Pro-Zionist Media Bias II

Why is it indefensible?

You know don't you, that Britian  and France, and many other countries, used to occupy other countries and claim them as their own, until finally they had to admit their empires were collapsing and their citizens all had to go back home or elsewhere in the world?

...peoples from all those countries Thomas noted are occupying another people's lands, and it has only been approx. 60 years, in the case of the Dutch, French, Spanish, and British  they had sometimes  been occupiers for 100's of years.

Why on earth would these people have more rights to be occupiers than other peoples?

Having said that how are you feeling, and good to see you ghislaine.

This with Helen Thomas is certainly a piss off....and last night was the last night I will ever watch the Daily Show...

I don't think ANYONE should be expelled anywhere and the comparison with British and French and Spanish colonies make no sense either. The Spanish empire in South America came to an end in the early 19th century - I don't hear anyone demanding that all 300 million people in the Americas who are of Spanish descent should be put on a boat back to Spain. I also wonder how many people on bable who are of anything other than First Nations descent plan to set an example by leaving Canada and going back to the countries their ancestors came from.

BTW: Its interesting that Helen Thomas said that Israelis should all go back to Germany or Poland or the US - what about the majority of Israeli Jews who are descended from people who were expelled from Arab countries like Iraq and Yemen etc...in the 50s?

remind wrote:

Why is it indefensible?

You know don't you, that Britian  and France, and many other countries, used to occupy other countries and claim them as their own, until finally they had to admit their empires were collapsing and their citizens all had to go back home or elsewhere in the world?

...peoples from all those countries Thomas noted are occupying another people's lands, and it has only been approx. 60 years, in the case of the Dutch, French, Spanish, and British  they had sometimes  been occupiers for 100's of years.

Why on earth would these people have more rights to be occupiers than other peoples?

 

Having said that how are you feeling, and good to see you ghislaine.

 

This with Helen Thomas is certainly a piss off....and last night was the last night I will ever watch the Daily Show...

Personally I think a peaceful solution to the conflict will not involve removing 6 million people based solely on their religion against their will.  There needs to be a one or two state solution where Palestinians' rights are recognized. 

Canada was colonized and the British, French, etc. have not left. It is not feasible for us to leave. It is also not feasible for us to continue to deny human rights to FN people here. 

I am feeling good - haven't been posting much as I have a brand new baby, who is taking up most of my time!

Stockholm wrote:

BTW: Its interesting that Helen Thomas said that Israelis should all go back to Germany or Poland or the US - what about the majority of Israeli Jews who are descended from people who were expelled from Arab countries like Iraq and Yemen etc...in the 50s?

They should be allowed to stay in Israel or return to the countries they were expelled from ... just as the Palestinians who were expelled from Palestine should be allowed to stay where they were forced to move to after being expelled, or return to the home they were expelled from.

Unfortunately, seeing as we have racist tyrants in control on both sides preventing the return of the expelled, that's not likely to happen ... unless of course like my mother used to tell me when I was trying to justify my actions based on the actions of someone else, one of those racist tyrants decides to jump off a bridge, then of course the other racist tyrant will also have to jump off a bridge.

While it is interesting that helens comments weren't causing an uproar at the time they were said and were only used after the fact to vilify her, nonetheless her comments are not anything i would support, not to mention they do a disservice to all those trying to fight for palestinian rights in the face of an israeli pr campaign that says everyone who opposes israel's actions is an anti-semite.

i can't help but lump her "go back to where you came from" remarks in the same bag as all the others.

al-Qa'bong wrote:

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Personally I think a peaceful solution to the conflict will not involve removing 6 million people based solely on their religion against their will.

 

That's two of you now who have said here that opposition to Israelis is based "solely on their religion." It's not about religion; it's about invasion, dispossession and occupation.

 

Again I'll ask, were critics of the Crusaders antisemites?

 

 

I never said opposition to Israelis was based solely on their religion. I said that doing what Helen Thomas advocated (she specifically said "Jews" in her comment btw - not Israelis) will involve forcibly removing 6 million people from the region. The people moved will be Jewish people only - according to those advocating this "solution". By the way, this all reminds of [url=http://www.rabble.ca/comment/1148455/Cytizen-H-wrote-Does] this [/url] assertion by unionist:

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You're heard of Palestinians who demand that all Israelis leave Israel (I'm not talking about the occupied territories - but all of what is now Israel)?
I haven't. Some call for one state, some for two, none for expulsion of the people they don't like - except, of course, from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Golan, and of course an end to the aggression and sieges and incursions. The "expel the Jews" or "drive them into the Sea" is the non-existent phoney meme used to drum up Jewish support for the Zionist criminals

Well, there you go. Helen Thomas has called for Israelis to leave the entire area and "go back" to Germany, Poland, America, etc. and some here seem to agree.

al-Qa'bong wrote:

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I never said opposition to Israelis was based solely on their religion.

 

If so, what do you think, "Personally I think a peaceful solution to the conflict will not involve removing 6 million people based solely on their religion against their will" means?

 

You can't even accurately interpret yourself; how do you expect to appear credible when interpreting anyone else?

 

Opposition to Israel's policies is not based solely on religion. Opposition to the current situation of apartheid is a very different thing than calling for the removal of all Jewish people from the region. The removal of certain people would be based on religion. Helen Thomas used the term Jews. 

I find it fascinating the nine civilians murdered on the high seas is "regrettable", but an off the cuff remark by a woman in her 80s is "reprehensible".  Only in Zionist America (and Canada).

Ghislaine wrote:

She said that "Jews should go back to where they came from", being Germany, Poland, America. My point was that the majority of Jewish people in the region will not move to these countries willingly, so the obvious outcome of this position is that they would have to be forcibly removed.  I cannot believe her statement is being defended! 

How are we suppose to take any criticism of this statement seriously when even when someone suggests that Israel should move back to the 1967 borders it is considered calling for the extermination of the Jews? Hell, suggesting that Israel simply stop expanding the settlements, or let seriously ill Palestinians get to the fucking hospital in a reasonable time is considered by Zionists as Antisemitism?

What she said might be an somewhat inappropriate, but I'm not going to judge the level of inappropriateness based on how Zionists react to it, that's for sure.

Keep on saying that Helen Thomas would seriously want those folks forcibly removed and deported and keep the credibility of this whole bloody discussion at zero level!

Or have you noticed her tendency to slope her right arm in a salute-like gesture when she asked questions - the only really tough question - in the Whiite House over the past few decades?

al-Qa'bong wrote:

The Helen Thomas affair is significant only insofar as it is a perfect example of both Zionist intimidation of the media and how completely Zionist ideology has penetrated the minds of those in the media.

Did Thomas say Jews should be removed from Palestine or merely that they should go back where they came from? If she used the word "remove," I apologise in advance, but I think claiming she called for removal of Jews from Palestine is a sign of successful propaganda, and is a surfacing of the Zionist "Arabs want to drive the Jews into the sea" trope.

Oh for fuck's sake. No, she didn't specifically say they should be physically expelled. But if someone said that "all Chinese should go HOME to China" everyone would rightfully call it out for the racism that it is - even if they didn't specifially suggest pushing them onto boats against their will. People are allowed to emigrate. Her comments are particularly loathsome given that she knows damn well that 6 million people who DID stay "home" in Poland and Germany were murdered by the Nazis and that those who managed to survive didn't exactly receive a warm "welcome back" party.

For a long-time journalist who one would assume would be quite informed, it also reveals a profound ignoranceof the realities of the Jewish population of Israel such as a) that many Jews in Israel particularly in Jerusalem have had their families living there continuously since long before 1948 or that b) approximately half of the Jewish population of Israel are Sephardic Jews whose "home" was never Germany or Poland but whose families came from places like Iraq from which they were expelled for being Jews.

Well, the Jewishness of Israelis certainly IS important to many "supporters" of the Palestinians, like Iraq who expelled Jews from their country over opposition to Israel.

But, that's sort of a tangent. I wasn't even talking about the Palestinians, but about a long-time political journalist who should presumably know that most Israeli Jews didn't arrive via Germany

Ghislaine wrote:

She said that "Jews should go back to where they came from" ...

Hi Ghislaine, welcome back - and congratulations!!

Just a small note. That thing you put in quotes? She never said that. In fact, she never uttered the word "Jews" at all. Nor did she use the words "go back to where they came from".

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=447ekAh8AOo]Listen carefully.[/url] And don't repeat rumours. And think about the words "ambush" and "putting words in people's mouths".

many years ago, i watched barbara frum, on a cbc news program of some kind, call the Arabs 'ciphers' (nobodies) for opposing israel. The idiot cbc is so bloody politically correct, one would think they would damn such a racist, stupid notion as referring to an entire people (and a semitic people at that) as 'nothings', but then cbc has always been a rightwing stooge org, imho. Maybe it wasn't that bad once, but it has never really considered truth as anything more then a speedbump on the highway of misinfo that it travels (a few years ago, the cbc featured lester pearson, nobel prize winning liar, who was talking about the '56 Hungarian 'revolution' crushed by the 'USSR' (actually, Warsaw Pact) and sounding all outraged and righteous- and the strange thing was the cbc had just that evening had another program about france/britain/israel invasion of Egypt to stop Egypt from seizing Suez canal (a scheme that ended with USSR/USA telling them to get the hell outta there-the canal belonged to Egypt!). The way the cbc could pretend the two events; the cia sponsored effort to put a anti communist regime into Hungary, and the bullyboy antics used against Egypt's Nasser (the Egyptions would have literally destroyed the canal- something plain as day to everybody but the bullies, which explains Eisenhower's common sense...  indeed, the brits totally withdrew ALL their people, thinking the Egyptions coundn't handle the complex operations, but the canal continued to operate, as usual, w/out any problems) he cbc chooses to ignore anything that defies their secret rightwing logic, and it works, because no one ever calls them on it...

THis guy lost me when he described the questioning of Thomas as an "ambush". Did anyone actually watch the video. The context was that it was a Jewish heritage celebration at the White House (a friend of ours was actually hired to render the White House kitchen kosher and has some pretty cool stories) and the rabbi was asking people for comments. He wasn't confrontational at all. He seemed quite friendly, in fact. Now the rabbi is getting death threats over posting the video.

Merowe wrote:

As for Helen Thomas forbidden 'the Emperor has no clothes' remark, it peerlessly displays the level of denial demanded by the western establishment. The fact is Israel IS a settler state, and most of the original settlers came from the countries she indicated. It is still preferencing Jewish immigrants from these states over the displaced indigenous population.

Jon Stewart attacked her remarks with the comment that the Jews left those countries because six million had been murdered there. This comment completely excludes the Palestinians from the discussion. They don't exist, they are invisible, their lives mean nothing in this equation. Germany exterminated its Jews. Palestinians must provide them with a new home. End of discussion.

The fact is that her remarks were about MASS EXPULSION of over six million people for no other reason than their religion. If you agree with this then you have to also agree that the entire non-Aboriginal populations of North and South America should all go back to England, France and Spain and Portugal. I wonder how Portugal with a population of 8 million is supposed to accommodate about 200 million Brazilians of Portuguese descent who all have to "go home to Portugal" so that all of  Brazil can be the sole possession of the Yanomano tribe along the Amazon who are about all that's left of the original inhabitants of Brazil.

If Thomas's comments ACTUALLY reflect the hidden agenda of people who are "pro-Palestinian" then Israel is right to fight tooth and nail every step of the way. Hopefully, her vision of a "judenrein" Palestine are NOT reflective of any hidden agenda and we can go back figuring out how Israelis and palestinians can both be accommodated in the land between the Meditterranean and the Jordan river.

I can't believe that we are even debating this. Her remarks are to be condemned period! I don't condemn her as an individual since we are all entitled to go off the deep end sometimes and say things we don't mean. But right now the pathetic sight of people contorting themselves to find a way to defend the indefensible reminds of how all these neo-cons were jumping through hoops to make excuses for Nixon when some recently released White House tapes had him and Billy Graham chatting about how much they hated Jews or neo-cons trying to be apologists for their darling Mel Gibson when he said that Jews caused all the wars in the world etc...

I watched the video for the first time. (Thanks for the link Unionist.) I need to watch it a few more times and to reflect. It appears on first examination that a fair bit of extrapolation of her comments has taken place in the media.

She didn't HAVE to say "Jews"!! How many gentiles from from Poland are living in Israel? It's clear that she was referring to Jews.

I agree that this rabbi isn't particularly important. I'd never heard of him before. He's certainly not a prominent Torah scholar or person of much renown. And, yet, even with his lowly status, he's managed to get all this hatred directed his way. All for posting a recording.

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

She didn't HAVE to say "Jews"!!

Nobody who criticizes Israeli crimes against humanity HAS to say "Jews"!! It's UNDERSTOOD that they're just singling out, delegitimizing, and dehumanizing Israel [b]BECAUSE IT'S A JEWISH STATE![/b] Why else would anyone be concerned about this flourishing suburb of New York!?

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How many gentiles from from Poland are living in Israel?

How many gentiles from Russia are living in Israel, who pretended to be Jews in order to immigrate in the 1990s to open welcoming arms and install themselves where expelled Palestinians are verboten? Tens - hundreds of thousands? Got a count there? Just prove you're not an Arab, and come right on in.

There's not enough anti-semitism in the world for Zionist tastes. Anti-semitism is what makes Jews think about moving on, settling somewhere else. Anti-semitism has always been the lifeline of the Zionist dream - today in ways that could never have been imagined before.

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I agree that this rabbi isn't particularly important.

Oh, I didn't say that. I said he was a zero - in human, moral terms. He has become so important that the White House used his treachery to banish one its most upright and consistent critics.

I hope no one follows up on those millions, or was it thousands, of death threats. But if they do, at least we can take comfort, in advance, that the poor little unknown rabbi, thrust unwillingly onto the international stage, will have nobly given his life [i]al kiddush Hashem[/i]. [i]BeGan Eden tihyeh minuchato. Amen.[/i]

Sure, Stock, and then we can really convince people that the Israeli government doesn't like Arabs.

Are you sure the globe can withstand the shock?

After that, we'll collect comments from pre-1994 South African government leaders saying that blacks and whites shouldn't mix.

That would be really "productive" - wasn't that your word?

The progressive world has passed by this phase. The page has been turned. Even Pride Toronto is starting to understand that when you lick the backside of the Israeli cheerleaders, people don't applaud.