Yesterday I met a Muslim-Asian-American friend and asked him about Helen Thomas. He was so agonized by the destruction of an "icon" that he said he had avoided all coverage of the story. I said that I was moved by the fact that at the end of her comments, Thomas said, "I’m an Arab-American." She was informing us that her views come out of that experience (as Jonathan Cook’s defense of Helen Thomas above reminds us). I asked my friend–who is not Arab-American but speaks Arabic– How many Arab-Americans share her views?
He said, If you ask Arab-Americans, Should Israel have been created? The answer will be No, 90 percent. Should Israel exist? No, 80 percent or so. Should it be a Jewish state? No, 80 percent. Should there be a two-state solution? Yes, probably, 60 percent. Should all the Jews have to go home to Europe and elsewhere? Yes, 2 percent. He explained that Thomas’s attitude was very generational, of people of her age.
I walked away thinking I have no real idea of Arab-American attitudes, because their speech has been suppressed for precisely the reason that the Thomas episode demonstrates: If you are honest about your feelings about the matter, you can kiss your future goodbye. Thus John Sununu’s and Ralph Nader’s reticence about the issue as they became successful (I once badgered Nader on this question, when I did a profile of him for Vanity Fair. It took him forever to say Of course I am for a Palestinian state, or horrifying words similar to that; and today I have great sympathy for him and disdain for the role I was playing). I imagine that even Edward Said was compelled to be silent about some of his views.
I continue to insist that the Helen Thomas moment is going to help us all, it is so patently unfair. As America turns on Israel, slowly, it is time for us to accord Arab-American citizens the right of free speech and finally have this conversation. I think the AADC and CAIR can play a role; they should have forums about Arab-American attitudes.
Andrew Sullivan’s 1948 thoughts are completely in line with this turning. He has been moved by Helen Thomas’s removal to say, Wait, do anti-Zionists even get to open their mouths in America? No. And wait, it seems the whole Arab world was against Israel’s creation, including Arab-Americans, and why? And the answer is that the Arab world was never truly consulted on Partition. They were against it and they were defied. Palestinians were against it. And lo, in short order, 750,000 of them were expelled from their homeland. So the beautiful thing about the Helen Thomas moment is that it exhumes these never-dealt-with issues in the Arab-American heart. It is just a matter of time before NBC Nightly News is doing a piece on the Nakba, and Columbia anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod, editor of this collection on the Nakba, who herself avoided the topic for much of her professional life, will be on television to describe how her father Ibrahim Abu-Lughod and his family were ethnically cleansed from Jaffa. I have faith in our democracy.
