# Helen Thomas Forcibly Retired **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 7, 2010, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299 "2010-06-07T17:06:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/221 "2010-06-08T18:23:47Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > And none of the Palestinian inhabitants of Israel pre-1948 had anything to do with turfing out the Jews in 70 CE. > > That’s the problem with asserting ancestral claims on territory. It never ends. There’s always a prior claim, and there’s always an immediate claim. Exactly. That’s what war is for-- sorting out that stuff. No joking, either. That is the way it works, whether we like to admit it or not. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/222 "2010-06-08T18:28:23Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Every time this comes up, I sorta scratch my head. > > Assume for the moment it is true that lefties can be “anti-Israeli” but not “racist”. What difference does that make? Why is “unreasonable and impractical” animus directed against persons sharing a national origin some how morally superior, or at least not as blameworthy, as “unreasonable and impractical” animus directed against persons sharing a skin colour? > > Both to my mind appear to be subsets of the same thing - bigotry. I think the notion is that people don’t dislike Israeli’s, they dislike the actions of the Israeli government. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/223 "2010-06-08T18:37:42Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > #1 is a bait and switch because the answerer gives no indication that she thinks anybody deserves to die. So the interviewer is making a baseless assumption and trying to put the subject on the defensive, probably to smear her. (And no, I don’t think Helen Thomas actually believes anything like that.) #2 is a bait and switch because there are no specifics given about what kind of campaign finance reform the subject supports, and the interviewer is apparently trying to pidgeonhole the subject as a hypocrite. I’m sure there are more subtle ways to do this than these examples I just made up, but the point is that they are fundamentally different from what happened in the conversation we’re talking about. > > I didn’t say you had. I said you made up a bunch of crap about badgering, baiting and switching, elder abuse, and so on. You failed to support that, and because you can’t do so and generally don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re adding moral turpitude to the list. > He didn’t follow her around. He spoke with her in one location. > He did not change her wording. Asking for clarification - ‘When you said this, did you mean this?’ - is not changing someone’s wording, and she did not object to his version of her statement. > I didn’t have a problem with that, actually. Moore went to Heston’s home and asked for an interview, and Heston said yes. If you think that’s an ambush, you’re pretty hopeless. It’s not an ambush just because the person being interviewed does not like the questions. If I remember correctly, Moore’s questions made some factual errors that made his questions unfair. If so, he was wrong for presenting an unfair interview. And he’s never been the classiest guy. But going to someone’s house, getting permission to interview him, and asking tough questions about an extremely public part of his life is not an ambush or unfair. Heston later disclosed that he had Alzheimer’s disease, but that was not publicly known at the time. First of all, Moore implied he was doing an interview for the NRA, which he was not. That was as much fraud as Mr. Pimp at ACORN. You think that is fair. I don’t. It is fraud. As far as I know, it is the single most egregious act committed by Moore. Second, again, you parse the exchange with Thomas. Here again is Bricker’s transcript: > [@](#): > > Here is my transcript: > > Quote: > INTERVIEWER: Any comments on Israel? We’re asking everybody today… any comments on Israel? > > THOMAS: Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. > > INTERVIEWER: Ooooh. Any better comments? > > THOMAS: Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land. It’s not German. It’s not Poland. > > INTERVIEWER: So where should they go? What should they do? > > THOMAS: They should go home. > > INTERVIEWER: So where’s home? > > THOMAS: Poland. Germany. > > INTERVIEWER: So the Jews should… so you’re saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany. > > THOMAS: …and America, and everywhere else. Thomas never used the word Jews. The interviewer did. Thomas had the word Israelis in mind. As offensive as Thomas’ words about Poland and Germany were, she had in mind the word Israelis. The interviewer changed it to Jews. Clearly you cannot be trusted to consider the whole context. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/224 "2010-06-08T18:40:37Z")
[QUOTE=The Second Stone] Thomas never used the word Jews. The interviewer did. Thomas had the word Israelis in mind. As offensive as Thomas’ words about Poland and Germany were, she had in mind the word Israelis. The interviewer changed it to Jews. Clearly you cannot be trusted to consider the whole context. [/QUOTE] Given the “whole context”, who do you think she was talking about? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/225 "2010-06-08T18:54:51Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Worked for America. We’re just following your lead. No, Israel is not following the US lead. American Indians are allowed to vote in elections, travel at will and be full American citizens. All of them, but virtue of their birth. They have the added privilege of living on a reservation if they choose to do so. Israel is doing what Americans did 150 years ago: driving the native population to extinction or out of the country entirely. What the US did in most of the 19th century and before was no different than the Nazis. That is not something to smirkingly aspire to. American Indians (Native Americans, etc) don’t ask for the overthrow of the US, don’t launch rockets into downtown, don’t have suicide bombers, live in neighborhoods all over the US and love America with the same level of grousing as all other minority groups in the US because the laws apply equally minus petty corruption. Israel cannot claim that. Some Palestinians do launch rockets and bomb, for which all are punished. They do so because they see the Gaza confinement as the crime against humanity that the rest of the world sees. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/226 "2010-06-08T18:55:45Z")
Given that the context includes her being a confused 89 year old, who the hell knows what she meant, or even cares all that much? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/227 "2010-06-08T19:01:51Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Given that the context includes her being a confused 89 year old, who the hell knows what she meant, or even cares all that much? Actually, I’m somewhat sympathetic to that idea. However, the assertion was made that she had something particular in mind. I’m trying to understand what that could be, if not the Israeli Jews. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/228 "2010-06-08T19:15:48Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > American Indians (Native Americans, etc) don’t ask for the overthrow of the US, don’t launch rockets into downtown… You could really stop there. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/229 "2010-06-08T19:16:37Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Given the “whole context”, who do you think she was talking about? Well, here is the entire exchange: > [@](#): > > INTERVIEWER: Any comments on Israel? We’re asking everybody today… any comments on Israel? > > THOMAS: Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. > > INTERVIEWER: Ooooh. Any better comments? > > THOMAS: Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land. It’s not German. It’s not Poland. > > INTERVIEWER: So where should they go? What should they do? > > THOMAS: They should go home. > > INTERVIEWER: So where’s home? > > THOMAS: Poland. Germany. > > INTERVIEWER: So the Jews should… so you’re saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany. > > THOMAS: …and America, and everywhere else. She asks Israel to get out of Palestine. Her emphasis is on asking the invaders to leave. That is entirely reasonable. The reporter then takes the interview in a different direction and focuses on the plight of the Israelis, not the plight of the Palestinians, and her un-thought-out remark is insensitive and impractical. Palestinians have as much of inherent right to live in Palestine and Israel as the Israelis do. Any outrage directed to Helen Thomas for her thoughtless comments (and I agree they are thoughtless) we need to remember are just thoughtless comments. Unacceptable in America today and maybe appropriately so. But America supports the actions of Israel in 62 years of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Ethnic cleansing as in drive them out, malnourish them out, harass them out, steal their land out from under them, cut them off and kill them as they choose. Millions of them. What Israel has done and continues doing to this day with US money and diplomatic support is far more unconscionable than anything Helen Thomas has merely said. The crimes against humanity that are Gaza are gargantuan against against the insult that Helen Thomas said. Yet the only justice that America is willing to support is slapping down an 89 year old woman. The UN screwed up big time in awarding a mandate to Israel on the land that belonged to the people living there and not to the UN. That can’t be undone. The UN did it out of sympathy for what happened to the Jews by the Nazis, but did not consider the consequences to the Palestinians to be displaced. They had and have as much a right of self-government as anyone else. A right to exist and to defend themselves, the same as the Israelis. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/230 "2010-06-08T19:21:53Z")
> [@Gangster\_Octopus](#): > > Does it matter if it is racist or not, it is pretty offensive to tell anyone to go back to where they came from. Yes, this is why her statements are offensive. And made more offensive by the fact that she tells them to go to Poland, Germany and the US. Not so much the US, but most of them were Jews and treated criminally in Poland and Germany. And the US was no picnic for Jews until things changed after WWII. But it really is less offensive than Israelis actually driving out the Palestinians over 62 years. She just said it. The Israelis did it and still do it. But we are not up to holding Israel accountable for their actions. But we sure as hell can stand up to an 89 year old woman who _says something offensive_. Land of the free, Home of the brave. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/231 "2010-06-08T19:25:39Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Well, here is the entire exchange: I know what the entire exchange was. > [@](#): > > She asks Israel to get out of Palestine. Her emphasis is on asking the invaders to leave. Are these “invades” not Jews? > [@](#): > > That is entirely reasonable. Only if it’s “entirely reasonable” to hold every country up to the same standard. It’s entirely stupid, is what it is. > [@](#): > > The reporter then takes the interview in a different direction and focuses on the plight of the Israelis, not the plight of the Palestinians, and her un-thought-out remark is insensitive and impractical. No. She said they should leave. He just wanted to know who, specifically, she was talking about. > [@](#): > > Palestinians have as much of inherent right to live in Palestine and Israel as the Israelis do. Any outrage directed to Helen Thomas for her thoughtless comments (and I agree they are thoughtless) we need to remember are just thoughtless comments. Unacceptable in America today and maybe appropriately so. But America supports the actions of Israel in 62 years of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Ethnic cleansing as in drive them out, malnourish them out, harass them out, steal their land out from under them, cut them off and kill them as they choose. Millions of them. > > What Israel has done and continues doing to this day with US money and diplomatic support is far more unconscionable than anything Helen Thomas has merely said. The crimes against humanity that are Gaza are gargantuan against against the insult that Helen Thomas said. Yet the only justice that America is willing to support is slapping down an 89 year old woman. > > The UN screwed up big time in awarding a mandate to Israel on the land that belonged to the people living there and not to the UN. That can’t be undone. The UN did it out of sympathy for what happened to the Jews by the Nazis, but did not consider the consequences to the Palestinians to be displaced. They had and have as much a right of self-government as anyone else. A right to exist and to defend themselves, the same as the Israelis. The UN set up two states. The Arabs, largely, didn’t accept that. A war was fought. The Arabs lost. Other wars were fought, and they lost even worse. That toothpaste isn’t going to be put back into the tube, so all that remains is for the Palestinians to figure out how they want to exist, peacefully, with Israel. There is not other practical solution. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/232 "2010-06-08T19:46:02Z")
Sure there’s another practical solution. They can use physical force. If it’s ok for the Israelis to do it, it’s ok for the Palestinians to do it. If the Palestinians, with the aid of other Arab states, are ever able to militarily destroy the government of Israel and establish a controlling, Palestinian authority, you would have to agree that the palestinians had won fair and square and whatever remained of a Jewish population in the newly established Arab state of Palestine would have to learn to suck it up and live in peace, would you not? ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/233 "2010-06-08T19:55:16Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Sure there’s another practical solution. They can use physical force. If it’s ok for the Israelis to do it, it’s ok for the Palestinians to do it. If the Palestinians, with the aid of other Arab states, are ever able to militarily destroy the government of Israel and establish a controlling, Palestinian authority, you would have to agree that the palestinians had won fair and square and whatever remained of a Jewish population in the newly established Arab state of Palestine would have to learn to suck it up and live in peace, would you not? Well, no, I would say there would need to be a rubber match…a best two out of three if you will. I mean if the Palestinians are given a chance to be angry and fester their hatred into war, the Israelis should get the same chance. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/234 "2010-06-08T20:04:38Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > You could really stop there. Not and understand how it got to be that way. The American settlers and the natives had military engagements, sporadic but frequent, for two centuries before so many natives died that they could no longer fight cohesively. Only generations later, as part of the broader civil rights movement, could a lasting peace take place. Integration really hasn’t occurred yet. But now we read that Israel is copying that example, as if it were something to be proud of. At least we haven’t been treated to “The only good Palestinian is …”. Not in so many words, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/235 "2010-06-08T20:09:49Z")
> [@Sarahfeena](#): > > Exactly. Not to mention the fact that she “invites” them to go back to a place where genocide was perpetrated against them. And within the memory of people who are still living! You can nitpick over the meaning of the word “racism” all day long, but I can’t think of anything that’s more anti-a-group-of-people than that is. I live in the United States. I am not white and I immigrated here when I was a child. While I was growing up, I would encounter racism from time to time and sometimes this racism would take the form of “go back to where you came from” (and once again I don’t agree with what Helen Thomas said) but this is not the story of Israel. They did not come to Palestine merely to make a new life for themselves in a new country. They carved a country out of another country and that explains some of the animus in the region against Israel and Zionism. The US has nothing to be proud of considering the way they treated the native Americans but at long last we have the decency to be embarassed by it (of course we aren’t giving very much back but every native American is an American citizen). ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/236 "2010-06-08T20:13:23Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > But now we read that Israel is copying that example, as if it were something to be proud of. At least we haven’t been treated to “The only good Palestinian is …”. Not in so many words, anyway. The reverse is true, though. Which doesn’t mean that it’s okay for the Israelis to _almost_ have that attitude. But Palestinians _do_ officially have that attitude. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/237 "2010-06-08T20:24:25Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > No, Israel is not following the US lead. American Indians are allowed to vote in elections, travel at will and be full American citizens. All of them, but virtue of their birth. They have the added privilege of living on a reservation if they choose to do so. Israel is doing what Americans did 150 years ago: driving the native population to extinction or out of the country entirely. What the US did in most of the 19th century and before was no different than the Nazis. That is not something to smirkingly aspire to. > > American Indians (Native Americans, etc) don’t ask for the overthrow of the US, don’t launch rockets into downtown, don’t have suicide bombers, live in neighborhoods all over the US and love America with the same level of grousing as all other minority groups in the US because the laws apply equally minus petty corruption. Israel cannot claim that. Some Palestinians do launch rockets and bomb, for which all are punished. They do so because they see the Gaza confinement as the crime against humanity that the rest of the world sees. Lets not forget that for a long time, they did in fact engage in armed conflict with the US army. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/238 "2010-06-08T20:27:46Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > However, it’s preposterous to claim that the people who currently have death threats against them written into the mission statements of their enemies are the ones _doing_ the oppressing. And the ones who believe they should be destroyed are _not_ oppressing. Mind-boggling. What? Oppressed people can’t issue death threats. I’d like to bring up the example of American indians again. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/239 "2010-06-08T20:29:57Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Sure there’s another practical solution. They can use physical force. If it’s ok for the Israelis to do it, it’s ok for the Palestinians to do it. If the Palestinians, with the aid of other Arab states, are ever able to militarily destroy the government of Israel and establish a controlling, Palestinian authority, you would have to agree that the palestinians had won fair and square and whatever remained of a Jewish population in the newly established Arab state of Palestine would have to learn to suck it up and live in peace, would you not? Well, that’s a solution, but it’s not “practical”, if we take that word to mean something that has a reasonable chance of actually happening. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299/240 "2010-06-08T20:31:06Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Calling for an identifiable group of people to get the hell out of where they happen to live is not, by any stretch of the imagination, similar to criticizing the actions of a state’s government. You are right. Its more than criticism of the government, it is criticism of the existence of the state. Perhaps it is criticism of zionism but it is mroe than criticism of the state. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/helen-thomas-forcibly-retired/542299.md?page=13)