Mr Cronkite was recording a documentary for CBS in 1968 about the Tet offensive in Vietnam...he suggested that the US was in a stalemate in Vietnam and should get out. It was a moment that many older Americans still remember and has been shown to have been a turning point in ending the struggle. President Johnson reportedly turned to an aide at the time and said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America".

Imo, people like Greenwald are objectively assessing the facts of the public record and coming to conclusions that many people aren't yet ready to hear. But, if somebody, with a public forum, isn't willing to speak up, early and often, the country may take forever to be ready.

I didn't know until tonight she [Ms. Thomas] is the daughter of Lebanese immigrants...I went to hear Ralph Nader speak, right before the November [2000] election. I was shocked by his anti-Israel remarks. Only later did I learn his parents were Lebanese immigrants. It's probably too much to expect impartiality from anyone with a direct interest on either side of the Middle East issue.

The Palestinians are an occupied people. Just change the name of the country to Iran or Somalia  that boarded a ship in international waters and killed 9 people and you would have a different reaction to the "right" of that country to protect itself. They would have been called terrorists. We never recognize our own blind spots.

Helen Thomas' remarks weren't anti semitic she merely expresses an opinion and her anger at the unfairness of the treatment of the Palestinians. Many people do not believe, especially in retrospect, that Israel should have been created out of whole cloth by taking the Palestinians land from them. If you were going to create a homeland for the Jews the only country whose lands were forfeit after the horror of WWII was Germany and the other countries of the Axis. That is where a Jewish homeland should have been created. Not on the backs of British occupied Palestine. In addition, the Israeli's have not conducted themselves better than any occupying power when it comes to the rights of the Palestinians. No one is saying that the Arabs in the region and the Palestinians themselves are without blame but it does no good to accept a wrong just because it is our wrong. My country love it or leave it? Sorry  my role as responsible citizen is to criticize my government as many Israelis are doing and  not to support it when it is wrong.

The claims that Thomas is calling for a forced removal of Israelis or calling for "ethnic cleansing" are also ridiculous.  Thomas stated her opinion that the immigrants to Israel "should" return to their homelands.  I disagree with her, but she did not advocate ethnic cleansing or the forced removal of either Jews or post-48 immigrants, as some have claimed.  She also did not limit her comments to Jewish immigrants from Germany and Poland, as some have claimed, evoking images of returning Jews to the Holocaust.

What Helen is implying is that the creation of Israel was a terrible idea. There's nothing anti-Jewish in that notion---in fact, many Jews thought the same thing. It takes a special kind of craziness to think that a state which ceased to exist roughly 2000 years ago had any legitimate cause to be recreated.
Zionism was a colonial enterprise which could never succeed without ethnic cleansing, a fact which was explicitly acknowledged by Zionists.
Hence, bloodshed was inevitable.

We wouldn't tolerate the actions of Israel from any other country. The settlements not only have to stop but the existing ones need to be torn down.

Jeralyn wrote:

her lack of impartiality, to put it mildly, is unacceptable for a reporter

I strongly disagree. The best reporters were and are not "impartial" when they have to deal with state terrorism. Who were delivering better reports about the crimes committed by the Nazis: Those who were appalled by those crimes or those who were "impartial" ? What about "reporters" who are silent when their government supports or defends state terror? Is that "acceptable" ?

the Palestinians have not done themselves any favors since then by engaging in acts of terrorism - blowing up pizza joints and shopping centers - to make their point.

The Israelis are the ones who commit the highest numbers of terrorist acts, by large numbers--the scale is on the order of a thousand to one in terms of casualties. This is excluding the most recent attacks on Gaza and on the freedom flotilla. The Israelis were actually the first to bomb pizza parlors, for example, and hotels (the King David bombing, which killed 96 people, alone killed more people than all of Gaza's rockets combined). And they're the ones who bomb flour factories, U.N. rescue workers, schools, and so on.

Anyone who's followed the conflict closely knows the tragic truths so well that it's easy to see why they would "lose it" and respond the way Helen Thomas did. It's regrettable that her comment was both inaccurate (most current Israeli citizens don't come from Poland and Germany but from the former Soviet Union), and badly worded, but it was hardly on the order of comments other people have made and not had to lose their jobs over.

Here's Robert Fisk, writing during the Gaza massacre in a very good summary:

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 - a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border - were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise.

Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village - again after they were ordered to leave by Israel - and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.

The whole article is worth a read btw:

As observed notes, most Americans are hopelessly ignorant about the basic facts of the I/P conflict. The Zionist project was always, first and foremost, about ethnic cleansing and dispossession--period, and it started well before WWII. Its roots go the late 1800s and its chief tactic has always been terrorism.

Incidentally, the notion of "the dissolution of Israel" is not some insane, KKK-and-Nazi wet dream as it is often depicted here. Helen may have expressed the idea badly, but the concept of the one-state solution is increasingly taking a key role in the debate. It's been espoused by Israeli writer Tony Judt ,who first proposed it in 2003 NY Review of Books article (www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2003/oct/23/israel-the-alternative/?page=1), and Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah, who outlined it in detail in his 2006 book "One Country." Furthermore, even two-state proponents (most notably Walt Mearsheimer) are starting to state overtly that the two-state solution is no longer a serious option (www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/10418).

So again, Thomas was hardly saying anything outside the bounds of civil discourse. It's just that anything on this subject that doesn't follow the AIPAC-vetted script is not allowed, especially in the hallowed halls of White House and press corps that clearly intends to whitewash every Israeli action up to and including the murder of civilians (including U.S. citizens). Anyone who goes against the grain pays a heavy price for it--just ask Prof. Norman Finkelstein. Heck, just ask Jimmy Carter, whose wishy-washy defense of the Palestinians has branded him as Goebbels reincarnated.

I wonder if people would support this action taken against Helen Thomas if she were speaking out against, say, apartheid South Africa (of which, by the way, Israel was a huge supporter) or some other regime we've dubbed a rogue state? Somehow I doubt it.

Helen Thomas suggests they go back to Germany or Poland, etc.  Uh huh, exactly where 6 million of them were murdered in our time.

Both Nader and Thomas are Lebanese and have been openly critical of Israel's policies for a long time. That's fine as there is much to criticise in the current right wing fundamentalist leadership in Israel.

But telling Jews to go back where they came from is an astoundingly hostile and dense response and has nothing to do with honest criticism of some of Israel's current positions.

I'm sure Helen wold not want to go back to Lebanon, or tell African Americans to go back to Africa.  How do I view this remark?

An anti-semitic remark from a world class reporter who has been writing opinion and not reporting of late. Too bad her Lebanese roots have not cleansed her racial animus. It was not only a stupid remark it was stupid.

What is most offensive was the choice she gives Jews: Poland and Germany where they were methodically murdered.

She is calling for ethnic cleansing, in terms very similar to those used by the late, and unlamented, Mier Kahane.

Thomas was born in Winchester, Kentucky. Her parents, Mary (née Rowady) and George Thomas, were Lebanese immigrants from Tripoli, Lebanon;her father's surname had originally been "Antonious". Thomas was raised as a Christian in the Greek Orthodox church. She grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and attended Wayne University (now Wayne State University), graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1942. Her first job in journalism was as a copygirl for the now-defunct Washington Daily News, but shortly after she was promoted to cub reporter, she was laid off as part of massive cutbacks at the paper.

Thomas joined United Press International in 1943 and reported on women's topics for its radio wire service. Later in the decade, and in the early fifties, she wrote their "Names in the News" column, for which she interviewed numerous Washington celebrities. After 1955, she covered federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Thomas served as president of the Women's National Press Club from 1959-60.

President Barack Obama presenting Thomas cupcakes on her 89th birthdayIn November 1960, Thomas began covering then President-elect John F. Kennedy, following him to the White House in January 1961 as a UPI correspondent. Thomas became known as the "Sitting Buddha", and it was during Kennedy's administration that she began the tradition of ending all presidential press conferences with a signature "Thank you, Mr. President".

Thomas was the only female print journalist to travel to China with President Richard Nixon during his historic trip in 1972. (Barbara Walters was a member of the NBC News team that went to the People's Republic of China to cover the visits of President Richard Nixon in 1972.) She has traveled around the world several times with Presidents Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, and has covered every Economic Summit since 1975, working up to the position of UPI's White House Bureau Chief, a post she would hold for over 25 years. While serving as White House Bureau Chief, she authored a regular column for UPI, "Backstairs at the White House," which provided an insider's view of various presidential administrations. Thomas is the only member of the White House press corps to have her own chair in the White House Press Room. All other chairs are assigned to media outlets.

On May 17, 2000, after 57 years with the organization, Thomas resigned from UPI the day after the announcement of its acquisition by News World Communications Inc., a company founded and controlled by Unification Church leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon. She later described the change in ownership as "a bridge too far". Less than two months later, she joined Hearst Newspapers as a columnist, writing on national affairs and the White House.

The question posed at the end of the short clip is "Does Helen know that Jews lived in  Israel way before the Holocaust?" The glaring fact of course is that before WWII and 1948, there was no modern state of Israel. It was Mandate Palestine: a land that was populated by a thriving Palestinian population, the majority of whom were driven out in their hundreds of thousands, with a great number murdered, by the zionist thugs who later established the state of Israel. This Prussia of the Middle East is propped up by gargantuan amounts of US military aid, refuses to make peace with its neighbours who have offered recognition of 1967 borders via the Saudi Peace Plan, has continued to encroach upon Palestinian land, regularly attacks its neighbours in assaults that kill hundreds, flouts international law, continues to build illegal outposts on stolen land, and has refused to define its borders to this day.

Thomas has nothing to apologize for.  It is the Israeli regime, the illegal settlers (check out this charmer) and their enablers who owe the world -- particularly Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians -- an apology and restitution. At most, her choice of words may have been unqualifiedly quick and injudicious, particularly in the ill-advised choice of words `go home'. But `despicable', `beyond disturbing' and Judeophobic? The attempts to discredit her -- which include rightwingnut calls for her resignation -- are overblown. She'll probably win even more fans with her courage, and her regret for causing offence is in stark contrast to the unremitting racism and unstinting support for ethnic cleansing and expulsion from the Israel-at-any-cost camp, from whom there is no apology.

Speaking of context, I had no idea there was natural gas in Gaza.  A dash of capitalism certainly complicates things.

My take on Helen Thomas' comments is she was referring to people returning to their country of origin prior to their migration (chosen, forced, or otherwise) during and after the World Wars.  These countries were in fact "where they came from."  I.e. there had to Jewish people living in Germany in order for them to be expelled.  Simple.  It doesn't need to be malicious.  Why this interpretation is so hard for many to fathom is beyond me.  Of course my take may not equal what Helen meant thus YMMV.  

The issue here is that a respected journalist from a respected news agency has called for the complete removal of all Jews from a region of the world.  This is generally called ethnic cleansing.  In itself it is a hateful idea, but in terms of the political situation of the middle east it is both unrealistic and without foundation.  

Total eradication of the Jewish state in the Middle East is the wild hope of Hamas and the talking point of inflammatory leaders of the middle east, but is not a serious consideration that a reporter or commentator should be entertaining.  Any commentator who says that all blacks should go back to Africa or that the solution for our immigration question is for all Hispanics to be rounded up and sent south of the border would be roundly criticized and expeditiously removed from the public eye (well...not on Fox).  This statement is on par with those kinds of statements.

In addition, the statements about Jews of Israel coming from Germany and Poland is simply a gross misrepresentation of reality.  Whether we are talking about the ethnic history of Jews in Israel or the nationality of those who went there over the last 62 years (or even since the late 19th century), the Jews of those countries make up a minority.  And the people of Israel today are largely native born descendants of people who came to the country, not the primary immigrants, and are from a mix of heritages.

She made a flippant remark based on an oversimplistic and incorrect characterization of the history of the people of Israel that suggests a completely unrealistic and extreme solution to a problem that many people care about.  She didn't simply oppose the state of Israel or criticize it (as she has done many times in the past), she publicly called for its destruction and the dispersal of its people.  Far from helping us to understand the situation as we expect from a reporter or commentator, she promoted ignorance of the actual situation and helped extreme ideas be accepted in the mainstream.  

Not a position I agree with, but also not a position that is, per se, anti-Semitic, as you claimed.  Unless, of course, you have something other evidence of Thomas's anti-Semitism that you're hiding in your coffee.  Could be the cause of all your choking.  If so, by all means ...

The ouster of veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, after an anti-Israeli comment, is yet another demonstration of the politically foul and utterly conformist milieu of official Washington. ...

The campaign against Thomas was spearheaded by two of the most odious figures in Washington circles, Ari Fleischer, the former Bush administration spokesman, now working for a sports and entertainment firm, and Lanny Davis, a Clinton White House aide, who last year served as Washington spokesman for the Honduran military junta.

With his usual instinct for accommodating himself to right-wing bourgeois public opinion, President Obama joined in the pileup against Thomas after her resignation was announced, calling her comments about Israel "offensive" and her forced retirement from Hearst "the right decision."

The resulting media uproar was predictable and disgusting. It was prompted not so much by Thomas's reference to Jews going back to Germany and Poland, but by her reference to the Palestinian people as suffering under occupation in the land they had lived in for centuries.

Thomas showed anger over the basic injustice that underlies the establishment of Israel, the dispossession of the Palestinians.