The Passion of Helen Thomas, and Other Cautionary Tales from Israel/Palestine

The distinguished career of Helen Thomas, dean of the White House press corps and a reporter whose boldness in speaking truth to power for over 60 years earned her the rightful approbation of American progressives, met with an ignominious end this week. The octogenarian Thomas, a Lebanese-American, retired Monday following a public outcry over comments she made about Israel during the White House’s Jewish Heritage Celebration on May 27, four days before Israel’s bloody raid on a humanitarian flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip.

Thomas’s remarks were captured on video by Rabbi David Nesenoff of RabbiLive.com, and quickly made rounds on the internet before being picked up by the mainstream media. Here is a quick recap:

Q: “Any comments on Israel? We’re asking everyone today, any comments?”

Thomas: “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.”

Q: “Ooooh. Any better comments?”

Thomas: “Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land. It’s not German, it’s not Poland (sic).”

Q: “So, where should they go? What should they do?”

Thomas: “They’d go home.”

Q: “Where’s home?”

Thomas: “Poland, Germany.”

Q: “So you’re saying Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?”

Thomas: “…and America and everywhere else.”

Her comments drew immediate reproach from all quarters, including the White House. Speaking to CNN, former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer accused Thomas of advocating “religious cleansing” and called for her dismissal. As M.J. Rosenberg pointed out, the public furor over the Thomas video represents a rare public relations  victory for Israel amidst a rising tide of global condemnation. Whereas last week’s flotilla fiasco redounded to Israel’s serious discredit by exposing the inhumanity of its Gaza blockade, Thomas’s remarks have boosted U.S. support for Israel by reinforcing the notion that anyone critical of its policies harbors a secret desire to see Israeli Jews driven into the sea (or at least deported).

As a frequent critic of Israel, I do not condone Thomas’s remarks, which defy the call for “mutual respect and tolerance” expressed in the apology she posted on her website shortly after this brouhaha erupted. Nor, I’d wager, would most “pro-Palestinian” activists, including those who favor the creation of a single, binational state in Israel-Palestine. After all, a consistent commitment to democratic universalism, human rights, and international law is not compatible with ethnic or religious discrimination of any kind, even in recompense for past injustices. Thomas, it seems, allowed her outrage at Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to cloud her normally lucid moral judgment.

Of course, the question still remains as to whether Thomas’s imprudent statements about Israeli Jews were subject to a double standard. As others have pointed out, public figures from Mike Huckabee to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey to liberal blogger Matt Yglesias have openly called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians without eliciting so much as a peep from the mainstream media, no less the condemnation of the President of the United States (the White House called Thomas’s remarks “offensive and reprehensible”). In that respect, Thomas’s auto-da-fé simply reflects, on the level of U.S. politics, the same imbalance of power between Israel and the Palestinians that makes the Middle East conflict so difficult to resolve.

In sharp contrast with the media circus engendered by Thomas’s remarks, little has been made of the fact that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman — a cabinet member, mind you, not some doddering left-wing journalist — has called for the compulsory “transfer” of Israel’s Arab citizens out of the country. Nor of the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political party, the Likud, officially opposes the creation of a Palestinian state, hoping instead to relegate the Palestinians to a permanent apartheid existence. Just last week, the journalist Max Blumenthal released a video of an Israeli demonstration in front of the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv, during which hundreds of flag-waving Israeli protesters chanted “Death to the Arabs!” Rest assured, if a teeming crowd of Palestinians intoned “Death to the Jews!” from Ramallah, we’d be watching it on CNN, not on YouTube.

But forget the double standards for a second. Thomas’s shocking views on Israel-Palestine are indicative of a situation in which the perception of maximalist positions on one side — i.e., Thomas’s belief, not unfounded, that Israel’s government has an interest neither in partitioning the land nor in granting equal citizenship to its Palestinian subjects — provokes a maximalist reaction on the other. Were the prospect of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state on the horizon — rather than expanding settlements, seaborne commando assaults, and Operation Cast Lead — Thomas would likely be singing a different tune.

Israeli governments have long attributed the absence of peace to the fact that groups like Hamas refuse to concede Israel’s legitimacy. But from the standpoint of basic human psychology, why would they, given the perpetual expropriation by Israel of the very land over which Israelis and Palestinians are supposedly negotiating? It’s no surprise, then, that twenty years after the inception of the peace process, huge swaths of the Palestinian public still cling to maximalist aspirations. They’re simply reflecting what they experience, day in and day out, as an unremitting drive by radical Israeli settlers to drive them into the sea. Maximalism begets maximalism.

And so, rather than rejoicing at Helen Thomas’s downfall, Israelis should take note. If an intelligent, secular, cosmopolitan individual like Thomas can come to harbor the kind of resentments that breed such appalling, anti-humanist remarks, what does that say about the image Israel projects to the world? And what hope is there for the average Palestinian, who doesn’t merely read about the deprivations, but lives them?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons