Posted on 06/15/2010 8:08:56 AM PDT by John David Powell
Politicians and pundits widely accept Social Security as the fatal third-rail of U.S. politics. To touch it, regardless of intentions, leads to political death. That’s why Social Security remains unfixed even though everyone agrees it will crash and burn under its own weight if nothing is done to change it.
The Palestinian question is the third rail of Middle-East politics that will bring political or professional harm to anyone who unwisely touches it, regardless of intentions. Helen Thomas is an example of how quickly the jackals of journalism will throw one of their own under the wheels when they sense an opportunity to score political points at the risk of exposing their true biases.
To recap, Thomas, 89, a native Kentuckian of Lebanese descent, has covered the White House since 1960. During John Kennedy’s term, Thomas was the first female to close a presidential news conference with the traditional “Thank you, Mr. President.”
She served as president of the Women’s National Press Club, the first female officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and its first female president, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club and its first female president. In 1975, she was named Woman of the Year in communications by Ladies Home Journal. And, the World Almanac named Thomas one of the twenty-five most influential women in America.
Conservatives had good cause to name her Bleeding Heart of the Century, if they had such a title. By her own admission in a 2006 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5O-ShWgw6g), Thomas is a brazen liberal who wishes her colleagues covering the White House were more in line with her political views.
During that same interview, Thomas pointed out that the woman who was like a second mother to her was a Palestinian, born in Bethlehem.
Thomas brought about her own demise when she exercised her First-Amendment right to free expression. During the White House Jewish Heritage celebration on May 27, Thomas engaged in what appeared to be a good-natured, on-the-record video banter with Rabbi David Nesenhoff for his web site (http://rabbilive.com/RabbiLIVE/Helen.html).
When asked to comment about Israel, Thomas said, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” She and Nesenhoff chuckled briefly before she added these fateful words: “Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land. It’s not Germany. It’s not Poland.”
When asked by Nesenhoff where Jews occupying Palestine should go, Thomas answered, “Poland, Germany, America, and everywhere else.” She did not rule out Israel as a destination, even though she didn’t include it.
This topic came up over the weekend at Sparky’s Diner. I won’t go into detail of who said what to whom, but I will offer five personal observations that don’t bring me near that third rail.
1) At no time does Thomas advocate the murder, systematic or otherwise, of any human being, regardless of the hyper-hyperbolic reporting, aimed at inflaming passions, that followed in various media accounts. In fact, some sites use the word holocaust as a meta tag for search engines. She did not use the word in the interview nor did she mention a final solution.
2) I may have had a small-town education in history, but I do not recall acts of the Holocaust on U.S. soil. I do know about "relocation" camps for Japanese-Americans during WW2 and about government efforts to eliminate the Native American population and cultures.
3) I'm tired of people misusing the term "anti-Semite". Arabs are Semites. You can't be an Arab promoting Arab causes and be an anti-Semite. By the way, Phoenicians are Semites, and we sure don't hear enough from them these days.
4) People who use anti-Semite are really saying Jew Hater. So, come on, just say it.
5) “You can say what you like, as long as I like what you say” is the interpretation of the First Amendment by members of the political left, and now, it seems, from members of the objective media and the political right. The sad and disturbing irony is that the same liberal colleagues in the White House Correspondents’ Association, the ones who gave Thomas a place of honor on the front row during news briefings, the ones who applauded her when she skewered conservative presidents and policies, were shocked - shocked I tell you - to discover she was too old and too opinionated to be a member of their club. Or maybe she got too close to that third rail and started giving off sparks that shed light on bi-partisan Beltway hypocrisy.
Mundus vult decipi
John David Powell is a writer and award-winning Internet columnist. His email address is johndavidpowell@yahoo.com. The video commentary is available at www.youtube.com/jdp1953.
Victim my ass...
She’s a bigot, and has been one for decades, without any pretense of objectivity.
The real tragedy is that she was considered a “journalist”, at all, and the lives that has cost, over the years.
At least he got this right.
Oh B F’n S.
Israel is criticized all the time. Nobody is ostracized over it. It has become the ‘In Vogue’ thing to do.
Telling the Israelis (obviously only the Jews in Israel, not the Arabs), that they needed to return to two nations where millions of their ancestors were slaughtered, is beyond the pale.
This bitch got off lucky IMO.
Someone uses the term Black carelessly and they’re public enemy number one for racism, and this bitch actually tells Jews they need to go back to the death camp nations, and she’s the victim?
As I said, B F’n S.
Might want to try reading more and posting less on this topic until you fill that gap in your education.
Helen Thomas ... a casualty of revealing herself to be as ugly on the inside as she is on the outside.
“Thomas pointed out that the woman who was like a second mother to her was a Palestinian, born in Bethlehem.”
So much nonsence in this piece but this glarring discription stands out for me.
A woman old enough to have been like a mother to Thomas, born in Bethleham, was not a Palestinain.
She was an Arab. An Arab from Bethlehem.
Arabs only started calling thmeselves Palestinain in the mid 60’s when the myth of a Palestinian people- born as a weapon against Israel- was hatched.
BS. You can say that Israel should give up the rest of the territory it captured in the 1967 Six Day War just as it gave up the Sinai and you will not be run out of town. You can say that a Palestinian state should be formed on the West Bank and Gaza and still be part of the political mainstream. Helen Thomas crossed the line when she said that Jews should go to Germany, Poland and the United States - the equivalent of saying that the country of Israel should not exist at all. That is when she touched the third rail.
At first glance I’d say Helen Thomas was the casualty of a botched abortion, but that’s just me...
11 year alumni of FR and you post this crap, SHAME.
Etymology is a clue to meaning, but it is not determinative. Just because the term "anti-Semitism" is derived from the name of the patriarch Shem who happens to be the ancestor of a lot more people than even those you mention, it is nonetheless a proper technical term for the singular animosity directed at a particular subset of Semites, even when it comes from other Semites.
In a world where we park in driveways and drive on parkways, the term "anti-Semite" is relatively consistent with its derivation.
Go figger.
Helen Thomas was a casualty of her own bigotry and leftism. The tide is turning. No longer can these marxist, racist, bigoted idiots spew their hatred without being called on it.
Well, I prefer an "Internet Columnist" to a regular one, but heck...aren't we "Internet Columnists" too?
There must be a good Photoshop award for this.
Helen Thomas was the victim of her own hatred and bigotry, coupled with her own big mouth.
Nationhood and Jerusalem
Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C., two thousand years before the rise of Islam. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 A.D. lasted no more than 22 years.
For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.
Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.
King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.
Arab and Jewish Refugees
In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.
The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.
Arab refugees were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
The Arab - Israeli Conflict The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.
The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them with weapons.
Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.
The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs
Of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.
The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
________________
Unfortunately, Helen Thomas is a "Jew Hater" (only more 'honest' about it than the rest of the 'jackals of journalism').
And, as Ann Coulter says, I am always a little suspicious of people who use three names...
Nathan Gregory Silvermaster...Harry Dexter White...John David Powell...
Firstly, Helen Thomas was sacked not for touching any rails but for bigotry. This has absolutely nothing to do with her POLITICAL opinions about Israel and Palestinians.
Read up on the history of anti-Semitism in Europe and you will find that her form of bigotry is quite old. Whereas in the good old days it was OK for a person to say that the living Jews should be persecuted because their predecessors supposedly killed Christ (and Jews were considered a religious group), the Enlightenment made that statement both untenable (people started to drift from religion) and insufficiently intellectual. Since emancipated Jews (in France in 1781 and Germany gradually in 1800s) started to abandon Judaism en masse, anti-Semites could no longer hate them on religious grounds. Voila -- Jews were then viewed as an ethnic group ("race") rather than a religious one.
So, one now needed an intellectual argument that would justify prejudice. Since then the standard device is as a three-step procedure: (i) advance a judgment criterion that applies only to Jews, (ii) demonstrate that Jews are wrong or failed in some way when judged by that criterion, and on those grounds (iii) declare Jews being at fault and deserving a punishment of your choice.
This does the job quite well: by the time you arrive at the conclusion, nobody notices that your very criterion --- the first step in the argument is logically fallacious. It is still a logical fallacy, however. And it is needed only to mask bigotry.
Helen Thomas used precisely that device. Her opinion that Jews should get out of Palestine is not illogical by itself. But, if this is indeed her criterion, did she EVER apply it uniformly? Is she as appalled that Germans were kicked out of Poland after WWII; that about 800,000 Jews were kicked in the last 40 years out from the "Arab lands" were they lived for over 2,000 years; that 350,000 Georgians were kicked out by Muslims from Abhazia 15 years ago; that 100,000 Uzbeks are kicked out just last week? Of course not. It's only when the spooky evil Joos are involved that this particular criterion is applied (and in fact, misapplied: "Palestinians" have not been kicked out but enticed by Arabs to leave their homes with promises of victory over Jews in 1948). It is not only Helen Thomas: the entire West-European public and press does exactly the same thing: applies a unique criterion that somehow only Jews have to satisfy, shos that Jews or Israel fail when judged by that criterion, and demand punishment --- all the while claiming that their position is just a political opinion about Israel and not anti-Semitism at all.
As you can see it is not about what Thomas thinks about Israel but about the criterion that she applies (only to Jews). Unfortunately, this device, swallowed lock stock and barrel in Europe by now, is gaining ground here. And you have fallen a victim to it.
Thomas' bigotry and lack of basic manners have been well known. The real question is not why she was sacked by why she was not sacked long time ago: a bigot cannot report on events with any degree of credibility.
Finally, you misunderstand the First Amendment: it makes you free from the government, not from a private employer. An employer who disagrees your speech has all the rights to fire you.
You've got some thinking to do, my friend.
Helen Thomas said: “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land. It’s not Germany. It’s not Poland.”
She said "Palestine" not "the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan." That means all of Palestine, including 1948 Israel. And to make this clear, she told Israelis to go back to Europe. That is a call for the end of Israel and the disposession of all Jews including the 45% who did not come from Europe. Most of these were Jews expelled from Arab or Islamic countries.
For a conservative to support this Third Worldist position is tantamount to treason against the United States. It holds that all settler states are illegitimate. Last time I checked, the US is a settler state and if you refuse to admit this, check out the banners of Chicano activists (who support the Palestinians).
At no time does Thomas advocate the murder, systematic or otherwise, of any human being, regardless of the hyper-hyperbolic reporting, aimed at inflaming passions, that followed in various media accounts. In fact, some sites use the word holocaust as a meta tag for search engines. She did not use the word in the interview nor did she mention a final solution.
YOur right. Jews would obviously leave Israel without threat of violence or force. And I'm JFK.
2) I may have had a small-town education in history, but I do not recall acts of the Holocaust on U.S. soil. I do know about "relocation" camps for Japanese-Americans during WW2 and about government efforts to eliminate the Native American population and cultures.
YOu clearly had a liberal education. The Japanese, joined Germans and Italians and were rounded up due to spying for and aiding the Japanese war machine. Though limited, there were real instances of this. However, even if you buy the liberal lie, this is not equal to the destruction of a nation-state.
3) I'm tired of people misusing the term "anti-Semite". Arabs are Semites. You can't be an Arab promoting Arab causes and be an anti-Semite. By the way, Phoenicians are Semites, and we sure don't hear enough from them these days.
4) People who use anti-Semite are really saying Jew Hater. So, come on, just say it.
And clearly your education remains deficient. "Antisemite" was coined by German Austrians to differentiate their modern "scientific" racial hatred of Jews as opposed to the medieval religious hatred of Judaism. Look up Wilhelm Marr and print a retraction.
5) “You can say what you like, as long as I like what you say” is the interpretation of the First Amendment by members of the political left, and now, it seems, from members of the objective media and the political right. The sad and disturbing irony is that the same liberal colleagues in the White House Correspondents’ Association, the ones who gave Thomas a place of honor on the front row during news briefings, the ones who applauded her when she skewered conservative presidents and policies, were shocked - shocked I tell you - to discover she was too old and too opinionated to be a member of their club. Or maybe she got too close to that third rail and started giving off sparks that shed light on bi-partisan Beltway hypocrisy.
Fine. Defend her on free speech grounds. But don't undermine the US to support the leftist hag. And go learn basic facts about issues before writting on them.
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