By Gary Leupp
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp06082010.html
Outrage!
White House journalist Helen Thomas, covering a Jewish
American Heritage Month celebration at the White House May
27, is accosted on the sidewalk by someone who asks: "Any
comments about Israel? We're asking everybody today---any
comments about Israel?"
Smiling in grandmotherly fashion----the way an 89 year-old
woman might do when suddenly approached by an 17 year old
boy who seems sincerely interested in her thoughts---she
replies: "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine."
"Oooh." responds the questioner. "Any better comments?" (A
voice in the background: "Helen is fun!")
"Hah hah hah," laughs Helen. " Remember these people are
occupied, and it's their land, not German, and not Poland."
"So where should they go? What should they do?"
"They could go home. Poland. Germany."
"Where's home? You're saying Jews should go back to Poland
and Germany?"
"And America and everywhere else."
A week later this video of the impromptu interview appears
on "RabbiLIVE.com," website of Rabbi David Nesenoff. (Who by
the way is this "live rabbi"? Who is this rabbi character
who's terminated the career of a Washington press icon? How
many journalists are even asking?)
The clip begins and ends with strident musical
accompaniment, and concludes with the caption: "Six million
Jews were killed in Germany and Poland. Does Helen know that
Jews have lived in Israel way before the Holocaust. How can
Helen report unbiased?"
According to one report the questioner was Adam Nesenoff,
David's son. The latter supposedly "sat on the Thomas scoop"
for a week while his "webmaster son" Adam took final exams.
"So we waited," Rabbi Nesenoff told Yahoo News. "And of
course, during the waiting of it, the flotilla happened."
Nesenoff doesn't explain how the Israeli assault on the Gaza
aid flotilla connects to Helen or the timing of the video
release. But clearly it (and perhaps Thomas's comments about
it?) influenced the timing of the video. And once it was
online, the White House---which was not outraged at all by
the murder of 9 aid workers by the "Israeli Defense Forces"
last week---immediately condemned the journalist.
Nesenoff contacted her employer, Hearst Newspapers, telling
them they had "to get rid of her." They did.
Outrage! About what? A journalist is suddenly approached on
the sidewalk by two high school students who say they're
asking everybody today if they have comments about Israel.
(Might I ask: Why did this happen in the first place? Was
this for a school project? Are there other filmed interviews
young Adam would like to share, to prove that he and his
friend were really fact "asking everybody" and not just
Helen?)
"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine." This was
obviously a totally spontaneous statement, and could mean
simply, "Tell them to withdraw from the occupied
territories, as demanded by the entire world."
The interviewer responds with apparent humor, asking for
more comments. So the veteran journalist says, "Remember
these people are occupied, and it's their land." It is of
course absolutely true that Zionists occupy Palestinian
land. This fact, not the comment, is outrageous. Most people
on the planet understand this.
"Where should they go?" asks the youth rhetorically, perhaps
psyched for his gotcha moment. In this elliptical
conversation, the "they" could have been interpreted by
Helen, who has just mentioned "occupied" land, as referring
to settlers on the West Bank or on the Golan Heights. The
topic under discussion is Palestine, which in U.S.
journalistic useage is more likely to refer to a future
Palestinian state than to the state of Israel in its 1967
borders. But the video is skewed to make it seem as though
Thomas said all Jews in Israel and the occupied territories
should leave, and go back to places where mass murder
occurred.
To those who care about fairness, I suggest that's unfair.
That's not what Helen Thomas said. She said Israel should
leave Palestine. When prompted to say where those referenced
should go, she referred to countries with historically large
Jewish populations. Lots of Israelis are in fact leaving
Israel for those countries. (About 14,000 Israeli Jews left
annually between 1990 and 2005. According to a 2007 poll,
half of Israeli youth between ages 14 and 18 express the
desire to live outside of Israel, which they see as having a
bleak future. A huge percentage of Israelis has or plans to
inquire about obtaining foreign nationality; many Europeans
offer this generously to descendents of citizens who can
prove their ancestry. The Berlin synagogue has 12,000
members and is flourishing. There are now maybe 55,000 Jews
in Poland, many emigrating from Israel following Poland's
admission to the EU.)
It's not clear exactly what Thomas was saying in this
spontaneous, fragmentary sidewalk conversation with kids who
said that they were, for some reason, asking "everyone to
comment about Israel." Rabbi Nesenoff says there are more
excerpts to come, but it's likely that the above piece is
the most "controversial."
But let's just suppose that Thomas is saying that the
establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 was itself a bad
thing, a catastrophy for the indigenous Palestinian people.
(These by the way almost surely include descendents of the
ancient Judaeans. There was never a total dispersion---
diaspora---of Jews from Roman Judaea. Following the
rebellions against Roman rule in the province between 66 and
135, a large but undetermined number of Jews were driven
from Judaea as punishment. But the Romans did not, and
probably couldn't have, thoroughly "dispersed" the Jews.
Many remained, some becoming Christians and later, Muslims.
It is altogether likely that the DNA of many Palestinians is
closer to that of the first century Judaeans than to that of
Jews with centuries of European ancestry. And by the first
century there were already huge numbers of Jews outside
Judaea, many voluntarily, constituting trading communities
from Britain to India. St. Paul visited many synagogues in
Anatolia and Greece and dreamed of preaching the Christian
gospel to the Jews of Spain.)
Let's say Thomas is saying that the Zionists should have
stayed in Europe (where anti-Semitism has greatly diminished
in the last half-century, typically flourishing now mainly
as a result of Israeli policy towards Palestinians) rather
than pursuing their agenda in Palestine under Turkish rule
or the British mandate. Maybe she's saying that it was wrong
for the Zionists to terrorize Palestinians into fleeing
their villages in the diaspora of 1948. Maybe she's saying
that it's wrong for Israel to accept any Jew (as defined by
the rabbinical establishment) as a citizen while denying
hundreds of thousands of Arabs the right to return to their
homeland. If so, many agree with her. I do, certainly.
But there are some who demand that we all accept a certain
understanding of Israel. Everyone must, to avoid charges of
anti-Semitism, agree on these points:
1. The establishment of the state of Israel was
absolutely necessary, to prevent the annihilation of the
Jewish people in a future holocaust. (This is of course
an unproveable assertion. The global Jewish population
today is about what it was in the 1910s---about 16
million---and if it is declining it's mostly because of
birth control and intermarriage. The prospect for future
Auschwitzes seems minimal.)
2. The Jewish state must be within the boundaries of the
ancient state of Israel, as it existed during the
(legendary) reign of King David, as described in the
Bible. It is the right of Jews to reconstitute that
state, from which they were wrongly driven. It has
always been theirs, no matter where they roamed. It is
their "birthright" to live in Israel. (Tens of millions
of Christian Zionists embrace this notion, noting that
God, in the Bible, made the Jews his Chosen People and
gave them that land. Enough said!)
3. The establishment of the modern state of Israel was
the result of a just and humane struggle. The
displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian
Arabs was their own fault, or a consequence of
propaganda from Arab regimes urging them to flee.
(Israeli historians like the estimable Ilan Pappe have
effectively disproven this.)
4. The occupation of the lands invaded in 1967 is
necessary as a security measure against Arab anti-
Semitism, irrational anti-Jewish hate. (You can maybe
advocate withdrawal from the territories, and even
promote a two-state solution, without being called anti-
Semitic. But if you note matter-of-factly that the
occupation is against international law, is cruelly
implemented, and produces enormous suffering, expect
charges of anti-Semitism.)
If you don't agree that Israel is a moral exemplar and light
to the world, "the only democracy in the Middle East" just
attending reasonably to its security needs against a world
that is (for no good reason) hostile to itself, you can be
hounded, harassed, intimidated, discredited, denied tenure,
fired. Helen was fired. That's the real outrage here.
"So we waited. And of course, during the waiting of it, the
flotilla happened." Yes. A 19 year old Turkish-American boy
(among nine others) was shot to death at close range in the
head and back in international waters by Israeli hijackers
who've subsequently claimed that that their victims wanted
to "lynch" them. They effectively conveyed the message:
"Don't mess with Israel." And then 89 year old Helen got
ambushed (lynched?) by this innocent-looking kid on the
street.
The message? Shut up, you critics of Israel, you terrorists,
you anti-Semites!
I hope Helen Thomas keeps talking and writing. She's
understood and exposed the brutal realities of recent
history, and is much too young to shut up now.
[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and
holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion.
He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in
the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction
of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy
in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is
also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of
the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial
Crusades. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu ]
