Helen Thomas to Retire

[Brittain33]

It was hardly worth her retiring over.

I am sure the calculus would have been different were she not nearly 90.

[Brittain33]

Where I'm from, 'send the buggers back' is pretty much the definition of 'racist'.

Except there is a legitimate argument that the Israelis have no right to be there at all.

It's legitimate in the sense that laws are applied to Israel and the second- and third-generation children of immigrants there that are not applied to other nations. Generally, no nation has a "right" to exist except insofar as it can defend itself or get large patrons to defend itself.

[Brittain33]

Look at that. One of the few members of the press who is not an unquestioning lackey of the Israel lobby pushed out by the fake outrage of the Israel lobby.

I disagree with AIPAC and Netanyahu's government, but personally I was offended by her comment and was hoping for some kind of apology. Israel is not a binary issue (despite Likud's best efforts to make it such.) 

[Brittain33]

Suggesting that living in Poland or Germany is somehow dangerous or horrible is insulting.

No, it's the suggestion of "you shouldn't live where you were born or where your parents were born, go back to some country where they don't want you anyway and really don't want you and 4,000,000 of your friends back now asking for an extra set of keys."

[Brittain33]

I doubt immigration from Israel to Germany is that difficult, certainly not more so than immigration to Germany from Turkey or wherever (not that it's fair to demand all Israelis with German roots to move back, just replying to the "don't want you anyway" bit.)

I think it probably isn't hard to migrate and get residency, but that situation is predicated on it being small numbers of people coming and not a mass migration. A few thousand a year is not a problem, but larger numbers would drive a change in policy, the same way the UK tightened up its policies on immigration once it realized that several million Hong Kong residents might take them up on the offer pre-1997.

Germany is unusual among countries in that it had close to an open door policy for ex-Soviet Jewish immigrants in the 1990s. That's how the Jewish population increased from something like 33,000 to 200,000. I give them a lot of credit for that. But even so, while Germany is self-conscious about its past and not as ready to engage in immigrant-bashing as other countries in Europe, it still has a difficult time thinking of immigrants as anything but non-German. Jews would be "welcome" there as much as any other immigrant, but that welcome isn't particularly warm. And this is normal, or even better than the average reception for immigrants. My point is that I'm not singling out Germany when I say they don't want the Jews back. (Now Austria, on the other hand, really doesn't want its Jews back...)

[Brittain33]

The way she phrased her comments is clearly offensive and she apologized for them. But there's nothing wrong with the sentiment that the Israelis should leave the occupied territories.

Given that immigration from Germany and Poland is associated with the first period of Israeli independence, and that Palestine typically refers to the whole territory, it's not clear that she meant the West Bank and not all of what was once Palestine... nor does it seem that your reading of her remarks is the more common one. And if that's what she meant, the Israelis could scuttle back across the Green Line and go back to Israel instead of "home" to Germany, but she conspicuously didn't say that. At the very least, if she meant all of Israel, Gaza, and the WB, can you see why people would take that a little harder...

[Brittain33]

No, I don't oppose existence of Israel, I oppose new settelements. But if I opposed existence of Israel, would that make me an anti-semite?

The issues of the Middle East are not some giant passive-aggressive game of daring people to call you an anti-semite.

[Brittain33]

If a Russian opposes the existence of Poland, what would be the best description for his views?

[Brittain33]

Opposing the existence of Israel comes very close to the line, though.

How so? Unless you mistakenly think that Jews depend on Israel in some substantial way.

Jews depend on Israel in a substantial way.

[Brittain33]

Opposing the existence of Israel comes very close to the line, though.

How so? Unless you mistakenly think that Jews depend on Israel in some substantial way.

Jews depend on Israel in a substantial way.

Not really.

Yes, really.

I'm grateful to be an American, fully identify as such, and feel safe here. I have no interest in living in Israel. But there have been Jews in other situations who felt the same way about their countries, until suddenly they couldn't any more.

I'm damn lucky that the U.S. of 1885-1915 had a much more open immigration policy than the U.S. of 2010, for example. The Germans arrived in the city where my grandfather was born, and his cousins still lived, in the first few days of Barbarossa.

Some of his cousins didn't emigrate until the 1920s, when the rules were tightened. They ended up in Canada. Specifically, Montreal. Some are still there, some had to move on further in the 1970s because they weren't part of the right "nation." My aunt's family went from Russia to Cuba to Montreal to Toronto. And by comparison to most Jews, they were fortunate. In comparison to most Jews, I'm incomparably lucky.

[Brittain33]

Many (but not all) people who oppose the existence of Israel do so because they simply hate Jews.

I would say that for many people, questioning the existence of Israel is analogous to questioning the need for the Civil Rights Act. It doesn't come from bigotry, but it may come from, perhaps, selective intellectualization of the human experience that would strike them as unthinkable if applied to a different subject, or perhaps because it's unthinkable it ever would be applied to a different subject.

(Anyone else want to question the existence of Mexico?)

[Brittain33]

Ah the world's greatest democracy can't even allow freedom of speech to prevail in the personification of its power.

Has Helen Thomas been arrested?!

[Brittain33]

Ah the world's greatest democracy can't even allow freedom of speech to prevail in the personification of its power.

Has Helen Thomas been arrested?!

No, but the condemnation seems as though she had been.

Condemnation, as in, other people's free speech in response to hers, and her employer's decision to react to it.

[Brittain33]

You know, there are even anti-Zionist Jews. Are they close to self-hating?

Why is it so important to you to find out what you think we think your motivations are or what loaded terms you want us to use? Is that really important?

[Brittain33]

Oh, hey. Me and Cinyc are on the same side! Next thing I'll be calling myself an Independent Democrat and praising female wrestlers.

[Brittain33]

No, I just want to outline one clear difference: opposing existence of Israel in Palestine itself (which I support) doesn't automatically makes people anti-semites.

Ok. For what it's worth, there is very little on this Earth that I would say "automatically" makes anyone "anti-anything," and I get frustrated at these discussions because in the U.S. one consequence of making racism and anti-Semitism beyond the pale is that we're unable to have any kind of discussion about them because it's perceived as an attack on the person's reason or sanity. It's one reason I almost never use the word anti-Semitic, people automatically shut down their ears if they hear it. It's worse for "racist."

Secondly, I can not figure out what you actually believe based on your statement above. I apologize, I completely forget you're not a native speaker most of the time you post, but in this case you've qualified things such that I don't understand.

[Brittain33]

But a large majority of Jewish people don't depend on Israel.

I would hesitate to say a "large majority" because a large minority of Jews actually lives in Israel. Unless you are positing that the vast majority of Jews who live outside of Israel, do not derive any real security from knowing that it's a place to go should their country's environment turns sharply negative.

[Brittain33]

It makes you more likely to be one.  Almost all anti-Semites oppose Israel, but not all who oppose Israel are anti-Semites.  Someone who opposes Israel and says the Jews should go back from where they came, including countries in which millions of their relatives were slaughtered ARE anti-Semites. 

I have to say that I don't know or care if Helen Thomas is "an anti-Semite." I think her statement is, but that can be qualified fifty ways from Sunday, and I do not divide the world into anti-Semites and others. I think we benefit from recognizing that racism and, to a much lesser extent, anti-Semitism are forces flowing through society that can pop up at unexpected time and influence people in different ways. But it is not a virus that someone is either infected with or not. And we need to be able to work with people, and that is done by focusing on deeds and words, not on their identity as a person.

[Brittain33]

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I react badly to this particular line of argument because I have seen it deployed in a very manipulative way by people who are critics of Israel, no matter what intellectual position they come from. It delegitimatizes people who disagree with them by pre-emptively labeling us as labelers who try to shut down discussion. If someone says "I'm sure I'll get called an anti-Semite for this, but I think Israel's policy is wrong," they're pre-emptively disrespecting people who disagree with them because we're so irrational or obnoxious that we refuse to debate. And you end up debating whether criticizing Israel is always anti-Semitic or not, but that's not the issue, the issue is Israel's policies, let's just debate that for damn sake. And what's more, 1 times out of 5 on Daily Kos you get someone saying "I'm sure I'll get called an anti-Semite for this by the Likudniks, but wealthy Jews control America" and it's infuriating to everyone.

[Brittain33]

I have to say that I don't know or care if Helen Thomas is "an anti-Semite." I think her statement is, but that can be qualified fifty ways from Sunday, and I do not divide the world into anti-Semites and others. I think we benefit from recognizing that racism and, to a much lesser extent, anti-Semitism are forces flowing through society that can pop up at unexpected time and influence people in different ways. But it is not a virus that someone is either infected with or not. And we need to be able to work with people, and that is done by focusing on deeds and words, not on their identity as a person.

I mean, I'm sure she hates the country of Israel and really hates its government. I'm sure she's nice to ordinary Israelis and doesn't think anything bad of them as individuals, but hates what they do when they go to the ballot box or what she imagines they do when they talk about Arabs behind their backs.

But guess what, the nation of Israel is in large part responsible for the destruction of her ancestral country, both because of its founding driving Palestinians over the border, but also because Israel has no compunctions about bombing the hell out of it every few years. If I were her, I'd probably hate Israel, too.

And then it expresses itself in the form of statement that's as hateful as what Avigdor Lieberman says. Not because she's a monster. Because she's human, and because that's anatural extension of years of seeing people you empathize with suffer greatly at the hands of another country. And yet the sentiment itself shows no empathy for actual Israelis or recognition she'd be turning them into refugees. She doesn't care. This is a dilemma, not Eichmann on trial. So calling her an anti-Semite is wrong because it denies HER humanity as someone, like the rest of us, who is a member of a nation or two.

[Brittain33]

I meant outside of Israel.  And there's a difference between "depending" on Israel and "considering Israel a place to flee to".

Then for me this is an argument of semantics.