She was wrong, the Israelis occupying Palestinian territory shouldn't go to Europe, they should go to hell!

While Helen Thomas's comments were delivered in intemperate language and were thus ill-advised (for her sake), I believe she is sincere and as always, says it like it is. We should send her a thank you for her principled candor over the years. Her seat in the WH briefing room will be taken by a stenographer, a corporate-administration sycophant. I'd like to see a campaign for a full page advertisement in the NY Times, Washington Post thanking her for her service.

Helen has been asking tough questions for years and never really got the answers or the press she deserved. What she said was wrong. Israelis shouldn't have to go anywhere...but neither should Arab Israeli or Palestinian refugees.

It goes to show you should retire on top of your game. I may not like what the Israeli government is doing but the Jews are there and they are not leaving so learn to get along.

I have long admired Helen Thomas. We should all be free to speak our minds as she has. As far as her unfortunate choice of words here, it makes me wonder what word the Israelis use to describe the Nakba.

Helen is right and so are Dennis (6/7/2010) and Dana (6/7/2010).

Michael (6/7/2010): On the money!

Helen probably didn't mean exactly what she said, but she is right in feeling fed up with the Israeli Zionists and their defendants in the US and elsewhere who, as we know, behave dispicably to the Palestinians whom they have ethnically cleansed for the most part. Read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe, a respected Israeli historian, presently teaching at Exeter Univ. in England.

Anyway, goodbye and good luck to you, Helen, you have done a wonderful job all these years!

Helen Thomas says Israelis should go "home" and she loses her job and her seat in the White House press room. Israeli heads of state have decided it's okay to force Palestinians out of their homes (and homeland) and those same heads of state are welcomed to the White House. Guess who was being condemned on National Public Radio just moments ago. When will this manufactured outrage against ill-mannered folk like Thomas subside enough for us to take account of the real outrages perpetrated by homicidal Israelis?

Reprehensible?
REPREHENSIBLE???
What is reprehensible is this and previous administrations, politicians and mainstream media...virtually the entire establishment constantly excusing and supporting Zionist murderous war crimes in Palestine, and ourselves, the US, doing the same around the world to varying degrees and bullying the world.
THAT is what is reprehensible.
~John L.

Helen was perhaps the last true journalist in those WH briefings... and has never pulled any punches. Shame on all of them... for they can't handle the truth!

I think it very possible that Helen Thomas for a moment simply reached the end of her tether regarding the appalling and seemingly endless history of Israel's wrongs against the Palestinian people. We must differentiate between those who are wise and just and those who are racist and unjust. We may truly condemn the latter, but Helen Thomas does not belong in that group and the White House should come off their high horse.

If she is right, the we are all going to leave the country except the native americans, & I am including ALL of America--so back to Britain, I Ireland,Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, etc...where is Helen Thomas from?

I suggest we boycott Hearst. The following are their newspapers, magazine, & TV networks.

NEWSPAPERS
The Advocate
Albany Times Union
Beaumont Enterprise
Connecticut Post
Edwardsville Intelligencer
Greenwich Time
Houston Chronicle
Huron Daily Tribune
Laredo Morning Times
Midland Daily News
Midland Reporter-Telegram
The News-Times
Plainview Daily Herald
San Antonio Express-News
San Francisco Chronicle

MAGAZINES
Cosmopolitan
Country Living
Esquire
Food Network Magazine
Good Housekeeping
House Beautiful
Harper's Bazaar
Marie Claire
O, The Oprah Magazine
Popular Mechanics
Redbook
Seventeen
Town&Country
Veranda

A&E Television Networks
Lifetime
A&E
History
Bio
Cosmopolitan Television
ESPN
Hearst Entertainment
King Features
Reed Brennan

Helen Thomas is my hero.
But maybe she should have answered with another question:
where should the Palestinians go?

This is a sad day for everyone who believes in the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. There is very few who say what they think, write what is the truth and will take the hits as they come. MSM has been cannibalized by those who don't want the truth spoke, written and read. Real journalism has been destroyed and now all that is left is "reality pablum" disguised as news. My thoughts are with her and all the others who have been brought down.

Helen's choice of words was unwise. Be that as it may, she has a right to her opinions and the first amendment as well. While I do not agree with sending Jews back to their origins, I think it is high time the Zionist mentality was a thing of the past. Israel will not be placated as long as one Arab remains in Palestine. Their ethnic cleansing is so like what the NAZIs did to them. They have aggressively become murderous liars and thieves. Shame on them.

Now, just why do you suppose the Jews were allowed to go to Israel in the late 40s? I think they were not wanted in Europe due to a remaining anti-semiteic mind set that still exists. Therefore, it would be folly to go back there. Besides that, many Israelis know no other country.

All this begs the question of where did all this anti-semiteism start? The Jews use it to proclaim their much valued victim-hood. (They forget they were not the only ones in the camps.) I suggest it was because they were somehow seen as aggressive, lying, crooks. Wonder how that started? Anybody?

19:34 sums it up quite nicely. HT has been pressing the truth for decades. You remember the flowers a few years ago H from a certain social network site? Thanks for digging the truth out all those years. Always press for the truth. Good day.

Should Have STOOD for Her FREEDOM OF SPEECH! Bugger Obummer AND the Israelites for NOT!!

I commend Helen Thomas for the guts to express her truth. Israel has become the aggressor that pushed them out from their homes initially. No lesson learned.

Suppressing truth is something Helen never did. She indeed was correct that most Jewish "Israelis" came from Germany, Poland and the U.S., she left out Russia. Only a small number of Jews were proportionately in Palestine after WW I. Then, with reason, they did come flooding in before and after WW II. Helen was basically saying that those who fled terror and repression, should not be the ones now creating it.

Helen was good. Helen was usually right. She sadly was offended by the actions of the "unassailable chosen ones"- who never let anyone forget it, or point out the fraud of it.

Helen was Right. When israeli pirates attacked a peaceful flotilla in international waters, killing at least nine, and possibly as many as 26 people, one of whom was a US citizen, the White House said it was regrettable. But when Helen Thomas says those pirates should go back to Europe, where they came from, the White House says her "remarks were offensive and reprehensible." It just goes to show you whose boots are being licked in the White House and in Congress.

Presumably an "opinion columnist" is better off without opinions, or at least without opinions that offend important constituencies. Nevertheless, she is hardly the only responsible person to suggest that the Israeli government has misbehaved in its treatment of the Palestinians. And wasn't it Philip Roth who first suggested that Israelis should return to Europe? I think his point was that Europe was a better place with more Jews in it. Is that wrong?

I'm glad she said what she said, although I doubt anything useful will come of it. The notion that in the 21st century anyone should have a Divine Right to anything is preposterous. If everyone in the world trying to enforce what they consider to be their historical land claims, all hell would break loose.

I am so grateful that people are speaking out in support of Helen Thomas. I was told that this administration has not been as kind to her as they might have been. I have always respected her ability to cut through the dreck and direct her pithy comments and questions with candor and honesty. Very few of our most powerful citizens could answer her with any sort of candor but her open and direct manner spoke for itself. Helen, at times, could and did cause much consternation to whomever stood at the rear of the press lectern.
Like Einstein, not all of us are Zionists and Helen had the courage to "tell it like it is".

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell, 1984

When you're 90, you can tell the truth with impunity. Helen Thomas brings a breath of fresh air to a cesspool of lies.

Once again we see that in free America, it is not permissible to say or do anything that our self chosen elite rulers dislike.
Of course, the murders committed by their darlings are not to be condemned -- or even mentioned. Nor the systematic theft, not the torture, nor any other atrocity by the self styled holy invaders.
Isn't it wonderful here in the mainland of the Free World?!!

It is reprehensible that Helen Thomas should be banned for expressing an opinion shared, however covertly, by much of the world. Israel's inhumane treatment of the Palestinians, the murders on the Gaza fleet and their shameless annexation of Palestinian land is glossed over by US administrations and many who pay lip service to shielding the poor Israelis from criticism.
The idea that Israel can do no wrong is entrenched in media coverage in the Western world and it should not be.
The Holocaust did not make martyrs out of all Jews for eternity but now being Jewish means never having to say you're sorry. That is what's reprehensible.

Well, so much for "free speech". I guess it really doesn't exist in a country that keeps telling the world they are the greatest based on their freedoms. So America attacks Iraq and Afghanistan because they "want to take away our freedoms." America is doing a pretty good job of it herself, thank you.

Helen, you are one of my favorite reporters. That Israel should be coddled and can't stand up for itself without help from the croud is ridiculus ! America is land of the free and the brave, not just for those who never make mistakes ! Helen you have a right to get angry and sometimes we all say things in anger that we might not have said, otherwise. You said you were sorry and that should of handled things. I'm so ashamed of whoever made you retire ! Just remember there are plenty of us that love you and you will be deeply missed by all of us. I missed you, in the front row, the next day. You have worked long and hard and deserve a break so enjoy it. The loss is your employer's and ours, not yours ! God speed. Thank you for all you did those many years, informing and teaching us. Sincerely,

June 8, 1967, 34 U.S. sailors died and 172 were injured by Israeli forces. The casualty rate was among the highest on a U.S. naval vessel. Rachel Corrie was not the first U.S. death. The U.S. Navy suffered the first. The truth was a casualty. The name of the ship was the USS Liberty. The Bill of Rights have been dishonored as corruption has been protected. Islamic officials have been bribed to collude. While the Israelis jammed attempts to call for help in 1967, help was delayed. Muzzling of survivors was attempted. This attack on Turkey may turn the tide of deceit. Some of those present in 1967 speak out at legislator town halls, where activists hear their voices.

I support one secular, democratic Palestine where both Jews and Arabs can live in equality. The state of Israel has always been a colonial enterprise and at its core based on ethnic cleansing. Helen Thomas was completely wrong with her opinions about where Jews "should be". Promoting hatred against Jews has long been a potent strain of rightist politics. I believe we will see more of it as the capitalist crisis continues to deepen. Supporters of a free Palestine should never link arms with Anti-Semites or excuse racist comments from anyone.

I heard this story early this morning and sent Helen off an email right away, thanking her for all of her honesty over the years. I cannot believe that the flipping Tea Baggers and Rush Limbaugh can call President Obama every name in the book, and Helen Thomas cannot express an opinion without losing her job. Frankly I totally agree with her, and if I had been an adult when the state of Israel was created, I would have voted against it. It's unbelievable that a religion should be granted real estate that belonged to people who had lived on that land for thousands of years. Not only was the original act unfair and brutal, but for the very people who had suffered displacement and loss of wealth, to chase another people off the same way, with what they could carry, to become refugees, and then to inflict occupation,oppression,starvation, imprisonment, torture, and murder on them, has been outrageous. The topper is of course that American tax dollars fund this endless wrong, and NOT so some wretched group of brutalized people would have a homeland, but so the United States would have an ally in the OIL rich Middle East. It's all been a lie, and it would be a hell of a lot better world if the Israeli's, that mythical nation, WOULD just go home. Wouldn't Native Americans have preferred that Europeans would just go home rather than slaughtering them and herding them into ghettos, American style, known as Reservations?
I say Thank You Helen Thomas for speaking what she felt, and what a lot of people think. This is not anti Semitism, I wish the Jews no harm. Only that they live on the planet like the rest of us, believe whatever they like, but that their religion doesn't give them the right to oppress, occupy, imprison and murder, the people they have displaced. It's just not been a good thing at all. No more weapons for Israel. Peace, in the middle east. Peace on the planet. Speaking your mind is not a crime, is it? OH, only in the case of Israel. The Obama administrations response to this matter is just another in a accumulating collection of disappointments.

So what's next, will the lobby next insist that all WH reporters must subscribe to certain acceptable belief tests about Israeli history? That Israel never did anything wrong? That no one with Arab blood in them is permitted? (Helen's parents were Lebanese Christians)

Helen Thomas has right to express herself. But it is the extreme hatred that makes one wonder?? Why the imbalance??. Go look up the Turks behaviors towards the Kurds--any deaths, yes & many many more than 9.In Turkey religious muslim education is compulsory: conscientious objectors are punished 6mos-2yrs in prison; Kurdish is not permitted as 1st language, only Turk in schools & universities are #1; in 2009 Kurdish names were restored to villages & Kurdish was re-allowed in religious sermons; Turkey had the 2nd largest population of internally displaced peoples the Kurds from 1980-90; though no death penalty international research has found there were at least 65 deaths in custody for the year 2008...not to speack of the east & south where domestic violence, forced marriage & honor killings are still current happenings...wikipedia.

I have to laugh at the post which said that the "Jews are back where they came from" Well, not really. The Levant region was under tillage some 6000 b.c. The Israelites themselves, in their ancient writing, tell of taking land "God promised them" or some such bullwhack. This may have happened about 2000 bc or so. So, there were people in Palestine before the Israelites arrived. The Israelites came as conquerors. So where DO they belong? Maybe as Helen said, those places ares as good as any to a people with a truly homeless legacy.

I'm sorry, but asses in journalism like Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh can speak without fear of reprisal or the need to apologize, and one ill-considered and intemperate comment - from a woman respected for a lifelong career as the dean of the White House press corps, needs not just to aplogize, but retire? There is a double-standard at work here. We may disagree or critize the second half of Ms Thomas' comments, but I'm sure many of us, pro-Israel or not, have been exasperated and frustrated enough to repeat her first thoughts! Lest we forget, there were plenty of folks who publicly expressed doubts about the creation of Israel, foreseeing it as a divisive act that would destabilize and upset the balance of power in the region for decades. But they were shouted down due to the collective guilt the West experienced after WWII. Such guilt continues to permeate this discussion and silence critics, there can be no doubt.

Helen Thomas is the only one who will speak the truth.

Those who have been Victims have to be very careful not to become the Tyrant. The power structure of Israel, in the name of crying "Victim!", has become a Tyrant.

I do not condone supporting them forever and ever as if they do no wrong.

If you look closely at written history, it is not surprising that Israel-Palestine is a land of conflict. This is the land of Canaan where the giant Canaanites made a Paradise of gardens, vineyards, and healthy herds of animals. They were peaceful giants, and the Hebrews followed Jehovah's directions and destroyed every man, woman, and child of Canaan. Why? So they could take their lands, fields, vineyards and herds and call this their land of milk and honey (and Blood!).

The Hebrews got this land by genocide. They've had blood on their hands for centuries. And they still feel like Victims? Maybe the horror of the Holocaust was their very sad Karma. The Israeli people are never at peace on this land, cursed by their own hand.

Helen Thomas speaks the clean truth. I love her for this.

4:34Outdate: this information is posted on Wikipedia as a quick reference & undoubtedly some of it is outdated.But not that much?All the women in pictures wore headscarves...My point has always been that the motives against Israel are unbalanced in the world's big picture. Period. What country--including ours--does not have an ultimately violent past to establish itself--going back to Canaan & the Egyptians. OK shall we talk about the Greeks & the Romans w/ their crucifixion or any others who have shed blood? Little 'no'. That was ok. That is accepted. It was back then...How about blankets with smallpox? That is ok too. Get my point. Peace.

Alas for freedom of speech! Alas for independent thinking! Alas for American journalism! The Obama administration just caved, again, to the Israeli lobby in this country. It would condemn Helen Thomas and let Bibbi Netanyahu to continue to massacre anyone who does not support the Israeli creep into what's left to the Palestinians,

I informed some friend of this discussion going on around this article at Truthout, a site I support with a measly $10 a month donation, because I think William Rivers Pitt was a great hero of the Bush years.
This discussion is as taboo in our current political and media controlled climate, as doubts about what happened on 9/11.
However, it appears access to this discussion has mysteriously disappeared from the site . I had to access it from the links I sent friends.
I am very disappointed that Israel even holds sway, here.

I salute those who are supporting Helen Thomas and her right to speak her mind.

Regardless of whether I agree with her views or not, I will defend her right to speak her mind. She's about the only one in that castrated cabal of White House journalists who could make a President sweat with her questions.

So much for the freedom of the media - so much for the gutless colleagues who pushed her out of the White House.

Today is yet another black day for journalism in America where the profession is becoming more controlled and censored, probably more so than in many banana republics.

It's certainly a pity when the tail (0.002%) wags the dog (0.998%). This has absolutely nothing to do with 'truth' or 'fairness' but everything to do with being 'politically correct' (an achronism for 'pro-Zionist). The Rothschild family are the 'owners' of Israel, the U.S. Presidency, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Senate, the Pentagon, and the institutions of the U.S. legal system. Helen Thomas' comments are correct and reiterate the opinions of past historians whose advice was ignored - at the peril of reaching today's vicious and horrific conundrum. In the as-yet-unretracted words of Martin Van Creveld (September 2003 interview in Elsevier, Dutch weekly) quoting Moshe Dayan "“Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.” I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”". The leaders of the 'free world have nurtured an experiment in Zionism that is now out-of-control and which threatens global peace. Helen Thomas is deserving of praise and support, not ridicule and ostracism - she is citing a truth obvious to anyone willing to step outside the shackles of 'political correctness'. Any dilution of truth results in a LIE.

I'm sincerely looking forward to a Dan Rather interview of Helen Thomas on HD Net.

I would like any defender of Thomas' remarks above to answer this question:

Would you advocate the forceful removal of Jewish Israelis of any ethnic background from the currently recognized borders of Israel (that is, NOT including Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, etc)?

Helen Thomas' remarks can be interpreted a number of ways, including that she was advocating all Ashkenazi Jews leave Israel and settle in two countries that practiced genocide on them or it could be that she was only expressing her wish that Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories leave for Israel, and other countries.

It leaves a lot to interpretation, so if you're going to defend her remarks you owe it to other readers to explain how you interpret those remarks and what you would advocate yourself.

She is not an elected official, but a public person like you and me, so why the hullaballoo? I thought we had free speech in this country.

"I think Helen Thomas was fed up and lost her temper. Ninety year olds should be allowed these occasional lapses of best judgement. Good grief. When one of the above posters says the 'Jews are there' it is worth keeping firmly in mind that Jews all over the world are allowed to settle in Israel and Palestinians who have lived where many Jews live, in houses where many Jews now live, are not. This is not the post WWII world. Why should American Jews, for instance, be allowed to settle in Israel when Palestinians are not entitled to do so? A Palestinian is not even allowed to marry an Israeli. It is totally out of place and immoral to allow that discriminatory policy to continue into the 21st century. That doesn't diminish the horrors of the Holocaust. But the terrible injustice meted out against the Palestinians restricted beyond endurance, in an open prison in Gaza, should cease. Recognise their rights first and foremost."
 

Well there wasn't exactly a nation of Palestine, was there?

Helen had courage. To bad it is such a rare commodity. Most educated person in the world know the Israel story, but few have the courage to speak it.

the comments page for this article is 1000X more antisemitic than ht's remarks

Helen Thomas is an hero!

Eric Blair, George Orwell, wrote “If freedom means anything, it means the freedom to criticize and oppose.”
 
Defensive over-reaction is a strong indicator of guilt, culpability or at least something to hide.

What’s most disturbing about the on-going gang-rape of Helen Thomas is not just the breadth of the participation in the exercise of her vilification but the even broader passive acceptance, if not condoning, of her abuse.  Isn’t the loss of her professional credentials and access to the public sufficient for the mad-dogs of conformity?
 
Ms Thomas expressed a point of view shared by millions of victimized and oppressed peoples.  Of course the oppressors and persecutors don’t what to hear it.  Perhaps that is one reason they should, more often.  A fair and reasonable culture would welcome her expression of her perspective, unpopular though it be with some.
 
By the way, to those who accuse her of anti-semitism: Arabs, Palestinians and numerous other ethnic groups are also semitic.  Labels are more effective if based on facts.
 
 

Helen was right! They should get the hell out of Palestine. Isn't it amazing how those big tuff guys in the White House can trash a decent reporter like Helen, but can't say anything bad about their banking buddies and BigOil buddies and Warmonger buddies and their David Brooks buddies and yes, their asshole buddies in Tel Aviv. It's all about trashing the honest people and the brown people in the Middle East and Central Asia. Everything is always someone else's fault. Dems and Repubs can never look in the mirror on judgement day. What a sorry excuse for leadership...or even human beings.

We need more independent reporting. Rolling Stone did a great job.

Vote to give the front row seat in the White House briefing room vacated by Helen Thomas to National Public Radio!!

http://www.petitiononline.com/nprfront/petition.html