Bluer White
New Yorker
As the late, great Tony Snow once quipped to Helen Thomas during a White House press conference, "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view."
Tony Snow had the perfect temperament for that job.
As the late, great Tony Snow once quipped to Helen Thomas during a White House press conference, "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view."
Helen Thomas Gets A Defender... Hezbollah
As the late, great Tony Snow once quipped to Helen Thomas during a White House press conference, "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view."
Don't single out Helen Thomas
The veteran journalist was pilloried for her remark about Israel, but where's the uproar over such comments directed at Palestinians?
Saree Makdisi
June 13, 2010
Unconscionable. Offensive. Hurtful. Bigoted. Terrible. Hateful.
These are the words being used to describe Helen Thomas' recent comment about Israel and Palestine. Editorialists across the country have condemned her statement that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go back" to Europe.
Let's agree that she should not have said those things, and that a just and lasting peace in the Middle East fundamentally requires reconciliation between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. We need also to agree on a formula that allows them both to be at home in the same land (I have long advocated the idea of a single democratic and secular state for both peoples; a state that treats all citizens as equals). Insisting that either people does not belong is not merely counterproductive; it lies at the very root of the conflict.
If, however, it is unacceptable to say that Israeli Jews don't belong in Palestine, it is also unacceptable to say that the Palestinians don't belong on their own land.
Yet that is said all the time in the United States, without sparking the kind of moral outrage generated by Thomas' remark. And while the nation's editorialists worry about the offense she may have caused to Jews, no one seems particularly bothered by the offense felt every day by Palestinians when people — including those with far more power than Thomas — dismiss their rights, degrade their humanity and reject their claims to the most elementary forms of decency.
Are we seriously to accept the idea that some people have more rights than others? Or that some people's sensibilities should be respected while others' are trampled with total indifference, if not outright contempt?
One does not have to agree with Thomas to note that her remark spoke to the ugly history of colonialism, racism, usurpation and denial that are at the heart of the question of Palestine. Part of that history involves vicious European anti-Semitism and the monumental crime of the Holocaust. But the other part is that Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homeland in 1948 to clear space for the creation of a state with a Jewish identity.
Europeans and Americans were, at the time, willing to ignore or simply dismiss the injustice inflicted on the Palestinians, who, by being forced from their land, were made to pay the price for a crime they did not commit.
But this callous carelessness, this dismissal of — and refusal even to acknowledge in human terms — the calamity that befell the Palestinians, and of course the attendant refusal to acknowledge their fundamental rights, did not end in the 1940s. It continues to this very day.
Mainstream politicians, civic leaders, university presidents and others in this country routinely express their support for Israel as a Jewish state, despite the fact that such a state only could have been created in a multicultural land by ethnically cleansing it of as many non-Jews as possible. Today, Israel is only able to maintain its Jewish identity because it has established an apartheid regime, both in the occupied territories and within its own borders, and because it continues to reject the Palestinian right of return.
Where is the outrage about that?
Where was the outrage in 1983 when Israeli Gen. Rafael Eitan looked forward to the day that Jews had fully settled the land, because then "all the Arabs will be able to do about it is scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle"? Or when Alan Dershowitz suggested in 2002 that Israel summarily empty and then bulldoze an entire Palestinian village as a punitive measure each time it was attacked? Or when New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman claimed in 2006 to have discovered a "pathology" that caused some Arabs to "hate others more than they love their own kids"? Or when Avigdor Lieberman (who now serves as Israel's foreign minister) said in 2004 that Palestinian citizens of Israel should "take their bundles and get lost"? Or when Israeli professor Arnon Sofer, one of the country's leading demographic alarmists, said that to preserve the Jewish state, Israel should pull out of Gaza, though that would require Israel to remain at the border and "kill, and kill, and kill, all day, every day"?
An endless deluge of statements of support for the actual, calculated, methodical dehumanization of Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular goes without comment; whereas a single offhand comment by an 89-year-old journalist, whose long and distinguished record of principled commitment and challenges to state power entitles her to respect — and the benefit of the doubt — causes her to be publicly pilloried.
To accept this appalling hypocrisy is to be complicit in the racism of our age.
here is an op-ed I read this morning
Those arguments, about America in the 1700 and 1800s are ridiculous.
When anyone brings them up, they have surrendered the argument.
It is a confession that their cause is illegitimate.
Why????
Because in the 1700, and 1800s, there was all kinds of wrong actions and behavior. Why not argue for child labor laws, and slave labor to build the infrastructure, railroads, etc. That is/ was the standard in the 1800s.
Now if you want to come out of the dark and into the light of the 1900s and 2000s.
What is the standard? WW1, Germany and the AXIS powers, captured territory and displaced people. The world united against, this taking of territory and pushed them back.
WW2, again aggressors were pushed back, and the victors did not annex their conquered territories. Unless you want to site the Soviets and Eastern Europe? Does Israel want to say they follow the Communist Soviets, that were eventually fought back in the Cold War and had their empire crumble?
And we have Iraq and Saddam expansion into and taking of Kuwait. Should that have been allowed to stand? The Imperialists Japanese expansion into and taking Asia and the Pacific?
And when I did visit Japan, Japanese people did tell me that their expansion during the 1930s and 1040s was no different than the U S expansion into the West. That is was their manifest destiny.
All through the 1900s it has been going the other way. Expansionism, wrong, Manifest destiny, wrong. Occupation, wrong.
Israel's arguments about the 1800s are morally bankrupt.
And as for the hope that with time 200- 300 years from now this will be forgotten and Israel will be looked at the same way as the U S and their taking of natives' lands.
That was the same thing the White South Africans thought they could pull off in South Africa. And it worked through the 1960s through most of the 1980s. They got that far with the US, Reagan, Cheney and the like labeling the ANC, terrorist, communists, and killers of innocent people. Cheney and Reagan would have been fine with Mandela being executed.
Finally the West stopped supporting them and they had to deal with Mandela the terrorist and reach an accommodation.
sorry, Sean
I am sorry I quoted you in my reply, those observations are so often made by many people that support Israel
each time I just roll my eyes, because I think they are not credible at all
my reply was more of a response to all the times I have heard those comparisons.
I just quoted you for a reference point, I should have began with,
'This is not directed at you, but at those arguments".
Perhaps Achtung Bono can elaborate?
So, I guess the Jews should go back to Germany or Poland or somewhere.
Not many friends here.
Part of me understands how she feels, she is Jewish living in Tel-Aviv.
So, I guess the Jews should go back to Germany or Poland or somewhere.
Not many friends here.
-- but then refuse to invite them again because their Zionist funders won't have it
I don't deny the NRA's influence, but it doesn't matter when it comes to foreign policy -- just as Zionist groups don't matter (as the AARP does) when it comes to health care.floating conspiracy theories isn't going to win you any support. the tired "the Jews control the media" is silly. you can certainly point to AIPAC money in Congress, but there are other, bigger lobbying groups (the NRA springs to mind) that wield far more influence.
Look, it's not a conspiracy to say there are biases among given ethnic groups; it's a rare thing for a person to criticize those in their ethnic group, and many Jewish people have been exceedingly willing to go against Zionism, and they're real heroes for doing so.
It's the same reasoning I use to figure out why Jon Stewart has moved to the right on Israel; I think it has to do with his friendship with nationalist and pro-Israeli folks like David Gregory (who is Jewish) and Brian Williams (who's Christian) and his inability to criticize them, which, in turn, has made him tepid on Israel. Stephen Colbert (a Christian), though, is far more pro-Israeli. I think, among non-Jews, Holocaust guilt plays a major role and they're trying to look heroic -- as if they would have stopped the Holocaust -- by standing by Israel now, which is a dangerous conflation.[/B]
Now, if there's ever an ethnic group around the world not under siege, it's Jews.
Now, if there's ever an ethnic group around the world not under siege, it's Jews.
Now, if there's ever an ethnic group around the world not under siege, it's Jews. Perhaps in the Islamic world, especially in repressive regimes, there's some horrible anti-semitism, but one could argue Muslims face far greater discrimination in the West. And far worse than either of these groups are Latinos, then Blacks, then native Americans or other indigenous peoples who have it the worst off.
I don't deny the NRA's influence, but it doesn't matter when it comes to foreign policy -- just as Zionist groups don't matter (as the AARP does) when it comes to health care.
Bingo.
And if the NRA gets a few states to allow some people to carry concealed who are law abiding and just want to look after themselves, well that doesn't affect too many of us. Its certainly fine by me.
I am no fan of a lot of what the NRA does(gun show loophole, tiahart amendment are outrageous), I don't have a membership or a bumper sticker, but compared to something like the Israel lobby? They're NOTHING, NOTHING AND MORE OF NOTHING.
Its between a small segment of the population that truly believes passionately either way on the gun issue, and making foreign policy with implications for every citizen in the entire country and I dare say, the world. Say what you want about the NRA, at least its American citizens influencing American government. The Israel lobby operates at the edges of legality and raises serious loyalty to America questions.To equate the two is intellectual dishonesty.
The Israeli lobby influences members of Congress regardless of party or ideology, and has made it so that even minor questioning of the policies of the State of Israel is to be viewed with a certain assumption toward anti semitism on the part of the critic.
Again, one need look no further than what Pelosi did to Jim Moran when he spoke out.