Helen Thomas' journalistic news career has come to an abrupt end, the 89-year-old resigning after comments and video at the White House-that Jews in Israel should go home.
The iconic 89-year-old media journalist has covered 10 U.S. administrations, with a journalism career dating back to 1943. May 27, Thomas was asked by a rabbi outside of the White House (commentary which included video and taping of the event), during a Jewish heritage month celebration, if she had any comments to make about Israel.
Helen Thomas responded "Tell them [the Jews] to get the hell out of Palestine... Remember, these people are occupied, and it's their land; its not German, its not Poland's." Asked where the Jews should go, she said "they should go home" to "Poland, Germany... America and everywhere else."
Many considered Thomas' remarks on par with the likes of Barbara Walters telling blacks to go back to Africa. Helen Thomas herself is of Lebanese descent. Responding omments have included "What we actually have here is one Semite commenting on the plight of some other Semites who had been dispossessed by some anti-Semitic Western cultures in order to make a home for some Semites who had just been through an anti-Semitic program in Europe who formed a nation that has been engaged in an intra-Semite war for decades now. Describing this as "anti-Semitic" is more than a little clueless."
Since the White House video footage, viewed over a million times in only days, Thomas has 'retired' from Hearst as a journalist and was dropped from her speaking agency. Why did Thomas so recklessly put a humiliating final chapter to such an illustrious career?
Well, maybe because Helen Thomas is 89.