Good Riddance to Helen Thomas

So, Helen Thomas has been let go because she is at best an anti-Zionist or worst antisemitic. Ms. Thomas remarks at a White House hosted Jewish Heritage Celebration, said that Jews who live in Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "Go home... to Poland and Germany."; I guess because they did so well there during WWII. Of Course, Helen Thomas has been anti-Zionist ( meaning Israel has no right to exist) since the Kennedy Administration. This may have culminated in one infamous occasion during a press conference, prompting Bush (43)s then press secretary Tony Snow, to respond to Ms Thomas, "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view."

The illegality of occupied annexation is based on the Fourth Geneva Convention (GCIV) of 1949 and Protocol I, an amendment to the Geneva Convention in 1977, which prohibits an occupying power to annex land. The issue here however is one of national sovereignty. Israel, like many countries (including the US) have never signed on to these provisions. It is these issues of sovereignty that have been the bane of the UN, that has espoused world governance since it's inception. However the UN's tendency toward oppression and re-distribution, tends usurped the voluntary compliance needed for the UN to have any real authority.

Of course the whole annexation of occupied territory is a red herring anyway. After WWI the area that now encompasses Jordon, Israel and the West Bank, was a territory under British Mandate, referred to generally as the Palestine Territory. In 1923 the area was to be divided between Israel and an Arab Palestine State, separated along the Jordon river, that became Jordon. However in 1947 the UN created a second Arab Palestine State out the Israel partition on the along the West Bank; a year later the "Palestine Jews" finally declared their own State of Israel and became “Israelis” . In 1967 Israel defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordon, occupying the Golan Heights on the Syria Border, Judea-Samaria on the Jordon border and the Sinai Desert on the Egyptian border; if one looks at a map this creates what Israel called defensible borders. In 1982 Israel returned the Sinai Desert to Egypt, with Israel maintaining control over the Gaza Strip. In regards to the Palestinian problem, in the 18 years Judea-Samaria was under Jordanian control, there was never an attempt to give the Arab Palestinians their own state. Also, there have certainly been Jews in the middle-east since recorded history; the historical bible is an obviously source for this. There are also the "Arab Jews", or the Jewish population that originated in Arab countries. These Jews constitute 1/3 or 2 million of the Jews in Israel.

The reason for this Readers Digest history of Palestine is to place Helen Thomas' comments in historic prospective. Her call for the Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine”, is not call out of the occupied land taken in 1967. No, she defines Palestine as the British Mandate territory taken from the Ottoman Empire. Thomas further statement that the Jews "go back home" to Germany and Poland, is the anti-Zionist belief that the 1947 borders of Israel, drawn by the United Nations, is an annexation of occupied territory and not the granted territory by the United Nations; conveniently ignoring that the UN is the arbitrator of International Law. So, knowing the history of how Israel came to be, it would be a stretch to believe Helen Thomas is an anti-Zionist based of some violation of International law.

In the final analysis, Thomas is simply antisemitic; she blamed Israel for 911 and has sided with the PLO, Hezbollah, Hamas and any other governance or terrorist organization that has called for the destruction of Israel. How an antisemitic like Helen Thomas achieved her front row center seat by the White House Press Corp is inexcusable. The only caveat is that Thomas has never carried any weight as a journalist, but there were still apologist for Thomas, one saying tht because she never used the word Jew, her remarks were not antisemitic. But it was a straight forward remark by Robert Gibbs that put Thomas' hate speech in a proper prospective, “"I think those remarks were offensive and reprehensible. She should and has apologized because obviously those remarks do not reflect certainly the opinion of most of the people in here and certainly of the administration."

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