Media Hit Job of the Year: Punishing Helen Thomas For Criticizing Israel

In
1960, I co-founded a student magazine at Cornell University called
Dialogue. I was a wannabe journalist, fixated on emulating the
courageous media personalities of the times from Edward R. Murrow to a
distinctive figure I came to admire at Presidential press conferences, a
wire service reporter named Helen Thomas.

In
recent years, my faith in the power of dialogue in politics has been
severely teste--as, no doubt has hers--in an age where diatribes and
calculated demonization chills debate and exchanges of opposing views.

Once
you are labeled and stereotyped, especially if you are denounced as an
anti-Semite, you are relegated to the fringes, pronounced a hater beyond
redemption, even beyond explanation.

You have been assigned a scarlet letter as visible as the Star of David the Nazis made Jews wear.

My
career path took me from covering civil rights activism in the streets
to later working in the suites of network power. I went from the
underground press to rock and roll radio to TV reporting and producing
at CNN and ABC.

As
a member in good standing of an activist generation, I saw myself more
as an outsider in contrast to Helen's distinctive credentials as an
insider, as a White House bureau chief and later as the dean of the
White House Correspondents Association.

Yet,
beneath her establishment credentials and status, she was always an
outsider too--one of nine children born to a family of Lebanese
immigrants in Winchester Kentucky, who despite their Middle East
origins, were Christians in the Greek Orthodox Church.

She
became a pioneering woman, a modern day Helen of Troy, who broke the
glass ceiling, infiltrating the clubby, mostly male, inside the beltway
world of big egos and self-important media prima donnas; most
supplicants to power, not challengers of it.

Her
origins were more modest. She grew up in an ethnic neighborhood in
Detroit. Helen
received her batchelor's degree from Wayne State University in 1942,
the year I was born. Earlier this year, her alma mater which had taken
so much pride in her achievements, withdrew an award in her name in a
striking gesture of cowardice and submission to an incident blown out of
all proportions that instantly turned Helen from a shero to a zero in a
quick media second.

The
Simon Wiesenthal Center--not, by the way, linked to the legendary Nazi
Hunter (who was unhappy with its work), put her on their top-ten list of
anti-Semites after angry remarks she made about Israel went viral and
blew up into one of the major media stories of 2010.

President
Barack Obama who cheerfully brought her a birthday cake, hailing her
long years of service to the American people, later labeled her remarks
"reprehensible." You would think that given all the vicious slurs,
Hitler comparisons and putdowns directed at him, he would be more
cautious tossing slurs at others.

But no, all politicians pander to deflect criticism whenever they fear the winds of enmity will blow their way.

But
now it was Helen who was being compared to Hitler in a new furor over
the Fuhrer even though she says she grew up in a home that despised him,
and from which her two brothers joined the army in World War ll. She
says now "We didn't do enough to expose Hitler early on. He was not just
anti-Jewish. He was anti-American!"

I
might add if I considered it necessary, that I grew up in a Jewish
family and am proud of that identity, our culture and traditions. But
that was no big thing to Helen who worked alongside Jews all of her life
in the media world, many as close friends. Her main concern as a child
was with non-Jews who baited her in school as a "garlic eater," a
foreigner.

She
may be a critic of Israel but never a hater of Jews, a distinction the
world recognizes, but that right-wing backers of the Israel lobby (and
the media that backs it) refuse to accept in the name of a black/white
'you are with us or ag'in us" ideological agenda which has no tolerance
for critics, differences of opinion or the anger of the dispossessed.

They
only see themselves as victims, never the people they victimize.
Prejudice often infects those who live in glass houses and who are quick
to condemn others.

For
many years, I admired Helen from afar, and later gave her an award for
Truth In Media voted by my colleagues on Mediachannel.org. She was an
institution, an icon of honor. We were impressed by her history of
asking tough questions even when they embarrassed Presidents.

Then,
suddenly, last June, I like everyone in the world of media, was stunned
to witness her public fall from grace, partly self-inflicted, perhaps
because of inelegant language used in response to an ambush interview by
provocateur father-son Israeli advocates posing as journalists

They were following in the footsteps of the vicious comments by Ann ("You
will find liberals always rooting for savages against civilization")
Coulter who earlier denounced her as an "old Arab" sitting yards from
the President as if she was threatening him. She refused to dignify that
smear with a response.

I
didn't know until she told me that she had also been hounded for years
by Abe Foxman, a leader of the Anti-Defamation League, who demanded she
explain 25 questions she asked Presidents over the decades, "I didn't
answer," "she told me, "because I don't respond to junk mail."

Foxman
then sent the questions to her employer trying to get her fired, she
says. Later, he recruited former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleisher in
his crusade against her. Ari and his boss disliked her "hostile"
questions about Iraq on official claims that have since been unmasked as
lies.

Helen always stuck to her guns. She was considered the granddame
of White House journalists. Presidents respected her. She went to China
with Nixon. You don't survive in that highly visible pit of
presidential polemics for as long as she did by backing down. Many
correspondents assigned there turn into bulldogs for the camera. Maybe
that's why Helen can appear abrupt at times.

She
has, however, always been polite enough to try to answer questions from
strangers without always realizing who she was dealing with in a new
world of media hit jobs, where "GOTCHA" YouTube videos thrive on
recording embarrassing moments, what we used to call "bloopers.'

In
her senior years, she was brought down by a kid looking for a
marketable soundbyte like the one he extracted -- as if he was a big
game hunter in Africa who bagged a lioness. She had been baited and took
the bait. Unaware of how the video could be used, she ventilated and
then regretted doing so. It was too late. That one media hit job
triggered millions of online video hits.

Helen later apologized for how
she said what she did without retracting the essence of her
convictions. But by then, it was too late. Her long career was
instantly terminated. The perception became everything; the context
nothing.

She
tried to be conciliatory, saying, "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."

Those
remarks were derided and dismissed, with the pundits and papers
demanding her scalp. She had no choice but to resign after her company,
her agent, her co-author and many "friends" started treating her like a
pariah.

"You
cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive," she says now. She
believes the Israel lobby controls the discourse on Israel. She cited,
as an example, CNN firing a veteran editor in Lebanon for praising a
popular cleric for his support for woman after he died. (CNN had no
problems hiring Wolf Blitzer, a former executive director of AIPAC.)

I
didn't ask her but I am sure she is sympathetic to President Carter for
speaking out on the issue the way he has, despite the way he was later
dumped on. Once under predictable vitriolic attack began, even he was
forced to back down away from some of his positions.

She
was forced into retirement and thrown to the wolves in a media culture
that relishes stories of personal destruction and missteps. It's the old
'the Media builds you up before they tear you down' routine.

As
blogger Jamie Frieze wrote, "I don't think she should have been forced
to resign. After all, the freedom of speech doesn't come with the right
to be comfortable. In other words, the fact that you're uncomfortable
doesn't trump my free speech. Thomas made people uncomfortable, but that
doesn't mean her speech should be punished."

But punished she was

As
a veteran of one kind of real journalism, she may have been
inexperienced in dealing with our volatile media culture that now
thrives on hostile 'drive by' attacks and putdowns.

When
I called Helen Thomas to ask if she might be willing to share some of
her thoughts on what happened, I found her as eloquent as ever,
supportive of Wikileaks, critical of Grand Jury harassment in the Middle
West against Palestinian supporters and angry with President Obama for
his many right turns and spineless positions.

This clearly was not a mea culpa moment for her, but what has she learned from this ordeal?

While she hasn't written about the incident she did speak to me about it for publication.

I first asked her for her view about what happened?

She was, she said, on a path outside the White House on a day in which Jewish leaders were being honored inside, at American Jewish Heritage Celebration Day,
an event she said she was unaware of. A Rabbi, David Nesenoff, asked
to speak to her, and introduced his two sons who he said wanted to
become Journalists. (One was actually a friend of his son Adam, also his
webmaster.)

"People
seeking advice come to me a lot," she explained, "and I told them about
my love of journalism and that they should pursue their goals. I was
gracious, and told them to go for it."

Then
the subject abruptly changed. "What you think of Israel they asked
next. It was all very pleasant and I don't blame them for asking," she
told me. But, then, she admitted, she didn't know the people who she
then said, "shoved a microphone in my face like a jack knife."
It
wasn't just any Rabbi making conversation. Nessensoff is an ardent
pro-Israel supporter who runs a website called Rabbi Live and can be a
flamboyant self-promoter. He says, "even though I was born in Glen Cove
and grew up in Syosset Long Island, Israel is my Jewish homeland. It is
the homeland for all Jewish people."

The Jewish Forward newspaper would later report, "Nesenoff
came under scrutiny for appearing in a video depicting a man of Mexican
descent pretending to give a weather forecast while a bearded rabbi in a
black hat and coat stands nearby.

The
four-and-a-half-minute video, titled "Holy Weather," features Nesenoff
dressed as "Father Julio Ramirez," an outsize caricature of a Mexican
priest. The rabbi makes statements that fuel stereotypes, painting
Mexican laborers as dishwashers. He speaks in an exaggerated rasp of a
Mexican accent, saying, among other things: "The last time I saw a map
like that I was in an immigration office with three gringos down on the
Mexican border, you know, right near New Mexico." Fractured Spanish pops
up from time to time, as when Nesenoff says the rabbi's tendency to get
better assignments is "no mucho bueno picnic."

Though
some critics used the skit as ammunition to portray him as a hypocrite
and a racist, Nesenoff said he was dressed up because it was Purim." God, he said, likes humor.

Israeli
officials were not in a laughing mood during this period for other
reasons. Fox News reported: "A senior Israeli politician tells Fox News
that Israel is currently in the midst of its worst international crisis
since the creation of the Jewish state. The politician, who asked not to
be named in order to speak more candidly, added that for the first time
Israel's legitimacy is being questioned by many in the international
community.

"The
official believes the lack of a viable peace process, combined with
last week's Gaza-bound flotilla incident, which killed nine, has brought
Israel to this situation. The Israeli public doesn't understand the
severity of the situation, according to the politician. The official
believes that Israelis should not react in a nationalistic way to recent
events, because it is only weakening the Jewish state in this process."

I
don't know If any of this was weighing on Helen's mind but I do know
that criticism of Israel was soon at an all time fever pitch because of
the Gaza Aid Flotilla which left Turkey on the day of the "interview."

Supporters
of the humanitarian project feared Israel would attack the ships as
they soon did. For media spin, Tel Aviv righteously and loudly defended
its violent interception of the non-violent convoy as an act of
legitimate self-defense but, later, quietly, paid compensation to the
victims when the world media turned against them.

Soon,
there would protests worldwide and furious exchanges in the media. Much
of it was very emotional. There was also anger at President Obama for
not denouncing Israel's intervention on the high seas. But, by that
time, Helen Thomas was silenced and silent.

(In some outlets, the incident "outing" Helen was used, bizarrely, as pro-Israel "balance" to show why Israel must act tough.)

Back
at the North Lawn that day at the White House, Helen, who must have
been following these evolving events, blew a fuse, or at least lost her
usually professional demeanor. Here's the now infamous exchange
videotaped by an amateur cameraman, offering a deliberately unflattering
and extreme tight close up of an 89 year-old woman.

Nesenoff: Any comments on Israel? We're asking everybod today, any comments on Israel?
Thomas: Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.
Nesenoff: Oooh. Any better comments on Israel?
Thomas: Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not German, it's not Poland ...
Nesenoff: So where should they go, what should they do?
Thomas: They go home.
Nesenoff: Where's the home?
Thomas: Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.
Nesenoff: So you're saying the Jews go back to Poland and Germany?
Thomas: And America and everywhere else. Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries? See?

Nesenoff
does not repeat her use of America, but only to Poland and German. He
has nothing to say about her reference to occupation.

Clearly,
the question triggered something deeper in Helen, feelings that she had
perhaps bottled up for many years in the White House where every
reporter has a built in radar that teaches them to be careful about what
they say and how they say it, especially on a subject like Israel that
Helen considers a "third rail," almost an "untouchable issue." She
earlier told one college audience, "I censored myself for 50 years when I
was a reporter." (She was then an opinion columnist and perhaps freer
to speak her mind,)

Israel
was not a new subject for her to comment on either. Anyone from the
Arab world tends to have a very different understanding of the history
there, a perspective that we rarely hear or see. It's a narrative driven
by anger ar unending Palestinian victimization.

She
told me she had been in Israel in 1954 and visited the Palestinian
village of Kibia that was invaded by Israel in which local residents
were driven out and many killed. She told me she personally met many
Palestinians forced from their homes. She is not the only one angry
about this often hidden legacy, especially because many Israelis justify
expelling Palestinians in biblical terms and are supported by Christian
Evangelicals in saying so.

That's ironic, isn't it, because in our media, fanatical fundamentalists are only pictured as Muslims, rarely as Jews.

Her
historic memory was clearly triggered although her views are hardly
extreme. She says Israel has a right to exist, and so do Jews "like all
people. But not the right to seize others lands." She says Israel has
defied 65 UN resolutions on these issues. She was frustrated when so
many Presidents danced around the issues and in her view, "caved" on
human rights.

To
Nesenoff and many viewers oriented to see the world only through a
unflinching pro-Israel narrative, Helen had crossed the line in their
view from being anti-Israel to being anti-semetic. The reason: the
inclusion of Poland and Germany into the mix were considered "obviously
anti-Semetic."

She
agrees that by citing Germany, she opened the door to accusations of
insensitivity, lumping her in with holocaust deniers, but denies being
one or hating Jews. She says she was startled by that charge because she
is, she says, a Semite so how can she be anti-Semetic? (Another irony:
Jewish emigration to today's Germany has increased 10 fold since the
fall of the Berlin Wall to 200,000 with many leaving Israel. This
"reverse exodus" troubles Israeli officials.)

Helen
told me her thinking on this subject goes back to being moved by a
Rabbi who spoke alongside Martin Luther King Jr at the March on
Washington in 1963. I was there also, and heard him speak too, and so I
looked him up.

It
was Joachim Prinz of the American Jewish Congress who made a speech
that influenced a younger Helen Thomas. He said, "When I was the rabbi
of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned
many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic
circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent
problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and
the most tragic problem is silence."

Helen
says her whole career has been about combating the sin of silence. She
says she has now been liberated to speak out. And "all I would like is
for people to know what I was trying to say, that Palestinians are
living under tyranny and that their rights are being violated. All I
want is some sympathy for Palestinians."

Had
she said it like that, if she had perhaps made a distinction between
Israel as a State and its settlers on occupied lands, she might still
have her job. Unfortunately, what she did say, and how she said it,
brought all the attention on her, not the issues she was trying to
expose.

Now
it's the holiday season, allegedly a time of peace and forgiveness when
Presidents issue pardons to convicted criminals and reflection is
theoretically permitted, a time when its been suggested that even a
State Department hawk like Richard Holbrooke could, on his deathbed call
for an end to the Afghan war that he had dogmatically supported.

We
have watched the rehabilitation of so many politicians over recent
years who have stumbled, taken money or disgraced themselves in sex
scandals, including Senators, even Presidents.

Helen Thomas is not in that category.

Yet, many of those "fallen" are back in action, tarnished perhaps, but allowed to recant, to work and then appear in the media.

But,
to this day, there has been almost no compassion, empathy or respect
shown for one of our great journalists, Helen Thomas, who has been
presumed guilty and sentenced to oblivion with barely a word spoken in
her defense. She admittedly misspoke and is now officially "Missing"
like some disappeared priest in Argentina

A
whole world may be critical of Israel. Millions may believe that the
occupiers should withdraw or that that Israeli rejectionism of the peace
process must end. But when a "mainstream" American reporter of great
stature touches these sentiments, she is consigned to Dante's inferno,
and turned into a non-person.

How can we expect Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile if our media won't set an example by reconciling with Helen Thomas?