Genuine Lyin'
Socialist Weasel

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Helen Thomas: An unguarded comment, and the right wing finally nails her
8 June 2010

“They [the Israelis] should get the hell out of Palestine...Remember, these people [Palestinians] are occupied. And it’s their land. Not German and not Poland.” In response to the question, “What should they [the Settlers] do?” the reply was, “They should go home. To Germany. To Poland. To America. And everywhere else.”

That’s what sparked the storm that led Helen Thomas, storied reporter and columnist since 1943, to retire. Yes, you read that right. She’s been around longer than Vin Scully.

It’s being played up as a sort of “send the Jews back to the concentration camps” sort of comment, but the fact is it was just an old woman expressing a knowledgeable opinion on a situation that she finds distressing.

She knows the nuances of the situation in the middle east as well as anyone and better than most. She knows that the illegal settlements are the leading source of friction between Israel and her neighbors, and that they represent land being stolen by occupiers from a subjugated people. Most of the settlers do come from overseas–from Germany and Poland and America, and Russia and France, and relatively few are from Israel, not that that would give them any right to Palestinian land.

She probably also knows that the claim that the land “belongs to the Jews” is fallacious, since most of the Jews “returning” to the settlements are in families that left 1,500 years earlier, and the Palestinians, to an extent, are descendants of the Jews who stayed. Most people don’t realize that Islam started as a schismatic sect of Judaism. So even if you’re willing to pretend that there is some divine provision for Jews in Palestine, you still have to decide if the land belongs to descendants of Jews who left many years before, or descendants of Jews who stayed there right along, changing their religion rather than their locale.

Even the story of the Jews coming to the Holy Land in the first place is flimsy. There is simply no historical record that the Egyptians EVER made slaves of the Israelites. No seven plaques, no exodus, no forty years in the desert, no land of milk and honey. It was all religious mumbo-jumbo, historically inaccurate and used as a rationale to steal land.

Israel is stolen land, but that’s OK. There isn’t a country on earth that doesn’t occupy land that originally belonged to someone else, and was taken, usually by force. And the world owed the Jews something after what Hitler and the Nazis did to them. That right there gives Israel a better rationale for existing than has America or Iran or just about any other country. But since taking other people’s land has killed hundreds of millions of humans over the years and led to endless deprivation and grief, perhaps it might be a good idea to break ourselves of the habit of stealing other peoples’ land, and the middle east, rapidly nuking up as it is, seems like a good place to start.

Finally, there is the fact that at various times, Israel has removed some of the illegal settlements. Their policy is to return settlers to their countries of origin. Maybe Israel didn’t hear that six million Jews died in some of those lands.

Helen is doubtlessly aware of all that, and being an intelligent and discerning woman, could hardly have come to any other conclusion on what needed to be done to stop the ongoing agony, and horrific events like the Israeli attacks on the flotilla. Get the settlers the hell out of there. Send them home. Wherever home is. And she’s right.

But the right wing, who have been targeting her ever since she quit UPI the day after the reptilian Sun Myung Moon bought it and turned it into a far-right Moonie house organ, decided she meant, “Send the Jews back to the concentration camps.”

AIPAC, ever anxious to stem criticism of the settlements, chimed in. They took the video, shot by “rabbilive.com” and spread it far and wide. The video is honest, and in fact is where I got my quotes. But it ends with black screens with these words, “Six million Jews were killed at home in Germany and in Poland. Does Helen know that Jews were in Palestine long before the Holocaust?”

I’m sure she does. And she knows that some of them became Palestinian Moslems, and some became Germans, and Poles, and Americans.

AIPAC is annoying. They wield too much power. They have far too much influence in the media and in government. They sometimes fight dirty.

But they’ve always been steadfast in their defense of Israel, and even in situations where I thought Israel was in the wrong, I’ve respected that.

Israel is not in the right on this issue, and Thomas was saying so, and giving–albeit unclearly–her reasons why she felt that way. And AIPAC lead the charge against her for doing so.

Suppose, instead of criticizing the illegal settlements, Helen Thomas had promoted a book written by a Nazi apologist who praised Hitler for his “good work” and who constantly warned the world against “the Jew”. That would be pretty appalling.

Glenn Beck did exactly that last week, promoting a book, “The Red Network” by one Elizabeth Dilling, who died around 1965. The book Beck was promoting was your standard far-right spittle-flected venom that was common in those times. Dilling referred to President Eisenhower as ‘Ike the Kike’ and labeled President Kennedy's New Frontier program the ‘Jew frontier.’ Beck himself is no friend to AIPAC, often tying them to a wide variety of nutball conspiracy theories, up to and including “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Now, Beck has been getting a lot of well-deserved flack for promoting this long-dead crackpot on his television show. He’s received thousands of emails and letters condemning him for his vile stance on Jews.

In promoting a Nazi and her Nazism, he would seem to be exactly what AIPAC bases it’s existence on: “Never again”. Here is a woman being promoted who APPROVED of the Holocaust.

So where is AIPAC?

They’re smearing one of America’s great journalists, and bullying an 89 year old woman into retirement. All because she advocated something that was official Israeli policy to begin with!

You tell me. I can’t even begin to figure that out.

Meanwhile, about Helen Thomas: she was one of America’s greatest journalists, and the last of a dying breed. What passes for news in America these days is an utter disgrace, and she was one of the few remaining bright spots.

Thanks for all you did for America, and us, Helen.

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Zepp was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and spent his formative years living in various parts of Canada from Halifax to Victoria, and then the UK, South Africa, and Australia before moving to the United States, where he has lived for 40 years. Aside from writing, his interests include hiking, raising dogs and cats, and making computers jump through hoops. His wife of 25 years edits his copy, and bravely attempts to make him sound coherent. Zepp lives on Mount Shasta.