Helen Thomas was that rarest of commodities—a journalist in the mainstream media who told the truth. After hearing of her death today, I was reading a tribute to her from one of her former colleagues, Dean Reynolds, of CBS News.

“I worked with Helen Thomas for 11 years and I’m proud that I did,” reports Reynolds, who goes on to recount his being hired as a cub reporter at UPI in 1971 and the working relationship that developed between himself and Thomas, who already, even then, was the news agency’s veteran White House correspondent.

The Watergate years and Thomas’ use of Martha Mitchel as a news source, a birthday party for Helen given during the Carter presidency, the iconic Thomas’ travels aboard Air Force One—this and more are discussed, and all in all it’s not a bad tribute. But in the course of it Reynolds inadvertently makes the point I made above—that Helen Thomas told the truth while her colleagues consistently failed to.

He does this towards the bottom of his piece where, perhaps inevitably, he gets into Thomas’ 2010 comments about Israel that led to her resignation from Hearst Newspapers and the end of her professional career—and some of what Reynolds has to say on the subject I find particularly irksome. For instance, he claims that “Helen had a blind spot when it came to Israel.” Ah, but he seems willing to forgive her this transgression on the grounds that she was “the daughter of Lebanese immigrants,” who was “not shy about expressing her point of view when she thought the Israelis were in the wrong.” Special emphasis on the word “thought”—for Reynolds makes clear that he and Thomas parted company on the subject of Middle East politics:


A few years ago, in her 80s, she was asked an ambush question by a propagandist with a camera at the White House one day, and blurted out feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I did not agree with her on the Middle East; I thought she was mistaken and short-sighted. But a lifetime of great work should not be overshadowed by a comment made at an advanced age. Cut her some slack.

So in other words, Thomas was just a senile old lady when she made her comment calling for the Israelis to “get the hell out of Palestine,” and so by all means, cut her some slack—this, in effect, is what Reynolds is saying. It’s a rather disdainful tone for what is presumably otherwise intended as a tribute.

The truth is, Helen Thomas was a greater journalist than Reynolds or anyone else at CBS probably will ever dream of becoming. In 2009 she asked Obama a question that caught the president completely off guard and left him scrambling for an answer: did he know of any country in the Middle East that had nuclear weapons?

She also got her licks in on George W. Bush, whom she once referred to as “the worse president in all of American history,” inquiring of him in 2006:


I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, [about] your decision to invade Iraq ... Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? .... You have said it wasn't oil...quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?

And just as Obama would do later, Bush gave an equivocating, evasive answer.

Later that same year, in a White House press briefing during the July 2006 war in Lebanon, Thomas commented, “The United States…could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon. We have that much control with the Israelis…We have gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine,” prompting then-White House Press Secretary Tony Snow to reply, “Thank you for the Hezbollah view.” And then, by way of response, a critic at the Washington Post said such comments amount essentially to “tirades” and “anti-Israeli rhetoric.”

But perhaps saddest of all was the action taken by the Society of Professional Journalists. In January of 2011, in the wake of the controversy over Thomas’ remarks on Israel, the organization voted to discontinue giving its annual Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement. The concern expressed was that award recipients might suffer a “backlash” by having their name associated with Thomas. And thus has telling the truth become in essence an alien concept to America’s “professional journalists.”



In reality, however, Thomas, with an historical memory longer than most of her colleagues, realized how far America has fallen since it has become a satellite of Israel’s—something increasing numbers of Americans, despite the best efforts of the mainstream media, are waking up to these days.

The following is an article by Alison Weir from three years ago, written as Thomas found herself first caught up in the controversy over her remarks on Israel. The writer makes some excellent points regarding the extent to which public discourse in America is totally controlled by supporters of Israel, and though written in 2010, it remains true today: step out of line, say the wrong thing, and you pay a price. In the process, if you happen to be famous, you are also smeared; “standard journalistic practices” go out the window and a doctrine of hypocrisy is imposed. This is what our “special relationship” with the Jewish state has brought us to.



The Outrage at Helen Thomas

By Alison Weir

Whenever Israel commits yet another atrocity, its defenders are quick to redirect public attention away from the grisly crime scene.

Currently, there are headlines about allegedly anti-Semitic comments made by senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Pundits across the land evince outrage at her off-the-cuff 25-second statement made to a man who appears to be holding a camera right in her face.

Thomas issued a public apology for her words, but this was insufficient to assuage the wounded feelings of powerful antagonists, and she has now retired from a long and distinguished career.

Before we examine her comments and evaluate their possible validity, let’s look at other recent events having to do with Israel.

On May 31st Israeli commandos killed at least nine unarmed volunteers attempting to take humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

According to eyewitness reports and forensic evidence, many of these aid volunteers were shot at close range, including a 19-year-old American citizen killed by four bullets to the head and one to the chest fired from 18 inches away.

Israel immediately imprisoned eyewitnesses and hundreds of other aid participants, confiscated their cameras, laptops, and other possessions, and prevented them from speaking to the press for days. Among the incarcerated were decorated U.S. veterans and an 80-year-old former ambassador who had been deputy director of Reagan’s Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism.

When they finally emerged and were able to tell their stories, many described horrific scenes of Israeli commandos shooting people in the head, of those tending the injured being shot in the stomach, of people bleeding to death while flotilla participants waved white flags and pled for help.

They also described being beaten brutally by Israeli forces, again and again – including those on ships that, in the U.S. media’s judgment, experienced “no violence.” A 64-year-old piano tuner from California, Paul Larudee, described hundreds of Israeli commandos boarding his ship. When he refused to cooperate with them, soldiers then beat him numerous times both on board the ship and after he was imprisoned on land.

Eventually he was taken by ambulance to an Israeli hospital. He wasn’t treated, however, and Larudee believes he was taken there because Israel didn’t want media to see his black eye, pronated joints, bruised jaw and body contusions.

Marine veteran Ken O’Keefe described similar beatings while in Israeli custody. In his case, the public was able to see his bloodied, battered face in video clips and still images – but only on the Internet, since American mainstream media failed to report on his press conference or to publish the many still photos of his injuries.

Other gruesome photos available to the American public only on the Internet are of Emily Henochowicz, a 21-year-old American student whose eye and eye socket were recently shattered by Israeli forces. She has since had her eyeball removed, three metal plates inserted in her face, and her jaw wired shut.

Henochowicz was not on the flotilla; she was taking part in a nonviolent demonstration against the Israeli assault when an Israeli soldier shot a high-velocity teargas canister into her face.

A Swedish citizen standing with Henochowicz said, “They clearly saw us. They clearly saw that we were internationals and it really looked as though they were trying to hit us. They fired many canisters at us in rapid succession. One landed on either side of Emily, then the third one hit her in the face.”

Henochowicz is not the first to have been shot by such a canister.

Thirty-year-old Basem Ibrahim Abu Rahmeh died when an Israeli soldier shot one at him at close range while Abu Rahmeh participated in a demonstration against Israeli confiscation of Palestinian farmland. A video of this is also available on You Tube; U.S. networks have also chosen not to broadcast this.

Californian Tristan Anderson was shot in the head by a similar canister while he was taking photographs following another demonstration. Part of Anderson’s brain was removed and he was in a “minimally responsive state” for 6-7 months.

He is now in a wheelchair, has almost no movement in his left arm and leg, is blind in one eye, and his mental functioning is significantly reduced. Photos of the shooting are also available on the Internet.

Since at least 2006 Israeli forces have closed off Gaza to the outside world, essentially imprisoning 1.5 million men, women, and children, and denying them foodstuffs, medicines, and building materials, as documented by such agencies as Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Christian Aid, which said that Israel was using food and medicine as weapons.

One of the multitudinous victims of this illegal siege is five-year-old Taysir Al Burai, who suffers from an acute neurological disorder and requires round-the-clock care. According to the UK Guardian, he could be cured if Israel would allow him to leave Gaza, but to date his parents’ repeated requests have been denied.

Another victim is 7-month-old Mohammad Khader, whose swelling in the brain required specialized treatment unavailable in Gazan hospitals depleted by the Israeli siege. His distraught parents’ applications asking Israel to allow them to travel abroad were similarly denied. Their tiny son died a few days ago.

Such stories go on and on.



Thomas’ “outrageous” statement


Yet, the rage we see in the U.S. media is directed against none of this. People shot in the head, eyes and brain parts destroyed, the elderly beaten, small children and infants caused to suffer and die, parents to grieve – none of this has caused a hint of anger. In fact, most of it has been considered of too little importance even to report.

Instead, media reports are filled with outrage at “anti-Israel” words spoken by 89-year-old Helen Thomas.

In Thomas’s lifetime Israel has ethnically cleansed over a million people, replaced them with colonists from around the world, committed dozens of massacres, tortured thousands of people, killed and maimed untold numbers of children, mangled limbs, and committed outrages on women, old people, the weak and the infirm.

It has assassinated people throughout the world, invaded numerous countries, spied on the U.S., killed and injured 200 American servicemen (the anniversary is this week), and tortured and imprisoned Americans. All while receiving more American money than any other country on earth.

For years, long before her recent words, Thomas has been the target of Israel’s vicious American volunteers, the Zionist blogosphere abounding with nasty slurs on her looks and her Lebanese ancestry, this latter also consistently emphasized by the media, despite her Kentucky birth and upbringing.

One of the reasons for the ferocious animosity toward her is the fact that Thomas is one of the very few mainstream reporters to challenge the neocon engendered lies that led the U.S. into wars that have caused massive death, destruction and tragedy and to continue to expose ongoing policies of violence and cruelty.

As the same groups and individuals who pushed the US into attacking Iraq have in recent years been escalating their efforts to push the U.S. to now similarly decimate Iranians under the pretext that Iran might be developing nuclear weapons, Thomas’s questioning attempted to elicit from Obama the fact that Israel already posses nuclear weapons. While the rest of the press corps has conspired in the cover-up of this fact and others, Thomas worked to expose them.

Not surprisingly, the many people complicit in these manipulations, such as former Bush spokesperson Ari Fleischer, have led the charge against her.

It is useful to examine the video and context of Thomas’s allegedly “anti-Semitic” comment.

A man, apparently holding a camera right in her face, asks for her comments about Israel. She says, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land…” He interrupts her and asks where they should go. She responds, “They should go home. To Germany, Poland, America, and everywhere else.”

While Thomas has since apologized for her hasty words and many Israelis have the right to continue living where they are, the reality is that Israeli settlers did, indeed, come from elsewhere; they are, in fact, illegally occupying Palestinian land (a fact acknowledged even by the U.S. State Department); and international law does require that they leave.

Many commentators evince particular anger at Thomas’s inclusion of Germany and Poland as places to which Israeli colonists should return, suggesting that Hitler is still in control and waiting to pounce.

The happy fact is, however, that World War II and the Nazi holocaust ended well over half a century ago. In Poland today there is a vibrant Jewish revival with a 10-foot tall Menorah being lit in the center of Warsaw during Hanukah, and Germany has become, according to the New York Times, “a country where Jews want to live.” In fact, in recent years more Jews have chosen to immigrate to Germany than to Israel.

Thomas’s call for colonists to return to America (this destination was left out of many articles) is far from outrageous given that a great many West Bank settlers are from the U.S.

Overall, reporting on the incident has largely departed from the standard journalistic practice of quoting people from both sides of an issue. Quotes from Thomas supporters are missing, even though the You Tube page featuring the infamous video contains a large number of comments supporting her. In contrast, quotes from Thomas’s detractors, almost all of them Zionists, are ubiquitous, but generally fail to divulge the speakers’ frequent conflicts of interest.

For example, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz quotes Jeffrey Goldberg without mentioning that Goldberg is an Israeli citizen who served as a prison guard at an Israeli prison that held hundreds of Palestinians without charge, some killed in cold blood by the prison commander.

Mainstream media organizations do not seem to have investigated reports that the man who videotaped Thomas, Rabbi David Nesenoff, also made an offensive video featuring himself and another man impersonating a buffoonish Catholic priest and Mexican immigrant.

Similarly, news reports that a high school had disinvited Thomas as a graduation speaker almost never inform readers that many of the school’s parents and students wished Thomas to remain, even though this unreferenced group may represent a majority of the school. Members of this group have created a Facebook page, “Helen Thomas should have been our graduation speaker,” that states:

“The purpose of this group is to quietly but firmly protest the ability of a small minority to impose its will on the larger group through engaging or threatening to engage in disruptive discourse. This group affirms a belief in reasonable discussion and feel that in this scenario, a clear minority was able to override a larger majority by distorting the issues and discussion.”

It is not known who will take over Thomas’s front-row seat at White House briefings. Given the record of the current press corps, it is likely that Israel partisans are breathing a sigh of relief.