Before we close the chapter on Helen Thomas, I want to address a lingering point.
Helen Thomas' comments were anti-Semitic, not just anti-Israel.
Everybody has national aspirations of living in its own national homeland. Thomas singled out the Jewish people to essentially say Jewish national aspirations are illegitimate. Read carefully:
David Nesenoff: Where should they go? What should they do?
Helen Thomas: They should go home.
DN: Where's home?
HT: Poland. Germany.
DN: You're saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany.
HT: And America. And everywhere else.
Thomas didn't endorse a two-state solution recognizing Jewish and Palestinian aspirations. She didn't even plug a one-state solution that — on paper at least — would give Jews and Palestinians shared rights in the Holy Land. (More on that point here.)
Unstated but implicit: the future of the Jewish people is anywhere but Israel.
Doesn't sound like she has any room in her world for a Jewish state.
So why single out Israel? After all, as David Bernstein pointed out in a brilliant piece, nobody questions Japan, Greece or Ireland's rights to exist as a distinctly Japanese, Greek and Irish states.
If you've followed my blogging long enough, you may have noticed that I rarely accuse journalists of being anti-Semitic. It's a loaded charge that makes people less receptive to other important points. So I'm not going to call Thomas an anti-Semite. She already announced her retirement. She's history.
However, the view she expressed — quietly shared by many others — that the Jews are somehow singled out as unworthy of having legitimate national aspirations isn't just anti-Israel. That is indeed anti-Semitic.
