A Gaffe: saying the truth in the worst way possible

Another victim of Israel.
Helen speaks the truth and get pilloried. Besides Israel’s self destructive paranoia and aggression; the U.S. is also being irrevocably damaged
by it’s unbridled support of Israels criminal behavior.

I guess Obama is Netanyahu’s poodle.

He had him house trained by aipac.

Z

Israel is a colonial power occupying a land…

Is that the best framing for describing Israel? Can a better case be made for describing them as the new South Africa, an apartheid state? Wouldn’t a colonial power at least let the occupied have access to some court system, for example?

It’s so sad for all the reasons stated above that we’ve lost the only person with the cojones to ask a good question, made all the more tragic given that I couldn’t name a single possible successor. Seriously, I have next to no clue who else is even in that press room. I think I once heard the ginger tool Chuck Todd, but that’s about it.

Can she even pick her replacement? An Amy Goodman handoff of the seat would be a delicious twisting of the knife as a goodbye move, far worthier of Helen than some kind of teaching career where she could only teach young journos a fierce nihilism given her ouster.

Reading the comments, I agree with the title of the post and the idea that smart, forward thinking Israelis would/should be planning ahead. The one statistical breakdown I’d like to see about all this isn’t a military breakdown of Af/Pak adventures w/o Turkey, or tank fights, but the demographics of Israel’s political elites. Do the Netanyahus/Avigdors expect to die before the shit hits the fan for real, a la South Africa (Botha)? B/c given the world response, and more precisely the turning of the younger Jews (in Israel and here, on J Street) against this ever more stark an apartheid system makes it clear that this incompetent aggressiveness can’t go on for 10 more years.

I know I just said something I myself (and prolly everyone here) has believed at one point or another about everything the U.S. and/or Israel has done, but how this can’t end up within 5 years tops under our new Hooverian overlords with massive boycotts by everyone else in the region escapes me.

My only consolation with Helen Thomas is that she was up in years and sooner or later had to retire. Hunter Thompson killed himself a few years ago, Bill Moyers retired earlier this year… who’s left?

Mr Gibbs added: “Obviously those remarks do not reflect the opinions of most of the people in here, and certainly not of the Administration.”

So what? Does Gibbs think her job (as an opinion columnist) is to reflect the opinion the opinion of the administration? If so, I wouldn’t be surprised, since the administration seems to think that’s the job of news writers.

Helen Thomas is entitled to her opinion, as are those who defend Israel’s actions, no matter what.

And I’m also annoyed by people using her age as an excuse for her opinions.

anon, I agree. But I think others are bringing up her age to dismiss her as old and senile.

and I could add, at the “tender” age of 58, I’m also saying fuckit, I’m gonna say what I think and stop trying to make nice.

So much for “” Disagree with what you say, but shall defend to extremis your right to say it””

Maybe there should be a competition for replacement jingle.

Like: You have your opinion, show me the facts, or shut up!

Does Greshams’s Law apply to commentators?

Oh lord god, I am so very weary of people saying “well we butchered the American indigenes, back when, so we have no right…”

Israel is genociding their population today. Today.

If the US was gunning down, blowing up, torturing, savaging, kidnapping Navajo children at rodeos in New Mexio today, dont we think that would be an international issue?

Answer: Yes it would and yes it should be decried and boycotted and embargoed sanctioned and stopped. Today.

Instead Israel gets to endlessly cover their insane orgiastic butchery with a fine paper of “but we had to flee here / they did it to us first”. And we all nod our heads.

Will someone please point out to me where in the Western World, today, ethnically and religious Hebrew peoples are being tormented and need to flee.

Please.

The very fact that we slaughtered several million “American indigenes” is the reason that we must speak out against what is happening in Palestine today. I am not talking about a necessary precondition of moral purity before weighing in on such issues: there is no group not stained by the wantonly let blood of others somewhere in their (most likely not too distant) pasts. It is not hypocritical of us to speak out against the atrocities being visited upon the Palestinians, partly in our names, because we ourselves are past masters of genocide; if purity were a precondition then no one would be eligible to protest and the slaughter would continue, unabated, without the slightest qualm. Theoretically the world acknowledged it had to change after World War II and theoretically it did. The reality, however, stayed much the same. In light of the Holocaust what the Israelis are perpetrating against the Palestinians is archly sardonic. It is occurring because America allows it to happen. Our species’s inability or unwillingness to pass on information crucial to its survival from generation to generation is terrifying, especially in light of the impending calamities ahead in the next century.

I’ve been turning over and over her remarks in my head and they don’t make any sense. The question was what she thought of Israel (a country) and she said “they” (people–Israelis? Jews? Palestinians? etc.) should get the hell out of Palestine, and laughed in a nervous sort of way. When asked if there was anything else, she turned serious and said these people are occupied, they’ve been living there for years and its’s not Poland or Germany. So is that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, or all of the Palestinian whether citizens or not, or what? When pressed on where the “Jews” should go, which she herself never mentioned, she said back home, to Poland, to Germany or America or wherever.

The only way any of this conversation makes any sense is if she is talking about the creation of the state in 1948. There, I would agree, as did many Jews at the time, that Jews from Germany or Poland who are running from murderers, cannot then murder and chase out a 3rd party in a far away place. This is a cardinal sin of Jewish law and thus makes the very forming of the state of Israel as a “Jewish State” that must murder to survive as such, completely illegitimate and un-Jewish. I just wish she would have said it like that instead of the way she did.

well the Jews have an inalienable Nazi Holocaust card they can play whenever they feel “threatened.” i do wonder what the younger Jews/Israelis think about the Palestinians and all those dispossessed.

this is such fun for the powers that be. to have the truth spoken and then dismissed with “how dare they accuse me of being prejudiced!, Im Jewish. i can’t be prejudiced. i am one of the “chosen few.”

it really is a crime all around that no one can call them on their hubris. i often thought the Jews should be given Germany after WWII, but as always there is no easy answer.

what will have to be done is to force Israel to live with the Palestinians in Palestine or else the apartheid state will devour the Jews. the Jews are going to push the issue one day and some Arabs will decide one day enough is enough.

what i am astounded at is the cavalier attitude the Arabs have towards the Palestinians and the Iranians.

do the Arabs think the Israelis will stop in their attempt to “control” Iran and not go after anyone else who is “threatening” Israel.

my Gosh, who can threaten Israel? with American military hardware and money, the Israelis are unstoppable in the military arena.

i guess it will have to come down to the attack on Persian Iran for the Arabs to realize they are next. after all the hatred stirred by the Israeli occupation of Israel with America support, it’s just a matter of time before the war spreads from Iran all over the Arab/Islamic world. 9/11 was just a taste for America of blowback.

that alone is worth relocating the Israelis. what kind of neighborhood is that to live in anyway. the well has been poisoned. it will take greater efforts to begin to trust someone like Israel when the history of the Middle East is one of Arab hostility to Israeli behavior. no matter the purity of Israeli intentions, the neighborhood is not one of hope and possibilities. since Arabs have been living there most of the recent Christian history, i see now what it is to stir up a hornet’s nest. unless the Israelis get rid of all the “hornets” they are going to be fighting hornets for a long time.

amazing to think America is paying for all this. too.

read Mark Twain’s description of Palestine in the 19th century

S Brennan: we seem to agree and yet you attack me. Not sure why. my point was that I think Thomas’ comments are about the legitimacy of the forming of the state of Israel. I agree, as many did at the time, that forming nation-states 60 years ago by killing or chasing away the people who live there already is illegitimate. It’s even worse when it claims to be in the name of Judaism, which does not, in any way, condone such behavior. Being Jewish, that’s the part I can’t stand. Don’t see how it’s racist to simply not be a Zionist. I’m not a rabid nationalist about my own country. Why should I be one about Israel?

“read Mark Twain’s description of Palestine in the 19th century”

Why? Because it’s since been debunked by actual historians many times over? Twain was a great writer but when he visited Palestine he had already fallen for the Zionist myth of “land without a people.” (The Zionist project was well underway by the time Twain visited.) To this day, supporters of Israel still trot out Twain’s clearly bigoted and ignorant memoir to explain away the dispossession and genocide of the Palestinians. The same trick was tried later by Joan Peters, with her ridiculous “From Time Immemorial,” initially lauded by historians (and, of course, Zionists) but now found to be a pile of embarrassingly fact-free fabrications.

Alan Dershowitz, of course, still cites these two sources as unimpeachable. I think we can do better.

A comment that was made elsewhere.

History and the world were a lot different when Helen Thomas learned it and the recalled facts are much different for her as well. To pass judgment upon the Lady set at today’s standards is perversely anachronistic, Helen was obviously speaking from anamnesis that most no longer share, and fueled by honest outrage at the inhumanity exhibited. The world has less integrity than Helen Thomas, and nary a foot to stand on to level criticism in her direction. If anything, Helen Thomas’ remarks were righteously drawn. On this, the world needs to listen, stifle its ill-considered opinions, and Respect an Elder.

One last remark, what shabby treatment Helen Thomas ended her service, only adds to the light being shown upon the atrocities and wrongs being perpetrated upon a weak, proud, and honorable peoples. In that, Helen goes in a blaze of glory.

and:

From Al Jazeera today re Helen Thomas

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/201068132838677696.html

a temperate report, more light than heat.

ADDENDUM:
Does not it appear that Helen Thomas was accosted in a public place, unprepared for the interrogation, and responding to that unexpected trap being set by that zionist bigot? Good god, the camera was directly in her face, as was that religious swine. Cannot Helen’s discomfort at having her private space violated be seen?

Helen Thomas has no charge that she must apologize for, none whatsoever. She has not consistently lied and dissembled to the world such as Israeli Zionists do, it is now expected of all their blathering. When was the last time you heard a item of truth coming out of Washington D.C. and its press, and don’t hold your breath until you do. The creation and twisting of offense to service a lie is not the standard that Helen Thomas is to be judged, nor should those who keep her to that twisted standard be listened to, such statements are the squealing of swine, despicable and morally reprehensible swine.

It was the victim, Helen Thomas, that has lived a life of integrity and honorable service, no one else in this sad affair can claim the same. There are few people in the entire country that have the standing to pass judgment on Helen Thomas, and none of the commentators here are of that quality.