Ms Thomas earnt a reputation as a combative journalist, at least by American standards, with a succession of administrations over their Middle East policies, culminating in Bush officials boycotting her for her relentless criticisms of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the reaction to her latest remarks suggest that, if there is one topic in American public life on which the boundaries of what can and cannot be said are still tightly policed, it is Israel.
Undoubtedly, Ms Thomas’ opinions, as she expressed them in an unguarded moment, were inappropriate and required an apology. It is true, as she says, that Palestine was occupied and the land taken from the Palestinians by Jewish immigrants with no right to it barring a Biblical title deed. But 62 years on from Israel’s creation, most Jewish citizens have no home to go to in Poland and Germany -- or in Iraq and Yemen, for that matter. There is also an uncomfortable echo in her words of the chauvinism underpinning demands from some Jews -- and many Israelis -- that Palestinians should “go home to the 22 Arab states”.
The flip side is that the other Arabs don't want them.
Ms Thomas is an Arab-American, of Lebanese descent, whose remarks were publicised in the immediate wake of Israel’s lethal commando attack on a flotilla of aid ships trying to break the siege of Gaza. Unlike most Americans, who were half-wakened from their six-decade Middle East slumber by the killing of at least nine Turkish activists, Ms Thomas has been troubled by the Palestinians’ plight for much of her long lifetime.
She was in her late twenties when Israel ethnically cleansed three-quarters of a million Palestinians from most of Palestine, a move endorsed by the fledgling United Nations. She was in her mid-forties when Israel took over the rest of Palestine and parts of Egypt and Syria in a war that dealt a crushing blow to Arab identity and pride and made Israel a favoured ally of the US. In her later years she has witnessed Israel’s repeated destruction of Lebanon, her parents’ homeland, and the slow confinement and erasure of the neighbouring Palestinian people. Both have occurred under a duplicitious American “peace process” while Washington has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Israel’s coffers.
It is therefore entirely understandable if, despite her own personal success, she feels a simmering anger not only at what has taken place throughout her lifetime in the Middle East but also at the silencing of all debate about it in the US by the Washington elites she counted as friends and colleagues.
I've called her "the old Ay-rab" for years, but I didn't know 'til now that she actually is one. She's dead right about the United States mishandling the entire Middle East virtually forever, kinda like smoking a cigarette whilst seated on a powder keg in the middle of a lake of gasoline.
What she said after "Israel should leave Palestine", which is true of its attitude toward Gaza and the West Bank though not of the larger former Palestine, was out of line but it was her right to say it.
Repugs, neocons, warmongers, and other never-righties say a lot worse things and do not get pilloried for it. I think at her age it's plenty OK for her to bow out and retire and I hope she can enjoy her remaining years, but if she had been forty years old, those few sentences would have unfairly ruined her career, not that fairness should be expected by anyone anywhere.
This whole deal is the poster child for misdirected political correctness run amuck when it comes to Israel, which in a sane world would be called a bully. The U.S. as well for being its enabler and abettor.
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