Helen Thomas' Shameful Racism

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright June 7, 2010
All Rights Reserved.                                

             Telling Jews to “go home” in a live radio interview May 27 with RabbiLive.com, 89-year-old grand dame of the White House Press Corps. Helen Thomas decided to abruptly retire June 7.  Calling her comments “offensive” and “reprehensible,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs distanced himself from Thomas, despite the administration’s tense relationship with Israel.  Relations headed south when Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel March 9 and was blindsided by Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai’s announcement to build new units in the West Bank settlement of Ramat Schlomo.  Biden hoped for some concessions from Israel to jumpstart the peace process.  Continued building in the West Bank is a deal-breaker for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.  When the Israeli navy killed nine “peace activists” violating the blockade June 1, relations hit a new low.

            Helen’s outrageous comments were tinged by recent events but hark back to her Lebanese roots, having little sympathy for the U.S.’s No. 1 Mideast ally.  Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine" and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and “everywhere else,” said Thomas, shocking fellow reporters, especially the White House Press Corps.  Thomas covered every president since President John F. Kennedy, giving her a kind of seniority not seen by other White House correspondents.  Since covering the White House in the early sixties, Helen has been critical of Israel, buying the Palestinian line that Jews occupy Arab lands.  Thomas never mentions that Arabs attacked Israel in 1967, losing the Six-Day War and territories of Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights.  She insists the land belongs to Palestinians without any sovereignty.

            Thomas’ bigoted remarks cost her current job as Hearst Newspapers' White House bureau chief.  She was abruptly dropped by her speakers bureau “Nine Speakers, Inc. and cancelled from an upcoming graduation speech at D.C.’s Walt Whitman High.  Thomas abruptly issued and apology for her public remarks.  “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians.  They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come in the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance.  May that day come soon,” said Thomas, falling short of a full mea culpa.  Saying her remarks “does not go far enough,” Anti-defamation League Director Abraham Foxman called on Thomas to apologize to Jews for her hurtful comments.  Spewing platitudes about Mideast peace doesn’t undo her racist comments about Jews.

            Telling Jews to go back to Germany, Poland and the U.S. is precisely the same hate speech of Iran’s anti-Semitic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Hosting a Holocaust deniers’ conference in Tehran Dec. 11, 2006, Ahmadinejad, like Thomas, told European nation’s to relocate Israel to the “fatherlands” from which they fled during Adolf Hitler’s Nazi persecution in WW II.  Thomas wants her journalist colleagues to believe her statements were a fluke, when in fact she’s been ragging on Israel for her entire career.  Telling Israeli Jews, many of whom escaped or survived Hitler’s death camps in WW II, to go back to Poland, Germany and the U.S. smacks of Ahmadinejad’s brand of anti-Semitism.  Lauded as a respected member of the White House Press Corps. doesn’t jibe with her racist remarks.  Thomas’ remarks have nothing to do with the First Amendment.

            Thomas went over the deep end, caught up in all the hubbub over Israel’s recent attempts to enforce its Gaza blockade.  Telling Jews to go back to “the fatherlands” in Europe reveals her deep personal hatred toward Jews.  “Her remarks were outrageous, offensive and inappropriate, especially since she uttered them on a day the White House had set aside to celebrate the extraordinary accomplishments of American Jews during Jewish Heritage Month,” said Foxman.   Though born August 4, 1920 in Winchester, Kentucky, Thomas remained true to her family’s Lebanese roots.  Her pointed questions about Israel over the years relates to her sympathies toward Palestinians, agreeing with Hezbollah’s and Hamas’ hatred toward the Jewish State.  Telling Israelis to go back to Europe or the U.S. were not out-of-character.  Considered a liberal Democrat, Thomas was alienated during former President George W. Bush’s years.

            Thomas’ distinguished journalistic career came crashing down after expressing publicly her anti-Semitic views.  After breaking glass ceilings for female journalists, Thomas ends her career on a sour note.  Her shameful public remarks reveal her true feelings about Jews, with whom she’s contended since starting her journalism career in 1942 after graduating Wayne State University in Detroit.  She joined United Press International in 1942 and became the first female officer in the National Press Club. Telling Jews to go back to Europe or America offended many journalists.  “She should lose her job other this,” said former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.  No one can say Helen Thomas hastened her early retirement.  Given her advanced age, it’s obvious Helen no longer has the decorum needed to acquit herself as a White House correspondent or professional journalist.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.