SUBSCRIBE NOW WELCOME BACK. Do you want to continue reading where you left off? New Republic subscribers can pick up where they left off no matter which device they were previously using. SUBSCRIBE NOW

Go Home Helen Thomas Lets The Mask Slip

JONATHAN CHAIT DECEMBER 3, 2010

Helen Thomas Lets The Mask Slip

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

When Helen Thomas said that Israel's Jews should just GTFO and return to Germany and Poland, I suggested her comments were not anti-Semitic per se but merely very blunt anti-Zionism. But her latest comments suggests that, no, she really has a problem with Jews:

Thomas, who grew up in Detroit the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, was in Dearborn today for an Arab Detroit workshop on anti-Arab bias. ...

In a speech that drew a standing ovation, Thomas talked about "the whole question of money involved in politics."

"We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion.

I prefer to hold off on imputing motives of bigotry without strong proof, but there's not a whole lot of doubt remaining here.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Show all 16 comments

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

16 comments

Yes, I think this calls into question whether she would pass the "Anne Frank test" designed by our friend Jeffrey Goldberg.

- rozenson

December 3, 2010 at 4:17pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Bigotry is a disease. Sad, that this woman is so infected. Sadder still is the notion that comments like this draw a standing ovation anywhere in the United States.

- Tristan

December 3, 2010 at 4:19pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"When Helen Thomas said that Israel's Jews should just GTFO and return to Germany and Poland, I suggested her comments were not anti-Semitic per se but merely very blunt anti-Zionism. But her latest comments suggests that, no, she really has a problem with Jews..." Took you till now to figure that out? btw, the difference between an anti Zionist and an antisemite is that an ant- Zionist attacks "Jews who live elsewhere" and an antisemite is someone who includes someone like Jonathan Chait in his attacks. One would have been in denial not to have noticed that Helen Thomas “had a problem with Jews.”

- jdyer

December 3, 2010 at 4:22pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

The pathetic Helen Thomas is now totally transparent in her bigotry.

- liberal reformer

December 3, 2010 at 4:48pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nothing new under the sun. From Norm Geras blog: http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2010/12/am%C3%A9ry-on-left-anti-semitism.html "...I happened upon an essay of his from 1976, entitled 'Antisemitism on the Left'. Améry wrote one of the most powerful and distressing works known to me on the experience of the Nazi camps - At the Mind's Limits. It stands alongside the writing of Primo Levi, both as a document of witness and in its philosophical acuity and depth. His essay on 'Antisemitism on the Left' can be found in the collection Radical Humanism. You start reading it and you see at once that virtually none of the themes and arguments now so familiar in the post-9/11 world is absent or unanticipated there. We are already witnessing how political groups that regard themselves as "leftist" don't waste a word when a despot and paranoid in Uganda commits abominable murders; how they do not protest when the absolute ruler of Libya enacts laws under which adulterous women are stoned... Yet Israel - certainly no model state, but surely a polity that permits opposition... - is in leftist mythology a "reactionary" land. Further on: [A]ntisemitism, even if it calls itself anti-Zionism, is not respectable. On the contrary, it is the indelible stain that mars the honor of civilized humanity."

- noga1

December 3, 2010 at 5:54pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I continue to struggle, as a Christian, in understanding what seems for many who call themselves followers of Christ to be the visceral hatred of their fellow man despite the command to love. I could no more claim to be anything even close to ideal in this regard any more than I can claim to fly, but the pure anadulterated hate for certain groups is something I will simply never understand. One can say that hate is hate, that it doesn't matter who or what the person claims to be when they hate (or whom) but for the Christian this is in my mind a uniquely awful and disgusting phenomenon. Hatred of the Jews and Muslims and for homosexuals continue to be the greatest challenge we as Christians face, second only perhaps to the victimization of children by those tasked with introducing those chldren and their families to God. It is no wonder one can so easily find the vitriolic hate bubbling so close to the surface on so many blog sites; the desire to denounce at every opportunity anything remotely Christian. It is more than the desire to openly debate the eternal argument of science vs faith, or the possible coexistance of a loving God and a world of suffering, of the compatability of reason and faith, of evolution and creation. It is the desire to strike down even the idea of faith, a response to those for whom faith is an intergral part of life and so have - in the minds of those for whom it is not - aligned themselves with the worst of humanity: those for whom hate for hate's sake is a perfectly acceptable way of life. Few things are more disheartening that when I see Christians using the Bible itself to justify this hatred. For homosexuals? Well, Leviticus of course, and a few other choice passages from both the Old and New, with no regard for their context or evolution of such text. The Jews? "Let their blood be upon us and our children, they cried". Again, no undertanding of context. The "us" after all, was humanity. But why should there be understanding? Why, when there can be passages to lift from your Holy Book that substantiate your hate. What a sad, sick perversion of something beautiful this is. As someone once wrote, when it turns out God hates all the same people you do, it's fair to say you've successfully created Him in your image. Sorry for the long winded rant. I take the time to apologize on behalf of other Christians when I can, to Jews, to homosexuals, to those who for no reason other than simply "being" must endure hate fom those commanded by God to do otherwise. We are commanded love one another and to introduce others to God, but we remain, as always, our own worst enemy. Calling this hate anti-Zionism may sound like it gives some air of legitimacy - this is a just political argument, no? - but hate cloaked in a bit of politics is still hate, and no one should mistake Thomas's rejection of the Jews being secure in their homeland as anything but the latest installment in this centuries old - and utterly lacking in reason - animosity towards the Jews.

- Tristan

December 3, 2010 at 8:19pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Hatred can bring a lot of comfort to those who hate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZMuOhuB3Wo&feature=related

- noga1

December 3, 2010 at 9:09pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Jon I think the time has come to accept that Helen Thomas, irrespective of her gender heroics in terms of journalism's glass ceiling, is without a doubt, an anti semite. I do not altogether hold to the absolute conflation of anti Zionism with anti semitism but in Thomas' case, the use of the term Zionism seems to me to be a mere figleaf for the real anti semitic article.

- MrCookie1

December 3, 2010 at 11:42pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

BBC programme about modern antisemitism and anti-Zionism: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00c3449/Heart_And_Soul_The_Holocaust_Deniers_Episode_1

- noga1

December 4, 2010 at 8:29am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

What Tristan said about hate - it's scary and utterly disheartening. As far as Thomas is concerned - my goodness - how did people not notice this before now? She's NEVER been presented as anything but "the Dean of the White House Press Corps" etc - has she been hiding her true self all along? Or have people simply and conveniently not noticed?

- Sophia

December 4, 2010 at 1:17pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"Or have people simply and conveniently not noticed?" Villifying Jews, or Israelis - dog bites man

- noga1

December 4, 2010 at 1:48pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

She's made no secret of her loyalties for at least 48 years: http://blogs.sj-r.com/offtheclock/index.php/archives/2126

- drheingold

December 5, 2010 at 3:42am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/383282 "“I can call a president of the United States anything in the book,” she said at an anti-Arab-bias workshop in Detroit, “but I can’t touch Israel, which has Jewish-only roads in the West Bank. No American would tolerate that — white-only roads.” She’s right that no American would tolerate white-only roads. Israelis, likewise, would never tolerate roads for Jews only. That’s why such roads don’t exist. The roads she’s referring to in the West Bank are Israeli, and they’re not just for Jews. Israeli Arabs can drive on them, and so can non-Jewish foreigners, including Arab and Muslim foreigners. Palestinians were once able to drive on them but have not been allowed to do so since the second intifada, when suicide bombers used them to penetrate Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in order to massacre people. There are also, by the way, Palestinian roads in the West Bank that Israelis can’t use. I don’t know if Helen Thomas knows this and is lying or if she’s just an ignoramus. What I’ll bet she doesn’t know is that Arab residents of Jerusalem can use both the Israeli roads and the Palestinian roads. They’re the only people who live in the area who can do this. (Foreigners also are allowed to use both.) This doesn’t remotely line up with her narrative of perfidious Zion. But it’s true."

- noga1

December 5, 2010 at 10:00am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

and add finkelstein, chomsky, bennis. zunes, tarik ali, goodman, mondoweiss, silverstein......all ill-informed supporters of muslim extremists....

- sf4200

December 5, 2010 at 7:25pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

In this country, an anti-Zionist who is not an anti-Semite is pretty confined to university Middle Eastern studies departments and certain parts of the Haredi community. I guess George Soros qualifies as well. Other than that, their anti-Zionism is only a manifestation of which Jews they choose to hate at all times and which ones they choose to hate only in private.

- wildboy

December 6, 2010 at 11:28am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

“I am against Israel – not against Jews.” http://contested-terrain.net/us-professor-for-the-destruction-of-israel/ ______________ Anthony Julius: “Given that the principle of the Jewish state would be defended to the death by most if not all Jewish Israelis, to call for the dismantling of the Jewish state is to encompass the possibility of the wholesale death of its Jewish population. And if one can contemplate that with equanimity, one’s cold-heartedness puts one in the company of antisemites even if it doesn’t qualify one as an antisemite.”

- noga1

December 6, 2010 at 1:05pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

SHARE HIGHLIGHT

0 CHARACTERS SELECTED

TWEET THIS

POST TO TUMBLR

SHARE ON FACEBOOK

Close