Danny Schechter writes:
In 1960, I was fixated on emulating the courageous media personalities of the times, from Edward R. Murrow to a distinctive figure I came to admire at presidential press conferences – a wire service reporter named Helen Thomas.
In recent years, my faith in the power of dialogue in politics has been severely tested – as, no doubt has hers – in an age where diatribes and deliberate demonization chills debate and exchanges of opposing views.
Once you are labeled and stereotyped – especially if you are denounced as an anti-Semite – you are relegated to the fringes, pronounced a hater beyond redemption, and even beyond explanation.
As the legendary Helen Thomas soon found out.
The rise of a legend
As a member in good standing of an activist generation, I saw myself more as an outsider in contrast to Helen’s distinctive credentials as an insider, as a White House bureau chief and later as the dean of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Yet, beneath her establishment credentials and status, she was always an outsider too – one of nine children born to a family of Lebanese immigrants in Winchester Kentucky, who despite their Middle East origins were Christians in the Greek Orthodox Church.
She became a woman who broke the glass ceiling in the clubby, mostly male, inside-the-beltway world of big egos and self-important media prima donnas.
Her origins were more modest. She grew up in an ethnic neighborhood in Detroit.
Helen received her bachelor’s degree from Wayne State University in 1942, the year I was born. Earlier this year, her alma mater, of which she had taken so much pride in her achievements, canceled the award in her name.
A fall from grace
The withdrawal of her name from the prominent award was a striking gesture of cowardice and submission to an incident blown out of proportion that instantly turned Helen from a ‘she-ro’ to a zero.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center put her on their top ten list of anti-Semites after angry remarks she made about Israel went viral and exploded into a major story.
President Barack Obama who cheerfully brought her a birthday cake, later labeled her remarks as “reprehensible”.
You would think that given all the vicious ad hominems, Godwins and putdowns directed at him, he would be more cautious tossing slurs at others.
But no, all politicians pander to deflect criticism whenever the wind of enmity blows their way.
Now it was Helen who was being compared to Hitler in the latest furor. [Continue reading.]
The stablishment may have demonized and cast her aside… but she voiced the voice of the voiceless. She is not alone! She has millions of people who regard Hellen Thomas as a great soul, a serious jornalist a beautiful human being!
HELLEN THOMAS ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The WH, Obama and the press conference room STINKS!
Schechter wants the media to reconcile with Helen. Ain’t gonna happen. The “scandal” is much too useful to the Zionist project to keep convincing us that antisemitism is ubiquitous and universal, that we’re back in 1932, and that the only way to fix it is for the US t0 bomb Iran.
The entire article is worth reading.
As Helen Thomas said: “You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive,” and that is the sad truth that America has to live with for now.
Unfortunately most Americans have been conditioned by “Mad men”, PR agents, lobbyists and their paid politicians to be led without thinking at all deeply, otherwise more would balk at the deliberate and subtle conflating of criticism of Israel, and criticism of Zionism, with “Anti-Semitism”. Clever people pretend that the terms are interchangeable only to convince stupid people.
Anti-Semitism is the ignorant bigotry of stereotyping and discriminating against Jews, often associated with the historical pogroms in eastern Europe and especially with the Nazi racial campaign before WWII and which culminated in mass internment and the death of millions of Jews which was later generally known as the holocaust. According to Donald L. Niewyk, since the 1960s, the term has come to be used by scholars and popular writers to refer exclusively to the murder of more than 5,000,000 Jews by the Germans in World War II. The term entered common parlance in America after 1978, (as to be expected) the year that the popular mini-series Holocaust was broadcast on the American NBC television network.
Ridiculous as it may be now, in Europe and America writers have to tread through terms referring to these matters as if they were soldiers in a mine field, in fear of even criminal prosecution for denying or historically revising what has apparently become more than sacrosanct, or at least by diversion from the approved text the writer may get labelled an Anti-Semitic by some agency of the a Jewish organization such as the Anti Defamation League.
The Holocaust has been “institutionalized” and as such “written in stone” and “branded” and if it could be I have no doubt the same Jewish institutions would copy right and trade mark all aspects of the hideous history, without a second thought for the Roma, the homosexuals, the communists, the dissidents, and congenitally mentally ill, and many others who also perished by the madness of tyranny based on a racial myth of Aryan superiority. Norman G. Finkelstein coined the term, The Holocaust Industry when he wrote on Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering a book published in 2000, that argues that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain, as well as to further the interests of Israel.
A myth similar to the Aryan myth was used in the foundation and development of Zionism according to Prof. Shlomo Sand’s and his book, Invention of the Jewish People.
“The large majority of surviving Jews in the world is of Eastern European-and thus mainly Khazar-origin. If so, this would mean that their ancestors came not from the Jordan but from the Volga, not from Canaan but from the Caucasus, once believed to be the cradle of the Aryan race; and that generally they are more closely related to the Hun, Uigur and Magyar tribes than to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Should this turn out to be the case, then the term ‘anti-Semitism’ would become void of meaning, based on misapprehension shared by both the killers and their victims. The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated.”
Theodor Herzl the founder of Zionist movement wrote in his diary how Anti-Semitism could benefit the Zionist enterprise, he wrote:
“The anti-Semites WILL BECOME our most loyal friends, the anti-Semites nations will become our allies.”
Between 1933 and 1939 the Zionists were doing their best to collaborate in Germany with Herr Hitler, the Nazis, and the SS, and their main concern at the time was to support the Nazi racial laws know as the Nuremberg Laws September 15, 1935 and dissuade assimilation, while working with the SS to funnel selected Jews and their money to Eretz Israel, under the Transfer Agreement or Haavara which was in contravention of the Global Jewish Embargo on German exports…
Getting back to anti-Semitism, the founder of Zionism, Herzl, was in fact an outright elitist racist intimating great shame of his own ethnicity in relation to sections of the Jewish community. He wrote in his diaries, anti-Semitism, “is an understandable reaction to Jewish defects,” and that, “each country can only absorb a limited number of Jews, if she doesn’t want disorders in her stomach. Germany has already too many Jews.” He believed Jews were to blame for anti-Semitism, and wrote: “Every nation in whose midst Jews live is, either covertly or openly, anti-Semitic; its immediate cause is our excessive production of mediocre intellects, who cannot find an outlet downwards or upwards. When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat. When we rise, there also rises our terrible power of the purse.” and is now being used again to justify murder and ethnic cleansing of non-Jews, this time by certain Jews. The important point is that clever people must see is that not all Jews support these crimes even though some institutions pretend total solidarity.
There are now many Jews who criticize Israel and Zionism and survive. Hopefully more non-Jews, Goy, Gentiles (or whatever the term that is used), and the media in general, will find the courage and the sense to discerningly discriminate propaganda and stand up to what has become literally a reverse racist propaganda orchestrated by Zionist dominated institutions. When this is finally achieved all people interest in the publication of truth will celebrate and honour the great journalist Helen Thomas.
NO MERCY FOR THAT DEEP-HIDDEN LEBANESE TERRORIST who tired to terrorize America by calling for en end to occupation of Lebanon!
Forget her Constitutional rights….better to focus on liberating spy Pollard– one of the *CHOSEN* people who only betrayed dumb goyim America for God’s chosen Israel—and therefore could be guilty of no wrong!
http://washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=14082
The only conclusion Zionists force us to in the end is: “good luck, Israel, do what you want for you’re on your own with all Diaspora Zionists true to your supposed ideology asked to move to Israel.” Since their ideology insists that they must move there, who give them a choice, shanghai them in burlap bags and take them “home.” Expect nothing more from us as you are in no way consonant with our national interests and so do not deserve $10billions/yr for your “fantastic” economy!
For Zionists Americans are neither friend our brethren, we are “dumb goyim” whose only function is as host for the “chosen” parasite. Read these two books and you’ll understand why:
http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-State-Israeli-Nation-Evron/dp/0253319633/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293745586&sr=1-1-spell
http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234/ref=pd_sim_b_3
The fate that befell Helen Thomas was not to make her feel weak but to make Zionists feel strong seeing how they can beat up an old lady. If these Zionists had any balls they’d be in the IDF, not in America accusing bullying anyone hesitant before their hasbara labeling them “anti-Semites” and demanding that they be ostricized. The two books (URLs above) are the best scholarly works to help you understand the weird notion that is Zionism. The more you appease it the sicker you make it and the more you endanger World Jewry; for in no way can righteous Jews escape the blowback imposed on them by Zionists deliberately throwing Israel’s chutzpah in the face of goyim just to feel like mensch!
They lacked the courage to hit Helen when she was prominent and just as outspoken. Instead, a rabbi, of all people (!!!), ambushed her in her 80s just to show that even such cowards can do harm. Worst cowards are all the American civil rights champions that silently bowed to the Zionist bullies in silence.
“she was always an outsider too – one of nine children born to a family of Lebanese immigrants in Winchester Kentucky, who despite their Middle East origins were Christians in the Greek Orthodox Church.”
Being an Arab immigrant to the USA would qualify her as an outsider yes, but that paragraph with its use of ‘despite’ also implies that being born a Greek Orthodox Christian in Lebanon also makes her an outsider.
But there have always been millions of Arab Christians, in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, drawn from many diverse ancient sects.
“… despite their Middle East origins were Christians in the Greek Orthodox Church.”
Yes, Danny Schechter, you display your ignorance here. Have you forgotten where Christianity originated?
for helen
and the
rest of us
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley