What a sad way for Helen Thomas to end an otherwise momentous career.
Yet, this sadness is utterly nothing in comparison to that which we Jews have endured through the millennia.
It is also interesting how the new cycles, pop-culture and politically correct movement are so very selective. For example, Helen Thomas is rightly criticized for her answer to being asked if she had any comments on Israel,
Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it’s their land. It’s not Germany, not Poland.
Asked, where they should go, she retorted,
Home. Poland. Germany. America. And everywhere else.
Yet, Sam Harris, the supposed and self-professed champion of reason, stated the following and continues to be a lucrative celebrity:
The gravity of Jewish suffering over the ages, culminating in the Holocaust, makes it almost impossible to entertain any suggestion that Jews might have brought their troubles upon themselves. This is, however, in a rather narrow sense, the truth.
Some, such as Ellen Ratner, have taken the approach of I’m a Jew and I know Hellen and she is no Nazi so “Give her a break,” actually, she wrote, “Helen is three months short of 90 and her brain’s filters might not work as well as a 40-year-old’s. Give her a break.”1
Be that as it may; if being circa 90 causes you to make such remarks—and make such remarks to a Rabbi, David Nesenoff, and make such remarks, make them to a Rabbi and make them during a White House Jewish Heritage Day event and make such remarks, to a Rabbi, during the White House Jewish Heritage Day event just when the world saw video evidence of Israeli commandos being attacked with weapons by “peace” activists while denying the video evidence before their very eyes—then perhaps it is time to retire; and retire she has along with this statement:
I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.
This is not just about the private musings of a latter day octogenarian, this is about the mood in the world against Israel and Jews and about the fact that we Jews must, yes indeed must, remain ever vigilant. Some may consider us hyper-vigilant, hyper-sensitive of hyper-paranoid yet, I wonder about my relatives who were murdered in concentration camps. I wonder if they asked themselves, “How did we get here?”
It was not that one day they were free as a bird and the next they were interred. There were incremental steps from the societal to the governmental and it is when we do not do anything about the little steps along the way that we find ourselves asking how we have gotten so very far so very fast.
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up—Martin Niemoller in 1946