Much Ado about Helen

A tremendous amount has been made over the words uttered by Helen Thomas recently, words spoken on May 27th, interestingly enough four days before the attack by the Israeli Defence Forces against a flotilla of unarmed civilians bringing humanitarian aid to besieged refugees in Gaza. Nine innocent and unarmed civilians were slaughtered by the defenders of the Zionist state, but it’s not okay to criticize them, is that what we are hearing? I listened to what Helen Thomas said and listened carefully; she understands history and is more than capable of reporting her stories without bias.

When asked if she had anything to say about Israel she said, ‘tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.’ When asked if she had ‘anything better’ to say, Thomas continued, ‘remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land; it’s not German [sic], it’s not Poland.’ Having heard this answer Rabbi Nesenoff, the man conducting and filming the interview, proceeded to ask a loaded question that indicated he fully understood that Thomas was discussing contemporary immigrants, not Jews who had been born Israel.

When asked, ‘where should they [the Jews] go’, Thomas replied, ‘go home, Poland, Germany, and America, and everywhere else.’

This answer lies at the crux of the controversy causing many to label Helen Thomas as an Anti-Semite who is insensitive to history; even her colleague and co-author, Craig Crawford, has announced that he will no longer be working on future book projects with Thomas as a result of this comment, but is that an over-reaction? Was Helen wrong? Was she taken out of context?

Under the ‘Right of Return’ law Jews are allowed to become citizens of Israel by virtue of being Jewish, even if they were born in America. Someone born in the ‘Holy Land’ who is not of Jewish descent, on the other hand, is not allowed to live in the home of their ancestors as it has been stolen and turned into a ‘settlement’, all so the ‘Jewish State’ can reclaim its Biblical borders.

Thomas’ reply was not insensitive to history, it was correct in every way to the political realities of the warped ‘Right of Return’ law and how it discriminates against non-Jews living in the Holy Land. When asked, ‘where should they go’, she replied, ‘go home, Poland, Germany, and America, and everywhere else.’ She did not say they should be killed or expelled, which is something that Israel routinely does to the Palestinians living within the borders of the state, but that can be dismissed as an ‘inconvenient truth’ that nobody wants to discuss.

As a result of this honest answer the website that interviewed her, ‘Rabbilive’ asked the pointed question as to whether or not Helen Thomas could be trusted. They posted, at the end of her ‘interview’ that six million Jews ‘were killed at home … In Germany and Poland. Does Helen know that Jews have lived in Israel way before the Holocaust?’

Yes, I’m sure Helen knows this fact, however, does that mitigate the fact that Israel has been carrying on a war against their neighbours? That they have been using criminally devious tactics, including the use of White Phosphorus artillery shells, against civilians living in Gaza while stealing land in order to continue with the development of the settlements that have been condemned by many civilized nations on this planet?

The most outrageous part of this ridiculous episode has come from, of all places, the Administration of the United States President. Press Secretary Gibbs should have made no comment about Helen Thomas’ comment for the simple reason that she is NOT part of the Administration. Of course her comments are not a reflection of the official policy of the government; even after Israel murdered nine innocent civilians the government has sat on its hands as though it were afraid to say anything nasty, as though it might offend the mighty Jewish State and send them into a whirlwind of retaliation against the United States.

Excuse me, but when did the State of Israel become more powerful than the United States of America? I’m sorry, but I just don’t ascribe to that crap about the Jews controlling that much power: they control as much as you allow them to control. If you stop listening to the AIPAC lobby they have no power. AIPAC can only influence people when they are listened to; otherwise they are a Zionist tool that should be expelled for sedition. They serve the interests of a foreign state, not the United States.

President Obama may stand up and say that Israel should stop building settlements and that Jerusalem should be a city for all, but the truth of the matter is that the Zionist State of Israel is a nation guided by a policy of institutional racism. Anyone who has lived through the Civil Rights Movement in the United States or has studied the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, or has any inkling of the history behind the Holocaust should be able to see this as clearly as the rising of the sun in the morning and the rising of the moon at night.

What we must also understand is that it is NOT Anti-Semitism to criticize the policies of the State of Israel. To be against the ideals of Zionism is not to be against the Jew just as being a Democrat in the United States does not make you ‘unpatriotic’. The idea that this is so is one of the lies perpetuated by the Zionists to defend the indefensible; they know their policies lead to the deaths of innocent people so they hide behind the label of ‘Anti-Semitism’, knowing that anyone labeled with it will be stigmatized and will have to shrink away.

I am a Jew. My mother is a Jew and my father is a Jew … and my father lives in Jerusalem. Branches of my family went to the death camps during the Holocaust. Go ahead, call me an Anti-Semite; you won’t be the first.

As for Helen Thomas, BRAVA! It’s about time people in the press started speaking out against the atrocities being committed by the State of Israel … and just in case you missed it, her comments were made on May 27th; Israel attacked a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza on May 31, killing 9 unarmed civilians.

A Legend Passes: Lena Horne, Dead at 92

Only a handful of artists can claim that they have influenced generations of performers, as well as having fought in the Civil Rights movement, and fighting to break down the barriers of racism against black artists in America even before that movement started: Lena Horne is one of those artists. She died on Sunday in New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

An obituary of Lena Horne can be found here.

Lena Horne biography from IMDB, the International Movie Database.

Lena Horne in the Encyclopedia of World Biography.

In Honour of International Women's Day

March 8 is the day we celebrate International Women’s Day, a day to honour and acknowledge the importance of the women in our lives and to reflect on the importance of those who, thanks to their selfless contributions, have made the world a much better place in which to live. This year the celebration falls on the first day of the work week, but that does not confer a day off for all of the working women of the world, it merely provides the day upon which the occasion is to be observed; alas, International Women’s Day does not – as of yet – command the same level of celebratory spirit as Thanksgiving Day or Memorial Day, though it is surely at least as important, particularly when you consider the significance of what is being celebrated.

If the importance of an event is tied to its historical background and what it commemorates then International Women’s Day should be held as one of the major observances on the calendar; it is a day that celebrates only a small sample of what women have strived to accomplish since its inception in the last century in their quest to preserve the species which could not exist without the pains of their labours. It is only through the anguish of women’s labour and the pains that they have endured throughout the ages that has allowed for the development of our modern society and continues to allow for the very existence of our lives today.
Without the struggles that women have endured, often at the risk of their very lives, we would be living in a society where civil rights was far from being the fulfilled dream that it has become in many parts of the world, and the struggle continues. Without the struggles of women, without the constant vigil that they keep at the eternal flame of hope for generations yet unborn, the chance of our civilization escaping the turmoil that has become its constant threat would be, at best, minimal. Women fight for civil and human rights for the simple reason that they understand that true equality only exists when everyone is treated with dignity and respect and are truly equal: anything less is the equivalent to the continued enslavement of all humanity, regardless of race, colour or creed. Without full equality for all men and women, without ensuring that all peoples are provided the opportunity to be self-determinate in the selection of who they shall be governed by, and without the right to access quality health care and education, the work of women and the symbol of what International Women’s Day is all about will continue to stand as a beacon of hope for the future.

The day shall come when the things these brave women struggle for becomes the cause of everyman for we shall realize that their struggle is our struggle; we shall recognize that what we call women’s issues are not that, they are things that men fought for in their unions at the turn of the twentieth century, but memories of labour solidarity are often precariously short, particularly when it is in the best interest of those in power to cultivate an atmosphere of amnesia. When the labour unions fought for their right to exist and to negotiate their first contracts they had to face the ‘scabs’ and strike-breakers who were sent in by management to break their will, to drive them back to work for less than what they had been making before they became ‘organized’, but that was not acceptable. By sticking together – by struggling for their rights as exploited employees – the unionized employees of the United States and Canada won such dramatic concessions from their bosses as the ‘right’ to have a forty-hour work week, the ‘right’ to have an un-paid coffee break (sometimes two) of fifteen minutes, the ‘right’ to have an unpaid lunch of thirty minutes, and sometimes the ‘right’ to even have a pension after working for twenty-five years or more.

In tribute to International Women’s Day I could easily create a list of a number of women whom I look up to and admire for their contributions to various fields of study, the arts, politics, and life in general, but such a list would fall pathetically short of fully expressing the breadth of the respect and appreciation that I feel for a group of people that I consider to be amongst the greatest to have lived. It is a list that, were I to produce it, would include several dead notables, not the least of whom would be Rosa Parks for the role she played as a young women in the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama. No list would be complete without the inclusion of such extraordinary women as Clara Schumann, George Sands, and Marie Curie.

Of course, there is no way that this tribute could end without acknowledging the most important woman in the world: she is the woman from whose life mine own began. My mother marched on Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr., and was active in the civil rights movement in the United States before moving to Canada in 1967, the year before I was born. Her struggles for the advancement of ‘the cause’ did not end after marriage or becoming a mother; if anything, having a child made her all the more cognizant of the need for change. After the United Nations declared 1975 the International Year of the Woman my mother was a member of a grass-roots group called ‘Women Helping Women’ that took the ‘struggle’ to the street and sought out practical solutions to the issues facing women during bleak economic times.
The times have changed, thus the struggle continues.