Helen Thomas Retires After Controversial Remarks

[Cordelia]

If I'm not mistaken though, there is some variety of religious Jews who think that Israel IS the Golden Calf.

or Sacred Cow.

[crikkett]

This person eviscerates the Straw-Man argument that "Get out of Palestine" is equivalent to "Go back to Africa". I enjoyed it, so I share.

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/20 ... raels.html

June 08, 2010
A Friendly Note to Many of Israel's Defenders
From the sickeningly rancid, foully infected underbelly of the Outraged Furor! over Helen Thomas's violation of The Sacred Rules Concerning What Is Permissible to Say About Israel, there is one "argument" offered by Israel's defenders that might be among my favorite debating tactics of recent years.

In their efforts to prove beyond all dispute that Thomas is a vicious anti-Semite who loathes every Jew who has ever lived and longs for the day when every single one of them is dead, these defenders of notably horrifying and murderous State terrorism gleefully spit out: "It's just like saying, 'Hey, all you Black Americans! Go back to Africa!' And we all know what it would mean if someone said that!"

I've heard and read this a huge number of times in the last several days. I am forced to admit that the comparison is staggering in its power. It makes the point with concision, and the historic parallels are overwhelming. To review briefly, and despite the very painful familiarity of these facts: significant numbers of Africans voluntarily, indeed enthusiastically, migrated westward and took over large parts of the eastern seaboard of what was then the United States beginning in the mid-1800s. They were able to do this because they had the unending support in a multitude of forms of the most powerful Nation-States of the time. The Africans claimed that a special dispensation from ... well, something or other ... ordained that the land mass designated by the name "United States" was uniquely theirs. The Nation-States that made possible the Africans' conquest and domination agreed.

In the ensuing century and a half, the Africans slaughtered most of those they found living in the United States, beginning in the eastern states and then steadily continuing their campaign of murder and destruction across the continent. The few survivors fled further and further west. The Africans inexorably pursued them, all still with the backing of certain immensely powerful Nation-States. Eventually, the Africans drove the remaining previous inhabitants of the United States into just three or four very small areas in (what were then called) Arizona and New Mexico. From that point on and continuing to the present, the Africans forbade virtually anyone and anything from moving into or out of these impossibly restricted areas. Although it is rarely talked about or admitted, people will eventually acknowledge, when pressed, that the Americans forced to remain in these concentration camps must endure conditions that are among the most nightmarish on earth.

Given this history, well-known to every young school child in the world, it is indeed exactly the same to say that the Israelis should "get out of Palestine" and to demand that the Africans should "get out of the United States." The argument is unanswerable to a degree that causes me profound embarrassment and distress. I greatly resent having the pathetic shabbiness of my views revealed in this manner.

But perhaps I might offer an exceedingly minor piece of unsolicited and doubtless unwanted advice to many of those who regularly defend Israel's systematic State terrorism, extended entirely free of charge and only because I'm a hell of a sweet guy:

You don't need to work at making yourselves stupid. Seriously.

On a related note: it is not "brave" or "courageous" of you in the slightest degree to side with unanswerable power, or to act as enforcers of permissible speech. To the contrary, that decision is one of the least courageous choices imaginable. It is also remarkably, astonishingly ... well, stupid. But I've told you that you don't need to work at that.

I have a number of other, considerably more complex points I want to make about this Helen Thomas episode. I'll get to all that in the next day or so. But I came across this particular "argument" several times again this morning. So I wanted to get this out of the way.

For me, one of the more gut-wrenching aspects of today's monstrous culture, a culture that kills each and every manifestation of empathy, understanding and compassion with relentlessly systematic determination, is the combination of unending destruction, cruelty, violence and murder with the most abysmally wretched depths of stupidity.

In certain respects, that is my own personal nightmare. And so, so many people work with such diligence to make it real every single day. They needn't work at that, either, and I desperately wish they would stop.

Assuredly, they will not.

posted by Arthur Silber at 11:32 AM

[Sweejak]

Which thread do I put this one into? I'll be happy to move it or delete it if it's on another thread.
Ilan Pappe.

"My quest for an authentic history of events in the Middle East required a personal de-militarisation of the mind"

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/g ... -1.1032971

[17breezes]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06 ... mas-video/

The New York rabbi who videotaped veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas telling Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine" says he has received numerous death threats and thousands of pieces of hate mail in the days since Thomas' abrupt retirement.

Rabbi David Nesenoff said he is facing an "overload" of threatening e-mails calling for a renewed Holocaust and targeting his family — a barrage of hate he said he planned to report to the police on Wednesday.

"This ticker tape keeps coming in," Nesenoff told FoxNews.com. "We got one specific one saying, 'We're going to kill the Jews; watch your back.'"

Nesenoff said he was shocked not only by Thomas' original remarks — which he called anti-Semitic — but by the wave of insults and threats he has received since his videotape brought about her public shaming and the end of her 50-year career at the White House.

"This is something that I thought was a couple of people here or there, [but] it's mainstream and it's frightening," the Long Island rabbi said. "[Thomas] is just a little cherry on top of this huge, huge sundae of hate in America."

Nesenoff approached Thomas with a camera on May 27 following a celebration of Jewish heritage at the White House. Asked for a comment on Israel, Thomas called Jews occupiers and said they should "go home" to Germany, Poland and the U.S.

But it's all about Zionists, not Jews, right?

[alwyn]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/09/rabbi-receives-death-threats-helen-thomas-video/

The New York rabbi who videotaped veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas telling Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine" says he has received numerous death threats and thousands of pieces of hate mail in the days since Thomas' abrupt retirement.

Rabbi David Nesenoff said he is facing an "overload" of threatening e-mails calling for a renewed Holocaust and targeting his family — a barrage of hate he said he planned to report to the police on Wednesday.

"This ticker tape keeps coming in," Nesenoff told FoxNews.com. "We got one specific one saying, 'We're going to kill the Jews; watch your back.'"

Nesenoff said he was shocked not only by Thomas' original remarks — which he called anti-Semitic — but by the wave of insults and threats he has received since his videotape brought about her public shaming and the end of her 50-year career at the White House.

"This is something that I thought was a couple of people here or there, [but] it's mainstream and it's frightening," the Long Island rabbi said. "[Thomas] is just a little cherry on top of this huge, huge sundae of hate in America."

Nesenoff approached Thomas with a camera on May 27 following a celebration of Jewish heritage at the White House. Asked for a comment on Israel, Thomas called Jews occupiers and said they should "go home" to Germany, Poland and the U.S.

But it's all about Zionists, not Jews, right?

It's all about hate. And I read more than quite a few death threats and mayhem directed against Helen Thomas on the various outlets, so the rabbi is not alone; however he started the shit-storm he is in the middle of. I know, because I have had to face the consequences of my ill-mannered actions many times. Did this rabbi say the original film was for a news feed or production? No. Was Helen plainly speaking her mind to a 'private citizen?' Yes. She had very ill manners to say what she did, perhaps her feet hurt. One can forgive a cantankerous old woman. It is harder to forgive someone who asks provoking questions to one known for speaking her mind, on video. A Rabbi? Really? God knows I expect more from my religious counselor than a video camera in my face at a very unflattering angle, but there's no accounting for taste. Maybe she thought she was giving him the set-down he deserved. So he got his petty little pecker revenge by cut, paste, and posting it and making a media incident out of it. My sympathies lie with the woman in this case, and if this is an example of 'religous excellence', God save me from it.

Maybe the shitstorm he supposedly provoked upon himself might make him look in his own mirror, and profoundly hope that the God of his choosing doesn't hold his ugly mug to a mirror some day. And, quite frankly, I would have to see evidence of his death threat. Really, the incidents of the flotilla, of which this was cleverly designed to suppress, have shown that Israeli so-called death threats are greatly exaggerated.

[vanlose kid]

"I agree with her."

She thinks Jews should go back to Germany and Poland. And you agree with that racist fucking bullshit?

[vanlose kid]

TPM Editors Blog
Voices
Josh Marshall | June 7, 2010, 4:13PM

JW checks in from the screechy sectarian left ...

The fact that Jews were relentlessly persecuted by European Christians for seventeen hundred years by no stretch of the imagination gave them the right to go and do exactly the same thing to another innocent people. If Americans are so passionate about such a relic of the nineteenth century as the ethno-religious state, then by all means let us give New York to the Jews; Palestine was never ours to give away.

But what has been happening for the past seventy years is the Palestinians have been paying for the antisemitism of Americans and Europeans. Eight hundred thousand people were ethnically cleansed in 1948 in order to create the right population for a "Jewish liberal democracy" in the Middle East by quite your standard grade Ameropean imperialists. And the people of that colonialist state have been psychotically trying to get rid of the rest of the Palestinians ever since, in the name of their evil deities or whatever.

The Jews getting kicked out of Iran, Iraq, etc. was all a response to that original horrific example of Ameropean hubris. So the solution is not "along the green line" as you suggest, especially since the Israelis themselves have proven over and over again that they will never settle for this. The solution needs to be paid for by us imperialists, not our victims. If you really want to do some good, let's start talking about U.S. government programs to resettle Jews in America.

[ http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archiv ... ?ref=fpblg ]

*

[justdrew]

no doubt all Israeli's support the Lakota Sioux Indians' unilateral Declaration of Sovereign Nation Status?

DECEMBER 20, 2007
Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status
Threaten Land Liens, Contested Real Estate Over Five State Area in U.S.West Dakota Territory Reverts back to Lakota Control According to U.S., International Law
http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/1220-02.htm

[operator kos]

John Stewart and Stephen Colbert went and threw her under the bus last night as well, no surprise there.

[Simulist]

For years and years now, Helen Thomas has been one of the only remaining real journalists in the White House press pool.

At a certain point, she peed in the pool.

She's 89 years old, for God's sake! — give the woman a break already.

(And Jon Stewart, kiss my ass.)

[justdrew]

John Stewart and Stephen Colbert went and threw her under the bus last night as well, no surprise there.

I've lost a lot of respect for them both lately, due to a number of things, but the Helen Thomas "jokes" weren't funny.

[norton ash]

Never had much respect for Stewart, but Colbert's been good lately.

And I don't think he threw Helen under the bus. He nodded to the circus by inviting her to come on his show and eat 50 hamburgers to make people forget. (i.e., won't fucking happen.)

I was all right with him using the Israeli ambassador's visit to AT LEAST remind America that they're also killing civilians on a regular basis, too... and hos kicking the shit out of the BP CEO bit the other night was priceless.

Cobert might be in chains, but he still sings.

[norton ash]

Never had much respect for Stewart, but Colbert's been good lately.

And I don't think he threw Helen under the bus. He nodded to the circus by inviting her to come on his show and eat 50 hamburgers to make people forget. (i.e., won't fucking happen.)

I was all right with him using the Israeli ambassador's visit to AT LEAST remind America that they're also killing civilians on a regular basis, too... and his kicking the shit out of the BP CEO bit the other night was priceless.

Colbert might be in some chains of network restraint, but he still sings.

[alwyn]

Stewart lost me when he piled on Helen. I was waiting with baited breath to see what he would say. I was horrified. But then, he works for a living, and the Jewish lobby is strong. Still. He lost my viewership that night. I wish I could find a way to write him and let him know, the comment section for the show is buried on the site somewhere.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Here's the John Stewart clip.

There's a place to comment as well.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-j ... e-disgrace