A Different Take on Helen Thomas

On this blog you'll find perspectives you wouldn't find on most others. This goes for the last post on the Gaza Flotilla Farce and will continue to the Helen Thomas Debacle. Farce, debacle, you always have to pick interesting words for these sorts of things. Otherwise, people don't think you did well on you SAT's and the sky falls. Luckily, the sky doesn't weigh anything, so you end up fine either way. It's just the nature of things.

To quote Dennis Miller, there is one positive thing we can say about Helen Thomas, and that is, she did not sleep her way to the top. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she's been at the top of the White House Press Corp since the Eisenhower administration in the 1950's. This sounds like an excruciatingly boring career, being that nobody ever says anything of any consequence during a White House press conference.

Anyway, Thomas was recently asked if she had any comments on Israel. She said sure. She said that the Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and go back to where they came from, which is Germany, Poland, those types of places.

I'm sure you've seen the video by now. I have a recurring problem of not posting these things fast enough.



We must understand why she said this, rather than simply be angry with her and demand her firing. We don't have the luxury to simply start yelling like the ADL and call for blood. It's too juvenile. It has to click why she said what she said, and the answer that she simply hates Jews is not enough.

Beyond all the decrepit imagery of what she said and the genocidal undertones of it, she said one thing that the Israeli government, at least, can agree with. "It's not their land," she said. And she's right. At least we don't act like it is.

Why should anyone accept the fact that Jews want to go back to some plot of real estate in the Middle East just because their great great grandparents used to live there thousands of years ago? So what?

People like Helen Thomas don't hate Jews intrinsically. They just hate when they try to act like non-Jews, and insofar as that's true, people like Helen Thomas are very helpful. They simply can't stand that Jews are still around today at all if they don't really do anything qualitatively special, and why they claim to be the chosen people if they're simply trying to be like everyone else. What Helen Thomas means when she says "Get the hell out of Palestine," is "If you want to be like everyone else, don't pretend you have any special rights to someone else's land." And, essentially, she's right.

Here's my response to you, Helen Thomas.

Helen, my dear,

I sincerely thank you for your comments concerning the Jews going back to Poland and Germany. Even though your comments are offensive and smack of supporting the Holocaust, in some strange way I agree with you. In their current state of mind, the Jews don't understand that they actually have not a right, but a Divine obligation towards their God-given land, which you call Palestine, and they think that they simply have a right to be there because their grandparents lived there a long time ago. That being so, they won't claim ownership of the land, and they'll whine to the world something about historical rights. You can even see that claim at the end of this video that ended your career. It's pathetic, I know I know. Until they understand that the land is only theirs and that they have a job to do in it assigned to them by God, then you have a point.

But what you don't understand is that this weakness, this dilly-dallying, this resorting to historical arguments and doing anything they can to keep God out of the picture, it is only temporary. Thanks to people like you, the pressure will keep building on them to the point that they will understand that they have absolutely no one to turn to but their God who did indeed choose them 3,000 years ago. And once you put the Jewish people under enough pressure, they will turn around, as they have always done throughout their history.

Don't be fooled by our current weakness. Soon, we will take our place as the moral leaders of the world. I hope and pray that you will be alive to see that day. In the meantime, I say to you this:

Bring it on.

Sincerely,

Rafi Farber