Jonathan Cook argues that the overreaction of the US political and media elite to Helen Thomas's unguarded comments that Jews ought to leave Palestine and return to the countries whence they came highlights the moral failure of American liberals and a blindness to the relations of power in the US, and contribute to the very intolerance they claim to be challenging.
The ostracism of Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, over her comment that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Poland, Germany, America and elsewhere is revealing in several ways. In spite of an apology, the 89-year-old has been summarily retired by the Hearst newspaper group, dropped by her agent, spurned by the White House, and denounced by long-time friends and colleagues.The blatant unfairness of it all! Labelling as "anti-Semitic" a woman who ordered Jews to vacate their homes in the Jewish homeland.
Thomas earned a reputation as a combative journalist, at least by American standards, with a succession of administrations over their Middle East policies, culminating in Bush officials boycotting her for her relentless criticisms of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the reaction to her latest remarks suggest that, if there is one topic in American public life on which the boundaries of what can and cannot be said are still tightly policed, it is Israel.
Undoubtedly, Thomas' opinions, as she expressed them in an unguarded moment, were inappropriate and required an apology...
But Thomas did apologize and, after that, a line ought to have been drawn under the affair — as it surely would have been had she made any other kind of faux pas. Instead, she has been denounced as an anti-Semite, even by her former friends...
Those bloody Jews again--kvetching about "anti-Semitism" when it's really a matter of "justice" and "human rights" and, um, "justice".
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