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.
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.
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.
" I was in Britain, France, and Italy as the story developed, and it was fascinating just to study the vocal tone of the news anchors — the inflections of both outrage and contempt: You won’t believe what those Jews have done now! The rage was as “disproportionate” as Israel’s actions are always said to be: Nobody gives a hoot what North Korea does to South Korean ships. Muslim gunmen open fire on two mosques in Lahore after Friday prayers, killing 93, and it barely makes the papers. "
Jews and Israel are judged by criteria that applied to nobody else. We have the right to board Iranian ships --- ships of a country that did not launch as single rocket at any other country, including ours --- but Israel has no right to inspect ships after Gazans' 2000 rockets landing in Israel.
Does anybody even ask why Saudi Arabia is formally at war with Israel --- what did Israel ever do to Saudis? Does anybody ask why it is illegal to bring a Bible into Saudi Arabia? Is it not racist that a non-Muslim cannot even enter the city of Mecca?
Just yesterday 20 Mexican prison inmates were kill by police --- are people appalled by this "disproportional" use of force? Of course not.
But the mere "humiliation" of Palestinian Arabs enrages even those Europeans that can barely read: it's very clear to them that Jooos are evil. These people are not anti-Semitic at all, you see; they merely _disagree_ with Israeli policies. How enlightened of them. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2535043/posts
“I’m tired of people misusing the term “anti-Semite”. Arabs are Semites.”
And I’m tired of people engaging in sophomoric, pedantic sophistry. “Alcohol” maps etymologically to “the antimony sulfide-based eyeliner powder”. Better think twice before using it to refer to booze, eh?
Yeah. And thank God that third rail was there, and in working condition.
Ding dong, the witch is dead.
Third rail? Wishing the holocaust on Jews?
That’s a get-your-ass-kicked comment in rural New Mexico, and having your sorry self shunned for life.
She deserves anything that happens to her.
"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."
The word anti-Semite was invented by a German journalist circa 1880. It is at this time that specifically anti-Jewish party was formed, and the time when the academics started to write "scholarly" books about the inferiority of the Jews and, subsequently, of other races. When Hitler came to power, there were two generations that had been raised on these ideas.
Naturally, in 1880s there were still sane Germans around, and the raicalist solution to the "Jewish question" was opposed by some in press. It is at this time that the word "anti-Semite" was first used. It did not at the time, nor does it now, have an anthropological connotation: it has always been reserved for Jews. Not unlike today, where "minority" is actually used for "Black."
The point you raised has become popular among the Arab propagandists in the West about 20 years ago. It appears to prove that they are not racist, not anti-Semites --- "we are Semites, too."
Well, they are not well versed in European (or their, for that matter) history. But what about you, John? Why do you hang out with ignorant people that repeat ignorant Arab propaganda?
As I said in an earlier post, you've got a lot of thinking to do. Stop writing for a while and read instead: there is time to cast stones and there is time to gather stones. You've got a lot of stones to gather, my friend.