The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Helen Thomas: Blood on Her Hands

Posted on | December 5, 2010 | 35 Comments

Yesterday I joked about Helen Thomas’s latest expedition into Jew-baiting paranoia. Yet, ridiculous as it is, what Thomas is telling the Arab world is what too many people — Arab and non-Arab alike — are all too eager to believe: That American foreign policy vis-a-vis the Middle East is controlled by a conspiracy of wealthy Jews.

Thomas cannot claim that her remarks were “taken out of context.” Jeff Dunentz at Yid With Lid has a 7-minute  video of Thomas’s remarks at Wayne State University’s campus in Dearborn, Michigan:

Having taken the trouble to transcribe part of Thomas’s remarks, I ask you to notice what she uses as the precedent to her claim about politicians and the media being “owned by the Zionists”:

“If we invade a country like Iraq for no reason that’s valid, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaeda – a very bad dictator, yes. But is that a reason to kill thousands of people? No reason to invade Aghanistan – no president has yet been able to defend it or explain it. . . . To kill or die, for what? . . . There is an actual campaign constantly, since I’ve been at the White House. Every president has known the truth about the Arab world, but they have not been able to act for the truth. And the whole question of money involved in politics – 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.”

Thomas is not merely saying that “Jews own Hollywood” (an assertion that is actually not even controversial) or “Jews own Wall Street.” What Thomas is saying is that America waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq entirely because of “Zionist” influence.

Is her assertion true? Was there “no reason” — or “no reason that’s valid” — for either of these military campaigns? Have thousands of American soldiers, and many thousands of Iraqis and Aghans, died merely to satisfy the blood-lust of Zionist Jews?

Leaving aside any debate about the overall wisdom of Bush-era foreign policy, is it really the case that the root of the world’s problems is the insidious (and allegedly insuperable) influence of a Jewish conspiracy?

Or is it not rather the case, as I am inclined to believe, that the incitement of hatred against Israel by Arab demagogues — whose ranks Helen Thomas proudly joins — is the real root of this problem?

Egged on by bloodthirsty radicals both Arab and non-Arab, Muslim and non-Muslim, Palestinian leaders have made the annihilation of Israel their casus belli for decades, and have recruited killers around the world to rally to that banner.

Everywhere that Islamist terrorists shed the blood of innocents, they do so in large measure because they have been indoctrinated with the belief that the continued existence of the Jewish state is an offense against Allah, so that there is a divine commandment for the destruction of Israel. Indoctrinated with that belief, the terrorists are waging what is quite literally a holy war that justifies the purposeful slaughter of men, women and children. Suicide bombers who seek death in the worldwide war against against “Zionism” do so in the belief that they are martyrs in a sacred cause.

Allah commands this.

And so does Helen Thomas.

There is blood on her hands, just as there is blood on the hands of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and al-Qaeda. Indeed, by her slanderous accusations against Israel, Helen Thomas dips her hands in the blood of Bobby Kennedy and proclaims to the world that RFK was wrong to support Israel, and that Bobby’s killer was right.

This is not a debate about U.S. foreign policy or about the terms of peace between Israel and Palestine.

We can debate such things civilly and amicably. But there can be no room in that debate for those like Helen Thomas who foment anti-Semitic paranoia by making accusations of mala fides against Israel’s allies, claiming that anyone who defends Israel is “owned” by shadowy Zionist conspirators.

Helen Thomas belongs to the Sirhan Sirhan wing of the Democrat Party, and it is high time we begin to speak frankly about how far and how deep this dangerous radicalism has spread.

UPDATE: Thomas actually had the effrontery to invoke MLK. “No Mistake About It,” says Aaron Goldstein of The American Spectator.

Category: Israel, Terrorism, Yid With Lid

Comments

Comments are closed.