Perspectives

The courageous legacy of journalist Helen Thomas: ‘Zionists go home!’

By Dr. Kevin Barrett -Guest Columnist- | Last updated: Aug 14, 2013 - 12:48:55 PM

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President Barack Obama presents cupcakes with a candle to then Hearst White House columnist Helen Thomas in honor of her birthday in the James Brady Briefing Room, on Aug. 4, 2009. Thomas, who at the time turned 89, shared the same birthday as the President, who at the time turned 48. Photo: White House Photo/Pete Souza
‘Helen Thomas paid a heavy price for speaking the truth. The Zionist-dominated mainstream media launched a witch hunt. Thomas was viciously slandered, dropped by her agency, rebuked by the journalists’ associations, and forced to resign from Hearst Newspapers. Yet nobody has ever managed to explain why her remarks were wrong.’
In the USA today, speaking out against the evils of Zionism is career suicide.

The Israel lobby has destroyed the careers of several of the greatest U.S. Senators and Representatives of the 20th century, including William Fulbright, Mike Gravel, Charles Percy, James Abourezk, Paul Findley, Cynthia McKinney, Pete McCloskey, Earl Hilliard, Roger Jepsen, and James Trafficant. Even former President Jimmy Carter has been viciously slandered and sued by pro-Israel fanatics.

Helen Thomas, the dean of the Washington press corps, spent her career watching the Israel lobby destroy Palestine—and American democracy. Finally, in June 2010, she could no longer hide her disgust with Zionism. When a radical Zionist rabbi shoved a camera in her face and pushily demanded that she say something to the Jews of Israel, Thomas responded with these immortal words:

“Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine … they should go home to Poland or Germany or America or anywhere else. Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries?”

Helen Thomas paid a heavy price for speaking the truth. The Zionist-dominated mainstream media launched a witch hunt. Thomas was viciously slandered, dropped by her agency, rebuked by the journalists’ associations, and forced to resign from Hearst Newspapers. Yet nobody has ever managed to explain why her remarks were wrong.

Thomas pithily explained what happened: “I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive.”

The Zionists tried to make Thomas back down. But she refused, saying: “Congress, the White House, Hollywood and Wall Street are owned by Zionists. No question, in my opinion. I paid a price, but it’s worth it to speak the truth.”

She later defended those remarks, saying: “I just think that people should be enlightened as to who is in charge of the opinion in this country.”

Virtually the entire population of the Middle East agrees with Helen Thomas: The Zionist invaders should leave Palestine and go home to wherever they came from. Why is this view unacceptable in the USA?

Because it is true and inarguable.

There is no legitimate argument for the existence of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Zionist Jews claim that Palestine is their holy land. But Christians and Muslims also claim Palestine as their own holy land. Why should one religion have special rights—especially a religion that represents a minuscule fraction of the followers of Abraham? After all, more than half the population of the world is either Christian or Muslim. Jews are only about one-fifth of one percent of the world’s people.

That means that for every 250 followers of Abraham, only one of them is Jewish. And that one may not even be a Zionist! Clearly, the holy land should belong to all of the followers of Abraham, not just the tiny number who stubbornly reject the prophetic missions of Jesus and Muhammad, peace upon them both, and insist on perpetrating genocide in the land that is sacred to all of the more than three and one-half billion followers of Abrahamic monotheism.

And Palestine should also belong to the Palestinian people, whatever their religion, since their ancestors have been living there continuously for many centuries.

The Zionists claim to be descended from people who lived in Palestine two thousand years ago. That claim has been proven false by genetic and historical studies. But even if it were true, what gives a group of people the right to invade, occupy, and ethnically cleanse someone else’s country, just because the invaders’ ancestors supposedly once lived there? Should the Native Americans, who came from Asia, invade, occupy, and ethnically cleanse China and India? The whole idea is ludicrous.

The Zionists say that because Jews have always suffered persecution, the world must give them anything they want. They invoke the Nazi holocaust to excuse their holocaust in Palestine. But it was the Germans, not the Palestinians, who persecuted Jews during World War II. If the “holocaust” argument is correct, the Zionists must leave Palestine and put their “Jewish state” in Germany.

The utter and complete illegitimacy of Zionism and its phony state “Israel” is the elephant in the living room—the elephant that no-one in the Zionist-dominated West is allowed to mention.

In the lands dominated by Zionism, including the USA, you are allowed to deplore Israeli human rights abuses. You are allowed to support a pathetic and powerless “Palestinian state.” You are allowed to say that Israel must return to its 1967 borders. If you are lucky, you might even get away with supporting the Palestinians’ right of return.

But you must never, ever mention the truth of the matter: That “Israel” does not have one shred of legitimacy … and that in the name of truth, justice, and decency, every Zionist invader of Palestine must go home and leave Palestine to the Palestinians.

Helen Thomas spoke that truth courageously, forcefully and brilliantly. Her immortal words sum up the reality of the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict with trenchant eloquence.

“Zionists, get the hell out of Palestine.”

Those words ring out today as the epitaph of one of America’s greatest journalists … and tomorrow as the epitaph of Zionism itself.

(Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. His website is www.truthjihad.com).