Helen Thomas

So Ms. Thomas, a White House Press reporter for over 50 years, is being forced into retirement because she said that Jewish people should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Poland and Germany.

I don't want to appear to defend a racist or an anti-Semite, but I didn't take her comments that way. If a bunch of African Americans went to Liberia and then decided we wanted to take over Cote D'Ivoire and Senegal with military force, I don't think it would be racist for someone to tell them to "get the hell out of Africa" and "go home" to the United States.

What no one is talking about is the fact that Palestinians, most of whom are brown-skinned Arab people, are being systematically oppressed in an apartheid-like system in Israel. That system is perpetuated by white-skinned people, many of Eastern European descent, whose only claim to Israel is their profession of the Jewish faith. If Judaism were a religion that did not have an ethnic identity at its core, perhaps the issue would not be so problematic (or so racialized), but I can't help but think of how the Israelis were so reluctant to accept the Falashas under the right of return rule, but how they will accept people who apparently have no DNA linking them to the Holy Lands.

Saying that people should go back home to Poland and Germany simply speaks to the number of Eastern Europeans who are claiming to "return" to a land from which they have no genesis. Given the history and treatment of Jewish people in the twentieth century, that return would not be a problem, if only Israel did not perpetuate racism in the process.

Why is it bigoted and racist for Ms. Thomas to speak truth to the situation? Why should it be the end of her career? She's spent 50 years calling things the way she sees them, which is exactly what she did in this instance. We are so afraid of being politically incorrect or offending people, that we overextend ourselves in the opposite direction, failing to stand up for the truth, and thereby offending many more people.

Perhaps Ms. Thomas's remarks were brutal, perhaps they lacked the flair and finesse we so often see in diplomatic circles. But she addressed the elephant in the diplomatic room, which is the Israeli invasion of Palestine, and she addressed the elephant's color, which is just as odd as that of many who claim to "return" and "repopulate" Israel.

I can see how her remarks could be interpreted as offensive, if one wanted to assume she were referring to the events of WWII, but I think it much more appropriate to assume her remarks refer to the events of the last 60 years, specifically of Israel's occupation of Gaza since 2005, and of its ongoing treatment of Palestinian people.

I don't think Americans realize that Jesus was Palestinian, or that the vast majority of Christian holy sites are in Palestine, which just happens to be the area inhabited by the folks Israel persecutes, and just happens to be the area that Israel would not want to give up in a two-state solution. It's as if the West has bought all the hype about Palestinians, and, in the midst of professing to be non-Christian, as if we are clinging to some Revelation-themed view of the Holy Lands.

Where there is no vision, the people perish.