Laura Flanders often appears on the MSNBC political shows and is a voice of calm and reason juxtaposed to the manic guests from the rightwing. True to form, Laura is able to step back and see the opprobrium being heaped upon Helen Thomas from a larger perspective. The only thing I disagree with in her column is the first part of the title.
Helen Thomas has as much right as anyone to state her personal opinion. If she is outraged over the blockade of Gaza, I agree with her. If she is furious over the way the media was manipulated into repeating the disinformation coming out of Israel after the attack on peace activists on the high seas, I agree with her.
Glenn Greenwald of Salon meticulously reports what eyewitnesses are saying really happened during that attack.
I don’t know of any other country that can keep 1.5 million people imprisoned and half starved and still come across as the “victim.” If anyone criticizes Israeli policies (including Jews within Israel,) they are bombarded with outrageous accusations of anti-semitism. One person who commented on Flanders’ article mentioned that the Palestinians are also “semites,” so that whole argument is bogus.
I don’t care what the White House says, I’ll always be a Helen Thomas fan. She had the moxie to ask tough questions when the rest of the press corps slobbered all over George Bush. She’s one tough broad, and I don’t think she needed to apologize for giving her opinion when ambushed by someone with a video camera.
the years. And I also agree with those who observe that people like Huckabee and some American neo-cons who have advocated ethnically cleansing Palestine of Arabs, should be held to the same standard.
That said, I also support a standard that condemns insensitive and bigoted statements by all parties – even those I like. It seems clear to me that Thomas overstepped and should, like anyone else, be held accountable, though not, perhaps, subjected to the current circus of condemnation. I don’t think we do our credibility any good when we excuse lapses from a public person (and Thomas is a public person) we otherwise find sympathetic or in service of a cause we find sympathetic.
Whether or not Israel should have ever been established and whether or not there were crimes against Palestinians inherent in the creation of the Israel, and whether or not its government is behaving badly, the state of Israel has long been fait accompli. Suggesting that people who live there should be dispersed back to the countries where they were butchered (including in the period when Jews attempted to return to Poland after the war, for instance) is not really anything but a rather nasty piece of pique.
By the way, if you are interested, Peter Beinart, interestingly enough, has written an excellent article on the changing conception of Zionism among American Jews and in Israel. The article, The failure of the American Jewish Establishment, can be found here
reflect immediate outrage over the attack on the Marvi Marmara.
You are right about the ad hominem “anti-semitism” attack leveled against anyone who criticizes Israeli policy – witness the treatment that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt received after the publication of their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (an excellent book by the way). My particular annoyance is the label, “self-hating Jew” which is lobbed at Jews who critize Israel. Lots of those in Israel, right now, just not enough to get rid of Netanyahu.
But I still think Thomas’ comments go beyond legitimate criticism.