Helen Thomas, hater, 1920-2013: Why I’m proud I ‘took her down’

My “association” with Helen Thomas began on a Friday, just over three years ago when my friend Rabbi David Nesenoff (who would subsequently become publisher of The Jewish Star) sent me a video, which contained a short explosive interview he had conducted with the veteran White House correspondent. In it, Thomas gave a statement that many people saw as telling the Jews to go face another Holocaust.

David asked me if there was anything I could do with the video. He had already offered it to the mainstream media and even The Jewish Week. Taking up David’s challenge, I guaranteed the video would have a half a million hits before he turned on the computer again after the Sabbath (I was wrong — it was over 750,000).

I quickly posted it on my site The Lid, wrote it up for Big Journalism, gave it to Scott Baker (who at the time was running Breitbart TV), and sent out tweets and emails to most of the large sites. Before I left on a five-hour car ride to my brother’s house for Shabbos, the story was already a banner Drudge headline.

By the time I arrived in Maryland the same video they had rejected a few days earlier was dominating the headlines of the mainstream media.

In the three years since, Thomas, unencumbered by a “front line” media job, made new anti-Semitic comments, Her colleagues in the media protected her by claiming her slanders were political, not hateful. Their claim is that she wasn’t anti-Semitic, but simply anti-Israel — a dangerous affront to the truth.

Last year Michael Calderon wrote at Huffington Post that Thomas retired “over controversial comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict…”

Charles Lewis, former investigative producer for ABC News and CBS’s 60 Minutes, recently created a new website to honor “independent” journalists. One of the site’s initial honorees was Ms. Thomas who it said retired “after making controversial comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed once wrote an item about Ms. Thomas’ receipt of an award from the PLO:

“The turn of the screw: Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas, 91, who was forced into retirement after making incendiary remarks about Israel…”

The day after her passing, the mainstream media continued to whitewash Ms. Thomas’ statement as about the “Israel-Palestinian conflict.”

If making false and slanderous statements regarding Israel was a crime that lead to termination, the New York Times newsroom would be empty, Peter Jennings would have been sent to live with his former live-in girlfriend /Palestinian Authority Official Hanan Ashrawi, and Mike Wallace would have been ousted from 60 Minutes decades before his death. Even in Israel, you don’t get fired for being anti-Israel (have you ever read the Israeli paper Ha’aretz?).

If you want more proof of Helen Thomas’ hatred, then examine what she said since her resignation.

Just six months after her “retirement” Thomas was at it again (again it was captured on video and again the story was broken on The Lid and Big Journalism).

Ironically it was at an Arab anti-bias conference where Thomas was asked about her statements on that first video.

“I paid the price for that,” said Thomas, a longtime White House correspondent. “But it was worth it, to speak the truth. The Zionists have to understand that’s their country, too. Palestinians were there long before any European Zionists.”

Alluding to the anti-Semitic canard that Jews control the media, Thomas said:

“You cannot say anything [critical] about Israel in this country.” That was the nicest thing Thomas said all night.

In a speech at the anti-bias conference about discrimination against Arabs, she blamed it on the Jews, launching into an anti-Semitic tirade on how rich Jews control America

In a speech that drew a standing ovation, Thomas claimed:

“We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no question about that.

“Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where there mouth is. … We’re being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.

In March 2011, Playboy interviewed her.

Thomas said that Jews had no historical connection to the Jewish State, and made renewed claims about the worldwide ”Jewish” conspiracy a little later in the interview.

PLAYBOY: That stereotype of Jewish control has been around for more than a century. Do you actually think there’s a secret Jewish conspiracy at work in this country?

THOMAS: Not a secret. It’s very open. What do you mean secret? … Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies, which are funded by wealthy supporters, including those from Hollywood. Same thing with the financial markets. There’s total control.”

That’s what the media doesn’t understand — there is a difference between being anti-Semitic and anti-Israel, and Thomas happened to have been both. It is entirely reasonable to disagree with Israel’s polices, but once you complain of an Israeli lobby that runs the world, belittle the Holocaust and the suggest that the Jews are not really the Jews — things that Helen Thomas believed — that person is a hater.

The media’s continued protection of Helen Thomas comes from the media desire to protect fellow progressives (the same way they continue to protect Al Sharpton). Backing Ms. Thomas’ claim she wasn’t being anti-Semitic, but simply anti Israel allows progressives to continue their hateful meme that Jews believe any attack on Israel is Anti-Semitism.

When Helen Thomas said the Palestinians were there long before any European Zionists, Thomas was simply being historically inaccurate and biased against Israel.

But when she said the media, Congress, the White House, Hollywood and Wall Street are owned by Zionists, Thomas was using traditional anti-Semitic libels straight out of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Helen Thomas died this past Saturday.

She will be celebrated by the mainstream media as a trailblazer. I will always remember for the hater she was and am honored that my friend Rabbi Nesenoff asked me to help expose her for what she really was — a vicious anti-Semite.