Dan Milbank writes “You’ll find no defense here of her anti-Semitic suggestion that Jews should ‘get the hell out of Palestine’ and ‘go home’ to Poland and Germany – where they were slaughtered by the millions. There’s no excuse for that, and Thomas deserved what she got.”
WATCHDOG: Why does Mlbank take the quote out of context? The entire comment included something like “or from America or wherever they came from.” (The Watchdog heard it at least two times on C-SPAN radio while driving .) Furthermore, she wasn’t talking about going back in the late 1940’s as Richard Cohen implies in his column “Why the Jews couldn’t ‘go home’.” She was likely talking about here and now, as indicated by her inclusion of American Jews.
In her 89 years, has anyone accused her of being an anti-Semite? If she is one, then editors were wrong to engage her and her colleagues cowardly in their silence. Is anyone now providing evidence of her anti-Semitism other than hyperbole to a make point in casual conversation, the point being that the Palestinian’s also have rights that must be respected. We haven’t read anything yet to suggest a lifetime of bigotry.
We seem to have a love / hate relationship with our celebrities. Thomas spoke truth to authorities, asking the hard questions of presidents that her colleagues feared to utter. But she makes one human error, the type most of us do every day either in humor or mental lapses, and we pounce!
The irony is that it will be Jews that will likely come to her defense. They (we) remember what it was to be unfairly persecuted. This story has legs.
I recognize that the quote was pulled out of context, but:
1) There is no country called Palestine. Israel came into existence 62 years ago in a way that was totally legal under international law.
2) She didn’t say they should get out of the occupied territories and go back to pre-1967 borders. She said go back to the places their families came from BEFORE Israel.
3) Adding America does not soften the blow of including Germany and Poland. She knows what those places represent to us. She knows they’re not home, and she knows they are places of horror and destruction.
4) Aside from what she said, I found the manner in which she said it venomous.
Did she do good in her life and career? Yes. In my mind, that doesn’t excuse this. I don’t consider this unfair persecution.
If we all went back where we came from – countries would be filed to the rim with foreigners. I don’t know about others but while I am a proud decendent of German stock I “Came From” America. Thus I suspect others came from whatever country their perticular body arrived.
On point.
How silly we are to hold everyone to every word they say as if the mind was necessarily engaged and we were fully conscious in all our utterances.
There is a wealth of powerful opinion in the US that to be critical of Israeli policy is to be anti-Semitic, or is, at least, an indication of latent anti-Semitic feelings. Being Pro-Israel, no matter what the issue, is not simply a matter of American Jewish opinion, whose membership is encouraged to leave their traditional liberal principles aside when the topic is Israel, it is also the opinion of millions of fundamentalist Christians who wholeheartedly concur while adding that to be against Israeli expansionism is to be against the very will of God, since His book says the land, i.e. all the land, belongs to the Jewish people.
Who can argue with that other than liberal, God hating, anti Semites? In such an atmosphere it is foolish to attempt any sort of rational discussion and so we remain silent and the Middle East gets worse and costs us more thousands of lives and billions of dollars.
Helen Thomas may have been wrong but the incident only proves that no one is even allowed an occasional outburst of anger at Israeli policy or Israeli stupidity or Israeli arrogance. Should Israel get out of Palestine if, as the above letter writer says, their is no Palestine?
Is there only Israel? Should this “only Israel”, which includes all of Palestine, i.e including all of the “occupied territories” East Jerusalem, and parts of southern Lebanon, be further legitimized by establishing more “facts on the ground” to compliment the “words in the book”?
Is the path to Peace really being blocked by liberal, atheistic, anti-Semites or is this just some very effective propaganda albeit venomous nonsense?
The creation of Israel was legal under international law? That sounds to me like a tautological, ass-backwards way of saying, the western, colonial powers decided that it should be done and they did it — Palestinians be damned! “International law” is shorthand for the interests of the big boys on the block.
Dana Milbank is the Washington Post columnist.