Playboy has published an interview with disgraced White House reporter Helen Thomas in which she claims that the anti-Semitic comments she made on video were intentional, and made some additional dizzying statements that give an insight into her bizarre world view. Thomas manages to condense an impressive number of anti-Semitic slogans and myths into a single interview.
Asked about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Helen Thomas, who has been outspoken in her animosity towards Israel over the years, issued a few new gems:
* The Jews (Thomas seems to insist on calling Israelis 'Jews') “want to come and take their [Palestinians’] homes and land and water and kill their children and kill them”. Helen has moved up from describing Israelis as land grabbers, and now portrays them as genocidal and intent on killing children, in the best Goebbels tradition.
* Israel should not exist. Its Jewish citizens should move to other countries because Jews have not been persecuted since World War II. “If they were, we sure would hear about it”, says Thomas, who believes that Jews control the media, like all conspirators. As to no anti-Semitism in our world today, perhaps she should visit fighthatred.com. Or look in the mirror.
* The Jackson-Vanik law, which “said the U.S. would not trade with Russia unless it allowed unlimited Jewish emigration”, was intended to send these Jews to Palestine so they would “and uproot these [Palestinian] people, throw them out of their homes”.
There is no excuse for the pretence of ignorance by Helen Thomas here, who was already a veteran White House correspondent at the time. She knows full well that Jackson-Vanik seized upon the plight of Jews wishing to leave the increasingly anti-Semitic USSR as a means of exposing the Soviet’s abuse of Human Rights on the international stage. She also knows that Jackson-Vanik did not manage to increase Jewish emigration from the USSR.
Helen Thomas ignores facts that she is fully aware of, because she is trying to build up a conspiracy case against U.S. Jews, according to which they caused the U.S. government to fight for the release of Soviet Jewry through Jackson-Vanik in order to send these Jews to Palestine. (BTW, of the Jews that did leave, as many settled in the USA and in Europe as in Israel).
In Helen’s world, the goal of the Jewish Conspiracy was to have the ex-Soviet refugees that came to Israel ‘throw Palestinians out of their homes’. This statement is so detached from any basis in history or reality, it is beyond reason. But it gets better, because Helen also claims that…
* Israeli soldiers go to Palestinian houses ‘knocking on a door at three in the morning and say “This is my home”, forcing people out of homes they’ve lived in for centuries’.
Again, Helen describes things so incredibly detached from reality that even hardcore Hamas and Hezbollah propagandists have not made this claim.
* It should come as no surprise that Helen’s rabid hatred of Jews/Israelis and belief that they are genocidal allows her to justify Palestinian terrorism and suicide attacks against civilians. She even puts a patriotic face on it and states “What would any American do if their land was being taken? Remember Pearl Harbor.”
Of course, in Helen’s eyes, there is no difference between fighting an attacking army or blowing up mothers and their children in a mall.
Among the other little gems in the interview with the proud anti-Semite:
* "The Israelis are not even Semites! They’re Europeans, and they’ve come from somewhere else."
* “I’m not anti-Jewish; I’m anti-Zionist”
* “Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists”
* The Holocaust – “here’s nothing wrong with remembering it, but why do we have to constantly remember?”
* “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?” When the interviewer calls the faulty logic of her conspiracy theory into question
* “Did a Jew write this?” When asked about a negative article about her.
* “I worry about young people really getting to know what’s going on in our world.”
