I blogged it on Open Salon earlier today, here: Goodbye, Helen Thomas

Sarah, I was aware of her heritage, but I am guessing many are not and you raise an important point about the media's handling of the story.

Actually, I did hear yesterday on the radio that she was of Lebanese descent - I think on NPR - and that her parents immigrated from Tripoli.

I look at Helen - and I've known her so long, I feel I can call her Helen - and I picture my Great Aunt Grace... or my Grandma Sybil, when they were in their 80's. And I know darn well they'd say things that upon reflection, they'd regret. Or they'd say, Oh, I didn't mean That, I meant This, and explain.

There's pros and cons to what Helen said. And even within the quote she was trying to wrestle back her words and clarify. But the hatred being spewed her way now is truly disheartening. There's so much truly ugly rhetoric flying around these days. For gods' (or God's) sake, people, Lighten Up.

k, I should clarify before I get crucified. There's "pros and cons" to the way the interpretation should be pursued....

She has free speech, obviously. Do you think the High School kids her former agency booked her to speak to would benefit by hearing Jews ought to return to the lands of ovens and Auschwitz?

I can tell you who she is NOT speaking for, the very Holy Bartholomew, her spiritual leader, who knows a thing or two himself about occupation.

Free Speech is free; Apologists, left to their own devices, would do something about that ...

Good Riddance and apologies to Gibran.

I agree with what you say. She is being used to deflect attention from the real issue, which is Gaza and Israel's illegal occupation of it, and its illegal attack on the flotillas.

@ Kathy Riordan: I read the New York Times before reading your blog on Helen Thomas's resignation. Just like Brian Stelter, you left out the fact that Ms. Thomas is of Lebanese origin. Since the New York Times yesterday and your blog, I have also read today the Washington Post (Richard Cohen, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Jo-Ann Armao, Dana Milbank and Howard Kutz) and I will read the NYT tonight. Only Richard Cohen and Howard Kutz fully disclosed the fact that she is Lebanese. Others either did not know or twisted her words by quoting them without the painful historical context of Lebanon... I have many Lebanese friends, and some Lebanese family (married to my sisters), all of them Christians, either Maronites, or Greek Orthodox, I can assure you that Ms. Thomas's words are not an old lady's rants (as I have read today, either in Katrina Vanden Heuvel's or Jo-Ann Armano's pieces), but the crux (and the cross) of a great majority of Lebanese Christians.

@ Stellaa: Thanks for your kind words. It's nice to be back.

@ designanator and @ Connie Mack: thanks for your support. I do think the media are actually implementing some kind of journalistic death sentence on Ms. Thomas. I also think Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary for Bush, went on a personal crusade to see her downfall, because of the great brave way she asked the very questions that should have been asked, right from the start of the Irak scene-staging towards war, by all journalists.

@ Oahusurfer: Ms. Thomas was the lonely crusader against a mountain of lies (weapons of mass destructions, false reasons to go to war....) also because as a Middle Eastern Christian, she knew that going to war meant that the situation of Christians in that area would worsen. Christians had been living in relative peace, although oftentimes a submissive one, and after the war in Irak started, crimes against the Christian communities in Irak increased, as well as in Turkey BTW. As a Russian Orthodox myself, I am fully aware of the difficulty the Oecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeo is having, how Turkey is waiting for his death to close the Patriarchate forever, how monasteries in the Asia Minor part of Turkey are often vandalized, with obscenities being written on cemetery stones or on the outside walls of Christians' houses. But that is different: Ms. Thomas, although Christian, is as Arab as another Muslim Arab. The Turks are not Arabs. There are reasons why some EU countries do not want Turkey in the EU: the rise of radicalized Islam is one, but the main reason is the situation of women's and minorities's rights in Turkey...

@Emma Peel: I agree. It is very easy to find a decoy, but between the Gaza fiasco and the Gulf fiasco, it was beginning to look like there'd be no other issue to write about.. until someone released Ms. Thomas ' opinionated words... 3 weeks after the fact...

Again, I do not agree with what she said about Germany and Poland: in Poland, the Poles killed Jews even after the end of World War 2. There were at least 2 organized pogroms/ murders up to 1946, one year after the war ended. But suffering is not one-sided, and my opinions on the Middle East changed dramatically after my stay in East Jerusalem in 2008, when I witnessed full-blown Apartheid, and saw the Wall with my own eyes. Every moning, the first thing I saw when I opened the gate to drive out, was the Wall: right in my face, on the other side of my street...

I knew her origins. And to be honest, I didn't think what she said was that damning, if you take her entire statement in context. The reporter kept pressing her, and it was clear she was reacting to the situation and that this is an emotional issue for her.

It seems to me, how this is being handled, the entire event and Thomas's reaction to the questions that there is bias in favor of Israel, regardless, for whatever reason and that angers me. I don't understand a country being held to such a lax humanitarian standard.

Is it antisemitism? Is the thinking is let "them" stay in the middle east and pit one undesirable race against another until they're all dead?

It's sickening, whatever it is. IMO Helen Thomas deserves better treatment than this.

rated

Reminds me a little of how they got rid of Dan Rather back in 2004.