This is where Helen Thomas wants jewish people to "go home" to

[Renew Deal]

Helen Thomas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc4OeRu7cfs">famously said that jewish people should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home to Germany, Poland, and America." That statement is disturbing on it's own. Now consider how the Germans and Poles feel about it...

From "Intolerance in Europe: new study sounds the alarm"

Despite decades of “Holocaust education,” Jews remain among the continent's least beloved groups. Seventy-two percent of Poles and 68 percent of Hungarians believe that “Jews seek to benefit from their forebears’ suffering during the Nazi era.” Forty-eight percent of Germans share this view compared to just 17 percent of Dutch people . However, the Dutch hate Muslims just as much as everyone else. A mere five percent of Dutch people thought “Jews have too much influence in the country,” whereas a remarkable 50 percent of the population in largely Jew-free Poland believed this.
<snip>

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=857558&mesg_id=857558

[cali]

1. you know, though I disagree with her about this and I thought

it was a remarkably tone deaf and insensitive thing to say, I don't think it's anti-semitic. Her comments about Jews owning the White House, the media, Congress, etc, now that crap is blatantly bigoted.

[aquart]

5. LOL!

I'm sorry, but that is seriously funny.

[aquart]

2. Really, REALLY unnecessary.

[Renew Deal]

3. I agree

What she said was totally wrong.

[WinkyDink]

4. Seems that Ms. HT is unaware that THEIR HOMES WERE TAKEN AFTER THE TRANSPORT.

She might have been, as a journalist, a bold gadfly in the face of power, but she is dismissively anti-Semitic here.

[malaise]

6. And then they took the homes and the land from the

Palestinians.

Lovely world we live in...NOT

[WinkyDink]

7. You ignore a little entity called the United Nations. War has ALWAYS altered geopolitics and nations

It's not like Poland or Pakistan has always existed, or that Austria-Hungary is still around.

[malaise]

15. Apparently I'm not the only one who

ignores the UN

[Puregonzo1188]

19. Poland wasn't taken by displacing an indigenous population and creating colonial-settler

state.

Also, the massive population transfers and ethnic cleansing that resulted from the partition of India were huge crimes against humanity and should be recognized as such.

Secondly, the UN did not call for the expulsion of Palestinians from their territory (a majority of those within Israel were Palestinian Arabs) and has constantly backed the right of return for Palestinian refugees to their rightful and legal place of citizenship. Israel denies this right, because it would alter the ethnic make-up of their state. Denying a group of people's rights based on their ethnic or racial background is called racism and is despicable. There is no right for one ethnic group to have a majority in a state and such a basis is not a reason to deny people fundamental human rights.

By the way, since you're so keen on the UN Israel annexed land beyond apportioned borders after 47. Israel does not define it borders, the only state the does not do so, and currently occupies land outside its '67 borders in violation of UN policy. It is in violation of more UN resolutions than any other state.

Also, Poland and Pakistan were also created within the wishes of the people who lived there, Israel was not. Can the UN really give away the land of one people against there will and is such a thing right?

[cali]

8. No, it's not a lovely world. It's a cruel and unfair one.

Are you just discovering that?

[aquart]

13. "Took," my history-challenged friend?

Paid through the nose, more like. I'm sorry your Arab friends were betrayed by their wealthy landlords who sold them out to live high on the hog in Beirut. But Jewish settlers began buying land in the 1880s and they worked like dogs to make that cheap, near-worthless desert they were gouged for fertile and fruitful. You really think the UN partition gave them a square inch for free?

Who ever gave a Jew anything for free? Even God said the Promised Land would be bought with blood.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Puregonzo1188]

18. You're flat out wrong. Yes, some Jewish immigrants bought land prior 1948,

but that constituted 3% of the land owned in historic mandate.

Here's a map of the land transfer you.



Seriously, I'm surprised by how much anti-Arab racism there is on DU, as well as how many DUers are willing to turn a blind eye to the injustices committed to the Palestinian people.

[aquart]

10. She's Lebanese.

All she wants is for them not to be in the MidEast because she's bought the story that the Jews are the problem. It's a comfortable story. You don't have to feel betrayed by your own if you believe it.

But she is also AMERICAN and she did damned good service for the people of this nation for decades. NONE of that is cancelled out. My father was a raving, foul-mouthed bigot for the last year of his life and not for one second before that. Does that cancel the 81 previous years?

If Helen believed this all the years of her life (and why shouldn't she be biased toward the Arab causes?), then she was marvelous at concealment. But old age and tiny changes in the brain can alter not only opinions but the filters and guards one must have to survive in the shark pit of DC.

As soon as she realized that she had lost those filters and guards, she quit. What monster is still holding her to account for those few words against a lifetime?

[TorchTheWitch]

21. Seems to me their homes are in Israel since most of them were born there

have spent their lives there and are citizens there. There aren't many left that went there during the Holocaust seeing as that was nearly 60 years ago. Telling them to go "home" to Europe is like telling me to go "home" to Ireland where I've never been and when I was born and raised here, my parents were born and raised here, and it just so happened that a couple of my grandparents came here from Ireland. The US IS my home just as Israel IS the home of most of the people there.

No excuse for what she said. It's apalling bigotry that she's apparently successfully been able to keep hidden for a very long time.

[bluestateguy]

9. Helen Thomas besmirched a great career with those thoughtless and hateful remarks

nt

[SoCalDem]

11. 6,5,4,3,2,1 n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Unrec. Old story.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cali]

17. tut, tut, tut. and I don't need to ask her. she frickin' wrote it down

and spoke it.

[Puregonzo1188]

20. Why don't you post some statistic on anti-Arab racism within Israel?

Israeli attitudes to Palestinians are a lot more disturbing than Europeans believing that Jewish individuals "seek to benefit from their forebears’ suffering during the Nazi era"

But the civil rights quoted polls suggesting half of Jewish Israelis do not believe Arab citizens of Israel should have equal rights.

About the same amount said they wanted the government to encourage Arab emigration from Israel.

In another poll, almost 75% of Jewish youths said Arabs were less intelligent and less clean than Jew

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7136068.stm

And how about these lovely statistics

Over half of the Jewish population in Israel believes the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason, according to a recent survey by the Geocartography Institute.

The survey, which was conducted for the Center Against Racism, also found that over 75 percent of participants did not approve of apartment buildings being shared between Arabs and Jews. Sixty percent of participants said they would not allow an Arab to visit their home.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3381978,00.html

Approximately 45 percent of the general Israeli Arab population lives in poverty – a figure even higher among the sector's children, at 57 percent.

Only some 20 percent of Israeli Arab women are employed. While the figure for Israeli Arab men is higher – 60 percent – most of those jobs are in physical labor and many are laid of between the ages of 40 and 45.

Nearly 8 percent of Israeli Arab youths drop out of high school – a figure nearly three times the national average.

Public transportation is either completely lacking or insufficient about 80 percent of Israeli Arab towns and villages, and overcrowded housing in these communities is 70 percent higher than in Jewish communities.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-arab-mk-racism-in-israel-has-reached-frightening-levels-1.316594

Israel's High Court has narrowly upheld a law denying Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza married to Israeli citizens the right to live in the country with their spouses.

The judges voted by six to five not to cancel a four-year-old amendment to the Citizenship Law which outlaws "family unification" in Israel between Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel.

It was passed as a one-year emergency measure in 2002 on the ground that it was needed to protect Israeli security. But the amendment, described yesterday by the Knesset member Ran Cohen, of the left-wing Meretz party, as "rooted in racism", has been renewed every year since then.

Israel's Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, sided with the minority on the bench, declaring: "This violation of rights is directed against Arab citizens of Israel. As a result, therefore, the law is a violation of the right of Arab citizens in Israel to equality."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/racist-marriage-law-upheld-by-israel-478291.html

Where does this remind you of?

It reminds me of the Jim Crow South.

[Renew Deal]

22. Because that has nothing to do with this topic.

Nice hijack attempt though.