has been made to appear – I’m sure she’s aware that many Jews are as Palestinian as any Muslim Palestinian might be.
The analogy is not with calling on blacks to leave America but with calling on whites to leave America – or perhaps with calling on English people with no Welsh blood to withdraw to Germany or Scandinavia, restoring the situation of 500. Maybe wrong, maybe ridiculous but not the stark, traditional racism that has been made to appear.
She is no doubt reflecting ruefully on her remark that a journalist is always learning.
1. Helen Thomas apologized and, as Jonathan Chait (TNR) has pointed out, on grounds of free speech she shouldn’t have been forced to resign.
2. The idea that the Jews might be forced out of I/P is not as ridiculous as the idea that whites will be forced out of America. One need only read the remarks of many in the comments section on this blog to realize that many will it and propose it and see it as true justice.
3. The continual interpretations of Helen Thomas’s words: she didn’t mean this, what she really meant was that, is truly ridiculous. She meant that all the Jews should go back to where they came from. And if she meant it differently, then why did she apologize? She knows what she meant and she apologized. Only you know better what she meant. Give it a break and accept that she said what she said. (It seems that pro Palestinians have learned the Talmudic habit of parsing phrases to turn them on their head. Certainly fun, but not honest.)
Which means, of course, that Middle Eastern Jews would stay in the Middle East.
You’re just upset because her statements were a criticism of your caste of Jews.
Hey, I think I agree with Wondering Jew for once — at for points 1 and 3. She said what she said, I don’t agree with it. She apologized. It was an angry outburst and it pales in comparison to the anti-Palestinian comments that are routinely made by public figures. It should not be unforgiveable.
I think it close to impossible that Jews will be forced out of the Middle East — although I see very few Israelis actually working to prevent that by setting up the foundations for a democratic state: one person, one vote, equal rights. Everything that Israel is doing is making bad outcomes more likely. In my opinion, someone like WJ who is worried about Jews being forced out of the ME should be actively working for a single state solution.
edit: … at least for points 1 and 3.
Much of what Mr.Cook says is valuable but I don’t think HT called for ‘Jews’ to get out of Palestine but for ‘Israel’, ie those engaged in imposing Israeli power on the Palestinians to get out. Perhaps this was reprehensible in itself but it wasn’t the stark anti-Semitism that has been made to appear – I’m sure she’s aware that many Jews are as Palestinian as any Muslim Palestinian might be.
The analogy is not with calling on blacks to leave America but with calling on whites to leave America – or perhaps with calling on English people with no Welsh blood to withdraw to Germany or Scandinavia, restoring the situation of 500. Maybe wrong, maybe ridiculous but not the stark, traditional racism that has been made to appear.
She is no doubt reflecting ruefully on her remark that a journalist is always learning.
w respect, M Hughes, parsing the phrases ensnares one in a hasbara trap and misses the fundamental point: does Helen Thomas have the right, in the United States of America and, it should be noted, on the grounds of the White House, to speak her mind freely and openly?
Why should one and only one group in the US — Jewish people — have an office within the US Department of State committed to the task of monitoring words spoken throughout the world that Jewish people decide for themselves are offensive? How does such a climate not fly in the face of the notion of “ALL men are created equal,” of “equal justice under law,” in addition to fundamental first amendment rights? This is either America run by American principles and values, or it is Israel, run by the principles and values of the Jewish and democratic state, but it cannot be both.
Sorry for duplication, don’t quite know how it happened.
As an Israeli and a Jew, I think perhaps too much attention has been paid to a 89 year old woman’s last pledge to her own lineage.
Please understand that I believe the we Israelis are here to stay; it also is more than obvious that the Palestinians will remain here as well. That being the case, a little bit of slack can be cut for those who cheer for their own.
It is enough that both sets of leaders are leading their followers into a cul-de-sac of blood and pain; not all of us need contribute to the insanity.
Should Kagan become the second Jewish justice on the US Supreme Court, Jewish representation would equal 22%.
Similarly, out of 535 member of Congress, there are roughly 45 Jewish representatives and senators accounting for about 8% of the total.
Now, when we contrast that representation with the actual percentage of Jews in the general US population – at 1.7% – we find that the adjective “successful” is rather too polite in describing the disparity.
Kagan, if approved will be the 3rd Jewish justice. 33%.
And whereas the supreme court is an appointment, the house and senate seats are elected positions. I suppose that money is part of the reason for the success of Jewish candidates for Congressional seats. But one must also consider the fact that congressmen are advocates and Jews are famous for being good advocates.
I think we all know what these Congress members advocate.
Avi- There are many issues besides Israel on the agenda of the United States, individual states, congressional districts and individual Americans.
You wouldn’t actually know that, of course, if you watched how Jewish congressmen have been wholeheartedly endorsing every act of Israeli murder as “self defense.”
In interpreting the various reasons for a particular group’s success, one must not leave out the effects of nepotism, either direct or indirect. I’ve heard many argue that they don’t get the benefits of tribal membership, but it would have to be compared to the days when white privilege didn’t guarantee you success, but it would be one of the first barriers you’d encounter.
I think tribal nepotism operates in a slightly different fashion. The entry points aren’t necessarily quite as rigid (though in Tom Hayden’s piece on political support, having the right position on Israel is a make or break deal on campaign contributions), but saying the right things, and better yet, saying the right things coupled with the loyalty one expects from those of the tribe is a good way to fast track your career.
And much in the way Carl Sagan explained in “Cosmos” how the Samurai crab wound up with the distinctive pattern on its shell, this same winnowing helps facilitate the representational numbers we find today.
My friend Bernie the Attorney (totally secular humanist atheist with a Jewish mother) said the tribal representation in law school was substantial, but there was no overrepresentation of talent. When I look at how pitiful the arguments Alan Dershowitz often puts forth to defend a particular position, I tend to agree.
on one of yesterday’s discussions a commenter asked who Phil was referring to when he used the pronoun, “we.”
I’ve begun to wonder, of late, who the writer, any writer, has in mind when he refers to “American liberals.” Can anybody be a liberal or has that become the territory of Jewish people? Is Jewish liberalism the same as the liberalism I thought I endorsed as my American heritage, a liberalism that called upon the critical thinking demands and processes of the Enlightenment, the passion of Thomas Paine, humanist religious views of Thomas Jefferson? Or is liberalism in America today only as defined within a Jewish mental framework (and yes, they are different, and no, it’s not antisemitic to say so, but if so doing makes you feel good, knock yourself out. If you do choose to render yourself unconscious to a fundamental critique, you’ll be missing an important key to resolving the closing statement of Jonathan Cook’s essay on Israeli victimhood:
Meanwhile, the lesson the rest of us need to draw from the deadly commando raid is that the world can no longer afford to indulge these delusions.
The most important issue of our times, the issue that, if not resolved, could literally engulf the world in a nuclear holocaust — Israel DOES have nuclear capable ships off Iran’s coast — does NOT involve territories or real estate or borders or blockades or competitive economic imbalance. The most important issue of our time pivots on the self-induced mental state of Israelis and Israelists. That mental state did not spring full-born from the side of Zeus; it has its germ in Jewish mythos.
American liberalism, I perceive, has been under sustained assault since the years of the Reagan Administration — all of my life, pretty much. And I think the sad fact is that the constant assault from all sides — neoconservatives, corporate interests, Christian fundamentalists, the Zionist lobbying/blacklisting machine — has succeeded in essentially neutralizing American liberalism.
Which explains why the US is now in the process of flushing everything the founding fathers fought for, down the crapper.
Kipling makes reference to ‘the more than inherited (since it is also carefully taught) brutality of the Christian peoples’ and we see what a problem there is with mythos in all forms. I keep telling myself that one of the essential things about mythos is that it is for ever being interpreted and reinterpreted. But I do have to ask myself – and it troubles me – how I can be at variance with Jewish culture in the interpretation that is currently prevalent without touching the defiling pitch of anti-Semitism.
Journalist Helen Thomas has taken a lot of heat for daring to address the fact that any Jew without any historical connection to Israel is encouraged to settle-as in colonize-upon legally owned Palestinian land.
I learned about, Aliyah, which means ‘going up,’ during my first of seven trips to Israel and occupied Palestine in June 2005 from an American Jewess who had taken the deal and she informed me:
“I get fifteen hundred shekels or about thirty-six hundred dollars a year in increments to help with my expenses. I can apply for unemployment benefits after seven months, as long as I look for a job. I just completed Ulpan, which was five hundred hours of Hebrew language immersion studies that took five months, five hours a day, for five weeks. I get subsidized rent and just moved out of the Absorption Center Projects. All the new immigrants get room, utilities, and three meals a day for the first five months in Israel. We also receive free medical care and all the doctors here are dedicated. We can go to the university with 100 percent of the tuition paid by the government. College is much cheaper here; it’s about three thousand to four thousand dollars a year. Until I am thirty years old, I can receive up to three years of education for my master’s degree.”
On February 9, 2009, Journalist Helen Thomas, asked President Obama about Middle Eastern states with nukes.
Obama blew her off stating he didn’t want “to speculate” and her ‘colleagues’ remained mute, but the US State Department has published reams of material about President Kennedy’s concern about the Israeli bomb!
In 2005, Mordechai Vanunu, the Whistle Blower of Israel’s WMD’s told me:
“President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons. Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection.
“When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.
“Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.”
In 1987, the Whistle Blower of Israel’s WMD Program, Mordechai Vanunu, wrote from Ashkelon prison:
No government, not even the most democratic, can force us to live under this threat. No state in the world can offer any kind of security against this menace of a nuclear holocaust, or guarantee to prevent it…A state that lives in fear of destruction must not threaten the whole world with annihilation…Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger. Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own government, just as if they have been hijacked and deprived of their freedom and threatened…when governments develop nuclear weapons without the consent of their citizens – and this is true in most cases – they are violating the basic rights of their citizens, the basic right not to live under constant threat of annihilation…Is any government qualified and authorized to produce such weapons?
In 1995, from Ashkelon Prison, Mordechai Vanunu also noted:
A radioactive cloud consumed rubbed out Hiroshima…A live nuclear test sentenced you. A nuclear laboratory…children women trees animals in and under a nuclear mushroom…burning… burned…flattened to ground radioactive ash-Hiroshima…Nuclear weapons gamblers win against you…Hollywood doesn’t know you – you are not a Jewish Holocaust.
In April 1999, thirty-six members of the House of Representatives signed a letter calling for Vanunu’s release from prison because they believed “we have a duty to stand up for men and women like Mordechai Vanunu who dare to articulate a brighter vision for humanity.”
President Clinton responded with a public statement expressing concern for Vanunu and the need for Israel and other non-parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty to adhere to it and accept IAEA safeguards, but ever since the silence from the American Government has been deafening!
And Israel returned Vanunu to prison on 23 May 2010, essentially for speaking to foreign media in 2004!
On April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage in Prague amongst thousands of flag-waving Czechs and spoke of good humor, home town Chicago, the will of the people over tanks and guns, old conflicts, revolution, moral leadership as the most powerful weapon, iron curtains that fell and the state of 21st century nuclear weapons and I excerpt:
“We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change. We’re here today because of the courage of those who stood up and took risks to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like. We are here today because the simple and principled pursuit of liberty and opportunity shamed those who relied on the power of tanks and arms to put down the will of a people.
“Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked -– that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.
“As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act…It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, Yes, we can.
“Words must mean something.
“There is violence and injustice in our world that must be confronted. We must confront it by standing together as free nations, as free people. I know that a call to arms can stir the souls of men and women more than a call to lay them down. But that is why the voices for peace and progress must be raised together.
“Human destiny will be what we make of it…Let us honor our past by reaching for a better future. Let us bridge our divisions, build upon our hopes, and accept our responsibility to leave this world more prosperous and more peaceful than we found it. Together we can do it.”
Yes we can do it and all we lack are the eyes to see, ears to hear and the political will to comprehend that all roads lead US to Israel:
link to youtube.com
Eileen Fleming, Producer “30 Minutes with Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member of Salem-news.com
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
Author of “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory”
link to youtube.com
But Likudniks get to tell Israelis to go back to Europe
link to youtube.com
Whoah. Can someone send this to the goons that got Helen Thomas to resign?
The dialog is interesting here. To be fair, the men in this video are saying what they are saying from the point of view of people who are convinced that Jews will never be welcome anywhere, and somehow “slaughtered”. It’s bad irony. They are saying “Hitler was right” as a way of saying “You people are so naive to believe that Jews can be accepted and mix with the rest of society, that you deserve the same fate as those who were massacred.”
Man, this fear runs deep, it’s startling.
Pulcinella’s secret revealed
At least H. Thomas said clear and loud what most anti-Zionists actually think and imply without admitting.
And why not say it? It’s absolutely right.
All “Jews” of Palestine who don’t like the idea of being to be simple citizens like all others, one-man-one-vote, can get the freak out to Brooklyn or Texas. Tell uncle Bama to get jobs for all the Russians who were handed a Master-Race First Class citizenship far away from where they belong –for no good reason.
“All “Jews” of Palestine who don’t like the idea of being to be simple citizens like all others, one-man-one-vote, can get the freak out to Brooklyn or Texas.”
Yeeaa, azythos. So let’s make some “selections”.
From the audio clip on Huffington Post, from Rosie O Donnell’s lips to your ear:
“Now, I think, in the year 2010, what she was saying was not, ‘Go back to the ovens,’” O’Donnell said of Thomas’s comments. “What she was saying was, the homeland was originally Palestinians’ and it’s now occupied by Israel and Palestinians should be afforded human and civil rights. That’s what I think she was saying, but I don’t know.”