She said what!!?!?!?!?!
badbrains
Posts: 10,255
Helen Thomas- "Jews need to get out of Palestine and return home to Poland and Germany!" At some Jewish function none the less........Wow........
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I've been searching for an hour and all I can find on dozens of U.S News Websites are edited comments and attacks on her character calling for her to be fired.
Helen Thomas: Tell em to get the hell out of Palestine.
Nessenoff: Oh. Any better comments on Israel?
Thomas: Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land. It’s not German, and it’s not Poland.
Nessenoff: So where should they go and what should they do?
Thomas: They should go home!
Nessenoff: Where’s their home?
Thomas: Poland. Germany.
Nessenoff: So you’re saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?
Thomas: And America and everywhere else.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and ... 259646.stm
US reporter Helen Thomas quits over Israel comments
Monday, 7 June 2010
Veteran US White House reporter Helen Thomas has retired after making controversial remarks about Israel.
In an interview on 27 May, she said that Israelis should get "the hell out of Palestine" and suggested they went to Germany, Poland or the US.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said her comments were "offensive and reprehensible". She has since apologised.
Thomas, 89, was the longest-serving reporter in the White House.
She has spent most of her career working for United Press International wire service, but had been working as a columnist for Hearst newspapers since 2000.
The veteran correspondent and columnist has been a feature of life at the White House since the early days of the Kennedy administration.
To withdraw from active duty at the age of 89 might not seem so remarkable, but Helen Thomas's fall from grace, from a coveted front row seat at White House briefings to retirement amid a chorus of denunciation, was abrupt.
It's an ignominious end to a career which began in 1943, when Thomas joined the wire service United Press International.
"Helen Thomas announced Monday that she is retiring, effective immediately," Hearst news reported.
"Her decision came after her controversial comments about Israel and the Palestinians were captured on videotape and widely disseminated on the internet."
Thomas's remarks were made in a video interview with the website RabbiLive.com, when she was asked whether she had any "comments on Israel".
"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," she said.
"Remember these people are occupied and it's their land, not Germany and not Poland.
"They can go home, Poland, Germany, and America and everywhere else," she added.
On Monday the White House Correspondents' Association issued a statement praising Helen Thomas's "long and distinguished career in journalism".
"Along the way, she shattered many glass ceilings, including serving as the first female president of the White House Correspondents' Association," the statement said.
"We are saddened by her recent comments, but we commend her for a trailblazing career, and we wish her the best."
Her comments also sparked criticism from the Obama administration and led to her being dropped as graduation speaker for a local high school.
Continue reading the main story
Remember these people are occupied and it's their land, not Germany and not Poland
Helen Thomas Former White House reporter Bitter end for 'press corps dean'
In an e-mail to parents explaining the change, Alan Goodwin, principal of Walt Whitman High School in Maryland, said that "graduation celebrations are not the venue for divisiveness".
On her website, Thomas said she regretted her comments.
"They do not reflect my heartfelt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognise the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."
wow - talk about being sensitive - or was it just that I am insensitive?
B, have you actually read her comments or seen the video?
She did not say that Israel should go back to the '67 line. She said Israelis should go back to their homes in Poland and Germany, which is outrageous not only because it is naive and divorced from reality, but because it implicitly denies to Jews the very right to national self-determination that she would (rightly and justly) have granted to the Palestinians.
Ya. The "mistake" of being a bigoted racist for 90 years.
ha, Ha.
Out to pasture you old cow.
Did you read what she said? I posted the transcript above. She said that the Palestinians are occupied, and that the Jews there should go back to their homes in Poland, Germany, America and anywhere else.
Rabbi Nessenoff: Any comments on Israel? We’re asking everybody today, any comments on Israel?
Helen Thomas: Tell em to get the hell out of Palestine.
Nessenoff: Oh. Any better comments on Israel?
Thomas: Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land. It’s not German, and it’s not Poland.
Nessenoff: So where should they go and what should they do?
Thomas: They should go home!
Nessenoff: Where’s their home?
Thomas: Poland. Germany.
Nessenoff: So you’re saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?
Thomas: And America and everywhere else.
'In 2002, she asked a question that few others at the White House would have dared: "Does the president think that the Palestinians have a right to resist 35 years of brutal military occupation and suppression?"'
Care to explain how she's been a bigoted racist for 90 years?
The woman is 165 years old and never got over her front-row view of the Lincoln assassination. She should have stepped aside several administrations ago.
And for you being a bigoted racist for all of 13 years????? It amazes me how much hate you throw at people. Particularly Muslims or anyone against your great country....from your name to your posts, how can anyone take you serious? I sure as hell don't.....maybe we can start a "kids" forum for you. There you can insult all the people you want and no one would care cuz you're just a kid......with a big mouth.
Helen Thomas, veteran reporter: why she had to resign
Her fierce questions shocked White House staff; Castro refused to answer her. And now veteran reporter Helen Thomas has had to quit. By Chris McGreal
Chris McGreal
The Guardian, Wednesday 9 June 2010
Fidel Castro was once asked to define the difference between democracy in Cuba and the United States. "I don't have to answer questions from Helen Thomas," the old revolutionary replied.
The grand dame of the White House press corps, who outlasted nine American presidential administrations – and Castro's rule – was finally forced to halt her determined, often opinion-laden questioning and into retirement this week over comments on the issue closest to her heart, the Middle East.
There were no fond farewells for the 89-year-old reporter remembered as a trailblazer for women in journalism but also as a grumpy old contrarian. Her front-row seat in the White House briefing room, in recent years uniquely tagged with her own name rather than that of an organisation, was left empty.
Reporters who variously described Thomas as cranky, stubborn and opinionated said they weren't surprised she'd finally overstepped the mark when she told a rabbi that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Poland and Germany. But the torrent of anger and criticism was tempered by Thomas' lofty status.
By the time of her resignation she had clocked up many firsts: first female officer of the National Press Club and first female president of the White House Correspondents' Association. She worked as a White House reporter for far longer than any other – for half a century. She was probably also the first White House correspondent to have a birthday cake delivered by a president, when Barack Obama arrived bearing cup cakes (they share a birthday).
Thomas joined United Press International in 1943 when it was still a major force in American journalism. She was 23 and had not long left Detroit, where she grew up to Lebanese immigrant parents. Her first job for UPI was reporting on women's issues. She wrote a celebrity column then moved to cover the justice department, FBI and other federal agencies.
She was assigned to cover then President-elect John F Kennedy in late 1960 and so began a reputation for relentless questioning that exasperated American leaders. Kennedy said of her: "Helen would be a nice girl if she'd ever get rid of that pad and pencil."
It was a sentiment echoed down the decades. "Isn't there a war somewhere we could send her to?" Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, once asked.
Thomas's determined questioning and forthright reporting chipped away at what had long been an all-male and all-white club of reporters that was often regarded as far too cosy with the officials they were writing about, and still is. For many years she was frequently the only woman in the room.
In a photograph of White House correspondents questioning President Lyndon Johnson, Thomas is the only female face. She was also the only female print reporter among the journalists accompanying President Richard Nixon on his historic visit to China in 1972. Barbara Walters was there as part of the NBC television news team.
She became one of the instantly recognised faces on television at presidential press conferences. She was so well known that she played herself in two films, Dave and The American President.
Thomas quit UPI in 2000 after it was bought by the Moonie leader, Reverend Sun Myung Moon. She called the purchase "a bridge too far". She had worked for the agency for 57 years, nearly half of them as UPI's White House bureau chief. That might have been the end of her career. She said she had planned to "hang up my daily news spurs" at the time. But she was approached by Hearst newspapers with an offer to become a columnist.
"I gratefully said, why not? After all those years of telling it like it is, now I can tell it how I want it to be. To put another point on it, I get to wake up every morning and say, 'Who am I mad at today?'" she wrote in her memoir Thanks For The Memories, Mr President. Many of her colleagues were surprised to hear that she regarded herself as having held back until then.
But first there was the question of her seat in the front row of the White House briefing room. Technically it should have gone to someone from one of the major news organisations. But Sam Donaldson, the boisterous former White House correspondent for ABC news, said she kept it because no one could imagine asking her to move to the back of the room. That marked another first for Thomas – an opinion columnist in a reporter's seat in the White House briefing room. Her colleagues noticed an even more strident and opinionated tone to her questioning.
President George Bush had just taken power in a disputed election. In the coming years, Thomas made no secret of her opposition to the war in Iraq, offering a determined line of questioning that some of her colleagues appeared to shy away from in the post 9/11 atmosphere in America.
In 2002, she asked a question that few others at the White House would have dared: "Does the president think that the Palestinians have a right to resist 35 years of brutal military occupation and suppression?"
Her questions were sometimes deemed to be so laden with hostile opinion that one of Bush's press secretaries, Ari Fleischer, once said: "We will temporarily suspend the Q&A portion of today's briefing to bring you this advocacy minute."
But she has not been averse to giving liberal presidents a hard time too. Scott Wilson, White House correspondent for the Washington Post, said Thomas did not go easy on Obama. "She did have a knack for trying to hold this administration accountable, particularly for its Middle East policy. She asked the question about which countries in the Middle East have nuclear weapons," he said "They couldn't not take her seriously. Her questions demanded an answer."
Mostly they didn't get one, but that was no less frustrating for those on the receiving end. "What's the difference between your foreign policy and Bush's?" she asked the presidential press secretary, Robert Gibbs.
A fortnight ago she challenged the president over what is increasingly known as "Obama's war". "When are you going to get out of Afghanistan?" she asked. "Why are we continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don't give us this Bushism, 'If we don't go there, they'll all come here'."
She was no less forthright in offering her opinion on the recent Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla, calling it a "deliberate massacre and international crime". The New York Times said in its story about her resignation that two sets of rules applied to reporters covering the president: "those for the regular White House correspondents, and those for Helen Thomas."
But an alternative view might be that Thomas was a courageous voice in an often craven White House press corps.
Even if White House correspondents sometimes grew exasperated with her, some said they respected her pedigree and generally put her shortcomings down to age. She grew so frail that other reporters had to help her walk from her desk to her chair in the briefing room, and she would sometimes fall asleep. She appeared less and less at the daily briefings.
Perhaps the best evidence that Thomas had lost touch was her failure to understand the consequences of saying that Israel's Jews should go back to Poland and Germany to a rabbi with a video camera at a White House event to mark Jewish heritage month. It is possible that given her Lebanese background, that is what she has thought all along. But she should not have been surprised at the storm of protest.
Donaldson, who describes Thomas as a friend, said that while he would not defend her comments they probably reflect the views of many people of Arab descent. He then called her a "pioneer" for women. "No one can take that away from Helen," he said.
Do you even know who she is?
electric delta has this right. I know exactly who she is, I once was a reporter for UPI and can tell you that this is how people felt about her 20 years ago.
You don't have to have worked for UPI to know who she is. I never worked for UPI and yet I know who she is.
And she wasn't a talking head. She worked in print media as a columnist.
And as for 'people', what does that mean? Some people? All people? You and your right-wing buddies?
I suppose you'd prefer White House correspondents to just toe the line and not rock the boat by sticking to innocuous, unchallenging questions?
You should consider switching to decaf and curbing your tendency to jump to completely unwarranted conclusions. And dial down the hostility while you're at it.
I'm not the one slagging off an 89 year old woman on the internet.
She also happens to be a highly respected columnist with a history of showing integrity, and taking a stand by asking the questions that most people are too spineless to ask. But never mind that; she insulted Israel, so she's now fair game for abuse and villification. And certain people are now getting off on trashing her entire career.
But I'm the one with a problem? :?
No, I'd prefer impartiality and responsibility from a White House correspondent as opposed to a woman who clearly has no problem inciting hatred.
Things are much bigger than your point of view. Go back to your Noam Chomsky books.
Asking probing questions was her responsibility, and by all accounts she did a very good job of it.
And when did she incite hatred? She suggested that the Jews living in the occupied territories go back to where they came from. How is that inciting hatred? The settlers have absolutely no right to be there.
It sounds like her comments were far more sweeping than that ... If she was just talking about illegal settlements, there would have been some concerns expressed but not like this. She did what a lot of us do from time to time ... Had an emotional outburst without thinking it through first. I don't agree with the whole all the Jews should go back to Poland thing but I am not sure that she should lose her job either. We should all be permitted some less than illustrious moments.
Given the situation in the Middle East at present, she should've been more responsible. It was very brash and careless.
By the way, the Jews were there a LONG time before anybody else. A Jewish element in that region has never been fully purged - and should never be.
Yeah, she should have clarified her points. She could have expressed herself better. Although she did mention the occupation at the outset so for people to then presume that she was referring to all the Jews in Israel is a bit of a stretch, as is supposing that she was deliberately trying to be insulting by referring to Germany and Poland - though she did also mention 'America and everywhere else'. If she'd been talking about any other country her comments would probably have been brushed aside as being thoughtless, or untactful, but because they involved Israel she's now lost her job along with having to endure a shit-storm of abuse.
you are right, no one else has ever been fired for making comments about other groups of people
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan