http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQcQdWBqt14

(I don't necessarily endorse the Rabbilive organization that posted the video.)

I wish the 90-year-old news service reporter had chosen more sensitive statements.  This was no way to end a six-decade career.  I always liked Thomas' brash, feisty attitude, but when she said the Israeli Jews should just go home to German, Poland, America, and so forth, she made herself look ignorant.  She might be getting a bit barmy in her old age, but she knows better.  Of course, it is a complicated issue, and I have a great disliking for the way Israel often conducts itself as a political state, but "Jews go home" is a terrible thing to say. 

I think columnist Robert Scheer sums it up best.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/on_the_vilification_of_helen_thomas_20100609/

I wish the 90-year-old news service reporter had chosen more sensitive statements.  This was no way to end a six-decade career.  I always liked Thomas' brash, feisty attitude, but...


I thought it was a perfect way to end a six-decade career.  The lack of sensitivity is the one thing about her I can respect - I may not have agreed with her biases, but she was always honest about them.  She went out the way she came in: with blatant editorial bias.

(When Helen Thomas said that) Jews should just go home to Germany, Poland (...)


Like I said, points for honesty.  I'll bet the thought of German and Polish Jews moving back (given that she's been in the business since before Israel even existed :), to make living space for the ethnicity that she'd prefer to see owning that land, well, this is Helen we're talking about, and I need another excuse to pull this out...

http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/8178/2364.jpg

Apparently, it made her a little too moist for her own good, because the only sound other than stunned silence was the sound of her career, melting.

http://cdn.picapp.com/ftp/Images/1/d/8/b/PicImg_Veteran_DC_Journalist_3143.jpg
http://sportschump.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/wicked-witch-of-the-west-2.jpg

This incident is a prime example of the global Jewish conspiracy to try and control thought and speech regarding Israel, in which all criticism of Israel is branded as anti-Semitism.

Now.. by "Jewish conspiracy" I certainly do not mean "all Jews".  But in prominent media roles, and Gentile politicians who have been feeding off the trough of Jewish PAC campaign contributions, you saw a monolithic lynching of Helen Thomas.

Thomas' perspective on the Israel situation, even if one does not agree with her, is not one that can be summarily dismissed. Her relatives were run out of Israel in a huge religion/race-based cleansing of "Palestine" sixty years ago and ther personal land holdings were expropriated by the government.

That said she was run out of town within 24 hours.

Those on this board who have read my posts on the Mideast situation may recall that I am a supporter neither of the Israeli or Palestinian factions over there.  There certainly is no surplus of virtue on either side of that situation, and that's why my opinion is that the world (well, at least the U.S. of A.) should stop meddling in the Middle East and should simply let Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druze over there fight this thing out, winner-take-all.

Our meddling over there has caused the USA nothing but trouble from both sides.

The Zionist description of Palestine before Israel was "a people without a land, a land without people".  Who (or what) the hell did they the Palestinians were? 

Thomas' remarks were impolitic.  That's all.  In the 1930s and 1940s, Jews didn't exactly decide to uproot themselves from their homes in Germany and Poland for a tiny strip of desert in Palestine. 

I sympathize with Thomas' feelings as a woman of Lebanese descent.  She has the right to be bitter.

The Israelis I resent are the obnoxious rich Americans who leave comfortable lives here because they think it is their God-given right to have a home in Israel. 

The modern state of Israel was carved out of imperial spoils by Britain and America.  I don't think it is a wholesome application of a 3000-year-old testament to deem it an inalienable right for anyone with a Jewish mother to push the denizens of Palestine out of the way and say God gave it to the Jews.

Thomas' remarks were impolitic.  That's all.  In the 1930s and 1940s, Jews didn't exactly decide to uproot themselves from their homes in Germany and Poland for a tiny strip of desert in Palestine. 

I sympathize with Thomas' feelings as a woman of Lebanese descent.  She has the right to be bitter.

The Israelis I resent are the obnoxious rich Americans who leave comfortable lives here because they think it is their God-given right to have a home in Israel. 

The modern state of Israel was carved out of imperial spoils by Britain and America.  I don't think it is a wholesome application of a 3000-year-old testament to deem it an inalienable right for anyone with a Jewish mother to push the denizens of Palestine out of the way and say God gave it to the Jews.


The problem is that we and the Brits DID give it to them and they botched it by displacing the Arabs.  Now we have to live with the consequences

The problem is that we and the Brits DID give it to them and they botched it by displacing the Arabs.  Now we have to live with the consequences


קִבּוּצְנִיק

It goes back even to the Russian pogroms against the Jews in the 1880s and the origins of the kibbutzim movement predating the Balfour declaration by a generation.  A minority of Jews victimized by the Russian pogroms did set up kibbutzim in Palestine.  The real trouble started with the partition in 1948 and then the six-day war of 1967 after which the Palestinians found themselves victims of pogroms themselves.

So easily we become what we despise.

It is high time we took religion out of the equation and talk about it for what it is.  Power, money, and the people who are pawns in an international game of greed.

It is high time we took religion out of the equation and talk about it for what it is.  Power, money, and the people who are pawns in an international game of greed.


No, the Israeli problem is indeed one of religion (or perhaps race).  Pretty much every argument that the Isareli government or Zionists make about their cause has to do with being Jewish, past crimes against Jews, that Israel is the Jewish homeland, that critics are antisemitic, etc.  You don't see Presbyterians packing up their families and moving to Tel Aviv.

No, the Israeli problem is indeed one of religion (or perhaps race).  Pretty much every argument that the Isareli government or Zionists make about their cause has to do with being Jewish, past crimes against Jews, that Israel is the Jewish homeland, that critics are antisemitic, etc.  You don't see Presbyterians packing up their families and moving to Tel Aviv.



It isn't the first, or last, time religion is used by the power structure as a smokescreen to achieve there own ends. Just because they insist on using religion as the reason, or excuse, doesn't mean we have to fall for it.

Shouldn't she have retired a long time ago?

Shouldn't she have retired a long time ago?


If you told her to retire, she'd belt you one!
8)

Shouldn't she have retired a long time ago?


She ought to start her own online blog.

She ought to start her own online blog.


"You gotta go to Florida, honey!  The city is driving you stark-raving crazy!

-- Over heard.  I don't know where and I don't know when.

If you told her to retire, she'd belt you one!
8)

Seeing that she's 90, another comment like that, and the foot in her mouth might cut off the oxygen! :D
And not to slight anyone's right to open discussion, but does it really make any difference if we all just sit here and kibbutz!?

Your Pal,
Doc
8)

Seeing that she's 90, another comment like that, and the foot in her mouth might cut off the oxygen! :D
And not to slight anyone's right to open discussion, but does it really make any difference if we all just sit here and kibbutz!?

Your Pal,
Doc
8)


That's what I was thinking. 

"....and let me tell you one last thing, I've wanted to say this for sixty f**king years..."

:o

"....and let me tell you one last thing, I've wanted to say this for sixty f**king years..."
:o


I hesitated to post this one at first, but it's like bowling: the Internet sets 'em up, and I just gotta knock 'em down.

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m70/hugh_jardohn/Thomasgohome.jpg

"Was that really what you wanted to say, Helen?  Because if it was, it was good to have you out of the closet at last."

I hesitated to post this one at first, but it's like bowling: the Internet sets 'em up, and I just gotta knock 'em down.

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m70/hugh_jardohn/Thomasgohome.jpg

"Was that really what you wanted to say, Helen?  Because if it was, it was good to have you out of the closet at last."


Hey, that's just plain mean!
>:(

Eh...  Her statements were more against Israel than against Jews in general.

For that reason, I'm not terribly offended.

*uck Israel and *uck the Palestinians for that matter as well.  That whole area is just a steaming pile of religiously fanatical excrement that the world would be better off leaving as a radioactive crater.

Eh...   Her statements were more against Israel than against Jews in general.

For that reason, I'm not terribly offended.

*uck Israel and *uck the Palestinians for that matter as well.  That whole area is just a steaming pile of religiously fanatical excrement that the world would be better off leaving as a radioactive crater.



That's why I don't like those countries having nukes.  Including Israel.
::)

Eh...   Her statements were more against Israel than against Jews in general.


Absolutely.  I do not believe that she refered to the "Jews" but to the "Israelis".

But the Global Zionist Conspiracy immediately cries "antisemitisim" and "remember the Holocaust" every time anybody criticizes Israel.

I reiterate my position that the USA should withhold all military, political, intel, and financial aid to Israel as well as the Palestinian authority.  Let them fight it out themselves, the last man standing wins.  Sixty years of meddling has gotten the USA nothing but lost money and lost lives.  For nothing.

Absolutely.  I do not believe that she refered to the "Jews" but to the "Israelis".

But the Global Zionist Conspiracy immediately cries "antisemitisim" and "remember the Holocaust" every time anybody criticizes Israel.

I reiterate my position that the USA should withhold all military, political, intel, and financial aid to Israel as well as the Palestinian authority.  Let them fight it out themselves, the last man standing wins.  Sixty years of meddling has gotten the USA nothing but lost money and lost lives.  For nothing.


An unwavering ally in the Middle East?  That oughta be worth a few shekels!
???