At the risk of sounding crass, there wasn’t a big chunk of the Jewish managerial and professional classes left in Germany circa 1945.
I’ll let Wikipedia fill you in on the remainder:
but, yes, they weren’t exactly made to feel welcome in Europe. But that is hugely different from being actively kicked out of Europe and forced to Israel, as your post essentially claimed.
If it helps, Finn and Dio, I think you’re both being ridiculous.
David Duke is not the left what Cynthia McKinney is to the right. We don’t get him, righties don’t get her.
But “hymietown,”, BY ITSELF, is sufficient evidence that your claim was wrong, Dio. And of course it is: it’s an absurd claim.
I’m sorry, but that’s not how it works here. I stated my position and presented several arguments supporting it. If you disagree, then debate me. Don’t start demanding arguments from authority - that’s the coward’s way out. If you have a cite disproving my position (that Israelis can be considered an ethnic group), then let’s see it.
Ah, age: the great filter remover.
I’ve liked Helen Thomas since seeing Ronald Reagan fall over himself to ingratiate himself to her. She was a pit viper with a pen and even though we don’t always agree on policy, I’ve always admired her (dare I say it?) chutzpah.
I will admit that my jaw dropped reading her comments. Not that she held them, necessarily – journalists come with their own set of deeply set biases, too – but that a person who made her living in the media was so reckless with her words.
You can split hairs and say it wasn’t racist to say that the Jews should go home. But Helen Thomas knows the power of words and knew that she was treading on thin ice.
So either she just didn’t care or her brain isn’t functioning properly. Either way, you simply can’t say things like that and keep your job in the mainstream media. It’s time for the old gal to retire.
If by here, you mean the SDMB, I would say probably not. If we speak of America more generally, the answer is a resounding no.
That’s Glenn Greenwald’s take on it; Helen Thomas wasn’t particularly guily of bigotry, just the wrong kind of bigotry. He cites several examples of prominent people saying very similar things about, well, other people who should get out of Palestine, with nary a peep raised about it.
Greenwald has been focused on the extreme pro-Israeli slant of the American media and political class for a while now. I do think it is really important for America to revisit our relationship with Israel and decide more clearly what we do want to support and what we don’t.
I don’t agree with Helen Thomas’ statement at all. I do think we cannot be reflexively one sided about Israel and Palestine.
<sigh>
Sorry to see that Helen Thomas has gone off the rails at last. As previously pointed out she was renowned for asking Presidents the hardball questions that other reporters didn’t have the guts to ask, but the Bush administration* and the passage of years have done her no favors and she’s clung to her front-row seat in a desperate attempt to remain relevant. Some people need to learn how and when to let go.
No apologies from me for her statements. While I think they were aimed at Israel rather than Jews in general, they were still misjudged and pointlessly offensive. IIRC she’s made previous comments critical of Israel, but this was the point at which she finally crossed the line.
*It wasn’t just that she was being sidelined; it was that she was stubbornly determined not to give the Bush administration the satisfaction of outlasting her. She should have retired when Clinton was still in office IMHO.
I suspect DIogenes is No True Scotsmanning here, based mostly on this:
Therefore, someone someone espousing anti-semite views is not a lefty, by definition.
There are Brits in New England and it belonged to us once. Can we declare a New Brittania on that basis?
And these ‘black people’ did not take over the land and declare it a new country.
However, since we all know that lefties would never makes such an easily disprovable statement, it can be clearly shown that Dio is in fact a crypto-neocon. We’re onto you, Mister Cynic…
I had no idea your average Iraqi civilian was a liberal.
I’m sure at least one of them is anti-semitic. I guess you’ve proven your case. Congratulations.
-Joe
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.
Well, I have it on good authority that there are a hell of a lot of Jews in Israel. And it’s not a huge leap to think that by telling the inhabitants of that country to “go home” to Germany, Poland etc. she was not referring to Israeli Arabs.
Gotta love Diogenes’ fantasy about Israel being founded on “racial entitlement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid”. I’ll do a Diogenes and ask him to cite the portion of the U.N. mandate that established any of those things - though he might try to squeak out “racial entitlement” and “apartheid” from the fact that the mandate created two states, one Jewish and one Arab. And “ethnic cleansing” would apply to the attempt by the Palestinian Arabs and their allies to destroy the Jewish state at its inception. But oops, there I go again, conflating Israel and Jews. :rolleyes:
My personal opinion on Helen Thomas’ debacle is that rather than adopting bigoted views contrary to her prior beliefs as a result of aging, it’s far more likely that age-related changes led to a loosening of inhibitions against expressing those views publicly.
Or maybe she’s mentally fully capable, and just thought that her elder statesman status in the press corps entitled her to say what she felt without being liable for the consequences. She’s had a fan base telling her that she’s wonderful for many years, and the plaudits may have gotten to her head.
But anti-Israelis are constantly invoking ancestral claims. Palestinians should be given land back because their ancestors lived there. Israelis should go back to countries where their ancestors lived. But when you point out that the Jews have an ancestral claim to Israel, suddenly ancestral claims are meaningless.
So, when Ann Coulter says things like “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” that’s how you keep a job in media, eh? To what should we ascribe Coulter’s liberty to say things like that and still be around? Would love to read these same posters that re: Helen scream shock and horror and, off with her head, what kind of justification is there for Coulter.
What puzzles me how quickly a non-news event becomes a Purgatory of sorts.
Palesntinians should be given their land back not because their ancestors lived there but because they lived there.
That’s a fair question.
But the answer is: Howard Stern is not Matt Lauer, even though they’re both “in media.”
Howard Stern’s employers welcome and encourage naked lesbian spanking and Beastiality Dial-a-Date, because that’s the kind of show they want to put on. Matt Lauer’s employers would react poorly if Matt led off the Today show with an invitation to a woman to describe in detail what she was wearing and how she seduced her next-door neighbor’s wife when she was 19.
So it’s not the Ms. Thomas’s views banish her from all media – but only from the ostensibly unbiased, “real news” commentary venue that was employing her.
What does Howard Stern have to do with Ann Coulter? As much as you’d love to claim, she has more journalistic cachet than Howard - especially so among her readers/viewers/listeners
Actually, Ann got booted as a writer from National Review because of that.
But when Ann is invited to join the White House Press Corps, I will concede your point.
Do you think when people oppose the actions of the United States, that is racist? Is it bigoted when they say that we should get out of a particular country, for example?
It seems perfectly clear that one can vehemently oppose the actions of a state without being racist in the least. Does it really not seem clear to you?