Maybe she is an Arab and resents the oppression of her fellow Arabs by Israelis? She is of Arab descent. That doesn’t make her comments about “go back to Poland and German” acceptable, it isn’t and it is cruel, but there are a lot of people who have given up on Israel treating Palestinians in accordance with international law.
I notice that everyone in this thread has equated her dislike of Israel with Anti-Semitism and in general equated criticism of Israel with Anti-Semitism and making Jews and Israelis co-extensive. It is not. Many Jews are highly critical of Israel’s actions and policies.
I work for Hearst, and overheard conversation in the cafeteria today at lunch was a constant stream of “did you hear about Helen Thomas?”
I merely thought she had died.
She’s been a little loopy for a while now. Her statements regarding Israel were highly obnoxious, but that doesn’t necessarily make her an anti-Semite.
I don’t see any problem with her comments, actually, other than her solution is impractical. It’s too late for the Europeans in Palestine to go back to Europe, but her sentiment that Palestine was unjustly invaded and occupied is defensible. I know it’s beyond politically incorrect to say so, but the formation of a modern Jewish state in Palestine was a morally muddled event at best. No other state founded on racial entitlement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid would gt the kind of obsequious support from the west that Israel always gets.
She also named the US, by the way. She was naming the places that the original invaders actually came from, not just naming places with bad associations.
Because if there were already Jews living there, ‘the Jews should go home’ is not just impractical or lacking in nuance, it’s completely stupid. And there’s a pretty good argument that it’s prejudiced. And I say that as somebody who’s already acknowledged the problems that surrounded the creation of Israel.
If you read her comments in context, she was referencing the original formation of the modern state of Israel, and the arrogance of Europe and the US in doing so. She was criticizing Europe and the US, not "Jews’ per se.
See your post # 23. Until then you had avoided calling her a racist or such, but in #23 it is strongly implied. And this was after my over-generalization of which you complain. You certainly were innocent before then.
I can’t view the video right now, so I’m looking for a transcript. If she said the Jews should leave Israel and go back where they came from, it’s a totally stupid thing to say and it’s not just a criticism of the U.S. and Europe, it’s a statement that the Jews don’t belong there.
I don’t know a lot about Helen Thomas and what her views on the Middle East are. I’m not defending her either. But I am wondering if it’s at all possible that she meant something more along the lines of, “it’s now possible for Jewish people who wish to do so to live in countries such as Germany and Poland, from which they were previously expelled.”
Wouldn’t that be an OK suggestion? Fitting, even, for Jewish families who lived there years ago to return? Not abandon Israel, but for some to live again in the countries that were involved in the Holocaust? (Of course many already do.)
Having seen the video, I don’t think that’s what she was trying to say. But could she have muddled up her thoughts and expressed herself poorly?
You mean the post where I thought that her specific statement were beyond political? I never said that anyone who is anti-Israel is also anti-Semitic and in addtion I challenged smiling bandit’s assertion that Thomas has always been “Jew hater.”
Look, we can reasonably disagree about whether or not the one thing that she said on that one day was anti-Semitic or merely anti-Israel but you are way the fuck out of line to indicate that I think that everyone who doesn’t like Israel is a racist. I don’t believe that and I have never believed that.
This is really a shame. Someone with such a long and notable career deserves to end it with a bit of dignity and even acclaim. But she just didn’t let that be possible.
