So who says Obama can't show anger? Helen Thomas sure made him angry.
After video hit YouTube of eighty-nine year old reporter Helen Thomas telling an interviewer that Israelis should “get out of Palestine” and go back to Poland and Germany and other places, the White House issued an immediate condemnation. Reprehensible was their word. In the ritual flagellation that's followed, one can't help thinking that the grande dame of the White House press corps would have gotten less grief if she'd purposely cheated the financial system and took taxpayer money to recover, or killed eleven and destroyed an ecosystem in an avoidable Deepwater drilling disaster, or let 29 men die in a push for more mining profits. Or shot nine men dead -- in the head -- in international waters.
Thomas's comments were regrettable, and she's regretted them and has resigned her post with Hearst because of them. Which is more than can be said of most pundits who say hateful things in the money media.
The White House Correspondents Association showed more fury in 24 hours towards Thomas than they've ever shown towards the journos who, unlike Thomas, softballed Bush for eight straight years and passed on government lies that led us into the Iraq invasion. Sometimes one's strengths are also one's weaknesses. Thomas was -- and remains -- a bulldog. She doggedly questioned President Bush about war and torture at a time when the rest of the press rolled over. In return, they appear more shocked by a comment -- albeit laced with 70 years of horrific history, it's true -- than they are by the deaths of flesh-and-blood humans.
Thomas's crime wasn't just Antisemitism -- it was Antisemitism in defense of Palestine. That's the true source of the outrage. The outrage that Obama and Biden and most other U.S. officials, to say nothing of the majority of the press corps, can't seem to find for others.
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Part 3 of 6
... Palestine was as good a place as any to escape to, since it was the last place, about 2000 years before, that the Jews had a sovereign state (see above). Never mind Jewish liturgy and texts pining for Jerusalem, since I know these are inadmissible in the international courts of the mind.
Anyway, nowhere else wanted European Jews any more than Russia did, not even America really, where there were very strict quotas, although the Americans, again politely, refrained from all the messy European killing, which was apparently in vogue until after Hitler. Besides, those Ottoman Turks, as now, were known around the world for their amazing human rights activism and the Jews were excited to see it firsthand. (No, not really. But…they were better than the Polish peasants. Unless you were Armenian.)
But when the Jews came back to Land of Israel, it was suddenly necessary, once again, to tell them to get the hell out. There was no living side by side, even though that was an express Jewish desire right up until 1947/8, when the Partition Plan was summarily rejected by the Arab League, who started the war that Israel won. If keeping land you win in a war others provoke (when you wanted to make peace) is called occupation, Helen, the world’s axis of furious justice has a lot bigger fish to fry than Israel.
Part 2
And you know why we were in Western Europe to begin with? Because we were told by the Greeks and the Romans – wait for it – to get the hell out of “Palestine,” where we had been living since the beginning of recorded history.
We also ended up in Babylonia (Iraq) and other Middle Eastern and North African countries, where we stayed as second class citizens for hundreds and hundreds of years, till the Arab world finally caught up with the pagans and the Christians in their hatred of the Jews. Amazing how the student has now far surpassed the teacher. But I digress.
In any event, there is no way around it: Jews being asked (usually not by old ladies on the White House lawn) to get the hell out of anywhere and everywhere is just the way it goes.
Persona non grata in East Europe
So it came to pass that about 200 years BCE the Macabees got sick of it and established a Jewish state in Palestine, within the Roman Empire, which lasted till about the time of Jesus (another Pesky Jew) and the destruction of the Second Temple.
And it also came to pass that Jewish settlers began arriving in Ottoman Palestine in the late 1800s, after the Russians and the Poles made it clear that Jews were persona non grata in Eastern Europe.
... None of those things will absolve us of our real sin: Existing and overcoming.
I’m really sorry they told you to get the hell out of the White House, Helen. It really wasn’t your fault that you thought you could say what you said. It’s not like it’s a secret: That’s what people think.
But this time, seriously. Getting the hell out is not in the cards. We’re just sick of moving all the time.
I know. Irritating.
... condemn Israel daily have done…daily.
But let’s be honest: the international community’s human rights crusades on behalf of the Palestinians are just the latest Crusades, and the ones who really suffer are not the Jews or the Israelis but the poor occupants of the Third World who are ignored while the enlightened First World castigates the Jews… and yes, of course, the Palestinians, who are kept in misery by their own leadership in order to provide the polite Jew haters with a media club to beat them with.
So here’s the thing: We are not going anywhere this time, Helen. We totally get it: Ya’ll pretty much hate us. It’s just the way it is, like a natural law.
Nothing we can do – not giving away pieces of Palestine/Israel (witness our evacuation of Gaza in 2005, and handing over the keys to army bases and greenhouses- a new economy! Food for the children! – which were summarily torched as property of the infidels); not donating billions annually to global charity, nor discovering a cure for Polio or the Theory of Relativity, or writing revered legal and religious texts, or co-founding Google, or manufacturing the microprocessor in the majority of laptops that spew Jew hatred to the Internet, or founding Christianity itself, or championing women’s rights and gay rights in the US and helping to bring about a human rights revolution in America in the 60’s.
The Arab desire to kick the Jews the hell out of Palestine did not begin in 1967, and not in 1948. It began the moment the initial groups of Jews arrived and started to make the land flower and produce crops. The Hebron Massacre of 1929, where marauding Arabs killed nearly 70 Jews and wounded countless others, took place long before a single house was built over the Green Line.
At any rate, it seems that every time a Jewish minority starts to make a society too successful – so annoying!!!! – the indigenous people start to feel very uncomfortable, and tell them one way or another to get the hell out.
Nowhere left for us to go
But now, alas, there is nowhere left for us to go, except the eternal place Ahmadinejad wants us to go, and Haniyeh and Nasrallah, and Hitler before them, and Khmelnitsky before him, and Haman before him, and so on. And, I suspect, in her heart of hearts, perhaps Thomas and the likes of her, who, the pesky Jew Freud may have observed, seriously let her slip show.
Let me make it clear: I know that Israel has made mistakes over its 62 years, some clumsy and inept (was there no intelligence regarding the terrorists aboard the Mavi Marmara?!?), and some borderline immoral. But none worse than every other democracy on earth has also done, and most much better than the large majority of the UN rogue nations which
A relevant column:
As Golda told Biden all those years ago: "We have a secret weapon." When Biden looked puzzled, she answered: "We have nowhere else to go".
We’re not going anywhere
Sara K. Eisen tells Helen Thomas Jews are just sick and tired of moving all the time
Sara K. Eisen
Published: 06.09.10, 17:33 / Israel Opinion
Here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking about poor Helen Thomas, who I believe was probably just saying what everyone thinks and has therefore been made a scapegoat. Not that I really care, because we ought to share the scapegoat status once in a while. It’s the least we can do to dispel the stereotype that we are stingy, us irritating Jews.
Helen, you know why we were in Germany and much of Eastern Europe in the first place? (And by the way, if I follow your advice, do you think the nice old ladies who got my grandmothers’ large houses and farms from the Nazis in what was once Czechoslovakia will kick the property back two generations? That would be cool because I’d love a vineyard and an agricultural estate.)
We were in Germany and Hungary and Czechoslovakia and Russia (where we were regularly just plain killed by Cossacks), and also, for many centuries, Poland (ditto), because we were told to get the hell out of England, France, and Spain. (Or, you know, just plain killed by handsome and heroic fairytale knights.)
But I wonder if he considered how outrage at an Arab woman expressing a personal opinion exceeding the premeditated slaughter of humanitarian aid workers might expose the deep hypocrisy of Z1onist organizations and individuals such as himself.
Is he saving the next installment that he claims for the next time Israel needs a distraction? He should think long and hard about that strategy.
Thomas' comments may have offended people who think they have the right to gain by force AND to have everyone be silent about it. Life doesn't always work that way and trying to enforce the silence over Israel's genocidal nature will backfire in the long run. Despite Z1onists efforts to control the discourse in all spheres of US public and social life, people are learning about the history and racist nature of Z1onism including that which predates Hitler.
The rabbi's stereotypical portrayal of a Mexican was both offensive to many AND immoral. Don't wait for FOX news to bring you that part of the story.
Like many Arabs, Helen probably doesn't hate Jews, she hates colonial conquest. And who in their right mind wouldn't?
That applies even to Gods chosen.
Wow. The posts get more and more intolerant and just plain anti-Semitic.
I guess to you the 6 million murdered were nothing, meaningless, and represent no reason for Israel to bear in mind when making policy about defending herself... against Arabs sworn to her destruction.
Perhaps you shouldn't be talking about Israel, unless you shill for "controversies".
A lot of NYC liberals and supporters of Obama and H.C., have learned about your attitude about Israel from your days at Air America. Typical British Left, somewhat moderated for the American media.
Perhaps you know. Does British anti-Semitism, so prevalent among the intelligentsia and the upper classes in the UK, stem from being appalled that Jews were the only ones that had no problem challenging the British attitude of superiority throughout the 18-20th centuries?
Is that why the leftist Brits have such a fetish about Arabs and Muslims in general?
If she meant historic Palestine including what is now Israel, that would also be a legitimate viewpoint since (1) the Nakba violated the UN Charter prescribing non-violent international conflict resolution, and (2) Israel has adamantly refused to honor UN Resolution 194 - despite its pledge to do so as a condition of admittance to the UN - and stolen the private land of several million Palestinians.
Incidentally, many Ashkenazi Jews are already following her advice before even hearing it. Perhaps she plans a 2nd career as a European realtor or relocation agent and knows that many Jews are returning to Poland and Germany, and that Germany now attracts more Jewish immigrants than Israel. Hardly a radical suggestion.
This is an AIPAC lynching party, and she should withdraw her apology. I don't think she's ever apologized before for speaking the truth and certainly shouldn't start now.
They are advocates for the oppressed and they are educators. That's pretty much it. You call them bullies. But you wouldn't know a bully if he came up and suicide-bombed your family in a shopping mall at Christmas.
Then you say that the Jews "need to get the hell out of Palestine, that's a fact!" That's not a fact, that's an ignorant opinion. Here's a clue, pal: the Jews aren't going to be kicked out of anyplace anymore, and won''t be told to leave by people like you, or by those who hate them. They've had to relocate all over the world because of hatred and persecution, being murdered or told to "get the hell out." There are few places left for them to go.
Why don't YOU get the hell out of wherever you are... if it's the U.S., unlike the legal formation of Israel via the UN, the U.S. simply stole the land that was the Indians'. So start with getting your own house in order.
Palestinian refugees have a right to return to their homes anywhere in historic Palestine (not some Israeli-approved state-let) and live as equals. If racist Israeli Jews cannot live in equality with the Palestinians, they can GET THE HELL OUT OF PALESTINE...