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Helen Thomas: You cannot criticize Israel in the U.S. and survive
Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas stands by her controversial remarks on Israel that led to her retirement.
By The Associated Press

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has acknowledged she touched a nerve with remarks about Israel that led to her retirement. But she says the comments were "exactly what I thought," even though she realized soon afterward that it was the end of her job.

"I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive," Thomas told Ohio station WMRN-AM in a sometimes emotional 35-minute interview that aired Tuesday. It was recorded a week earlier by WMRN reporter Scott Spears at Thomas' Washington, D.C., condominium.

Thomas, 90, stepped down from her job as a columnist for Hearst News Service in June after a rabbi and independent filmmaker videotaped her outside the White House calling on Israelis to get "out of Palestine." She gave up her front row seat in the White House press room, where she had aimed often pointed questions at 10 presidents, going back to Eisenhower.

She has kept a low profile since then.

"(It was) very hard for the first two weeks. After that, I came out of my coma," said Thomas, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon.

Rabbi David Nesenoff, who runs the website rabbilive.com, said he approached Thomas after he'd been at the White House for Jewish Heritage Day on May 27. He asked whether she had any comments on Israel.

"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," she replied.

"Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not Germany, it's not Poland," she continued. Asked where they should go, she answered, "They should go home."

"Where's home?" Nesenoff asked.

"Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else," Thomas replied.

"I told him exactly what I thought," she told Spears, who said during the interview that some accounts left off her reference to America. Thomas did not disagree.

"I was not talking about Auschwitz or anything else," she said.

"They distorted my remarks, which they obviously have to do for their own propaganda purposes, otherwise people might wonder why they continue to take Palestinian land," said Thomas. There was no explanation of whom "they" referred to.

When she soon began getting calls about her remark, "I said this is the end of my job."

She issued an apology, she told the radio interviewer, because people were upset and she thought she had hurt people. "At the same time, I had the same feelings about Israel's aggression and brutality," Thomas said.

Asked whether she's anti-Semitic, she responded "Baloney!" She said she wants to be remembered for "integrity and my honesty and my belief in good journalism" and would like to work again.

Spears said Thomas granted him the interview because the two had developed a friendship during previous interviews she had done with the station in Marion, some 70 kilometres north of Columbus, Ohio.

Their discussion also touched on current politics, particularly on women.

Thomas described Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as "a hawk." ''I thought women in politics would have more compassion, be more liberal," Thomas said.

As for Sarah Palin, Thomas said she believed the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate was ambitious enough to run for president.

"That would be a tragedy, a national tragedy," she said, describing Palin as "very conservative, reactionary, unbelievable."

Asked about tea party-backed Republican Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, Thomas responded with one word: "Frightening."

"I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive,"

Holland, MI —

Does exercising your freedom of speech mean sacrificing your job? Two stories in the news, one of them from Michigan, raise interesting questions about the extent and limits of Americans’ right to free speech.

The first involves a New Jersey railroad worker named Derek Fenton who, on Sept. 11, publicly burned a Quran at the site of the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York City. Fenton was detained by police, but was released without charge. The next day though his photo showed up in the paper and the day after his employer, NJ Transit, fired him for violating the state employee code of ethics. Defenders say the firing violated Fenton’s freedom of expression.

The other story concerns Andrew Shirvell, a Michigan assistant attorney general who has used his personal blog to attack Chris Armstrong, the openly gay leader of the University of Michigan student assembly, calling him a racist with a “radical homosexual agenda” and superimposing a swastika over a photo of him. However, his employer, Attorney General Mike Cox, says that while Shrivell’s off-duty expression is distasteful, it’s protected by his right to free speech.

So does an employer have any right to control what we do and say outside of work hours? Can employers legally abridge our free speech?

Strictly speaking, Fenton’s right to free speech was never abridged. No one stopped Fenton from burning the Quran. New York police didn’t charge him with any crime. But the right to free speech doesn’t mean we’re protected from negative fallout from what we’ve said.

Few people question that an employer has the right not to be publicly embarrassed by an employee. CNN anchor Rick Sanchez was the latest public figure to be fired for that, after he turned criticism of his nemesis Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” into a rant about Jews controlling the media in a radio interview. Many companies have ethics codes explicitly stating that. Making racist jokes at a party at your home may not reflect on your employer, but doing the same thing in front of customers or at a trade show does. Sure, you have the constitutional right to flame your boss on your Facebook page — we all have a right to be stupid. But no one should be surprised or offended when they get sacked for it.

The appearance of a conflict of interest created by your free speech can legitimately affect your work status as well. This is an ethical question that I’ve dealt with several times both as a supervisor and as a reporter. A Sentinel reporter participating in a protest at a city council meeting or making a significant contribution to a local political candidate would certainly have a hard time convincing readers of his or her objectivity covering the council or politics beat — and bring into question the objectivity of the paper as a whole.

But was there a legitimate reason to fire Derek Fenton? Fenton was hardly a public representative of NJ Transit. He wasn’t wearing a uniform at the protest and didn’t identify himself as an agency employee. His job as a train coordinator was neither a leadership position nor one that involved regular public contact. It would be hard to say he endangered the transit agency or compromised its operations in any way.

Shirvell is in a different situation, in my view. Assistant attorney general is a far more public position than a train coordinator and Shirvell’s public actions could conceivably call into question the credibility of the attorney general’s office in dealing with any case involving gay rights. And Shirvell’s behavior went beyond the political and ideological into the realm of the obsessive, including videotaping a party at Armstrong’s house. Almost any employer would be embarrassed by that kind of public behavior.

Update: A hearing on Armstrong’s request for a personal protection order against Armstrong was scheduled Monday afternoon in Ann Arbor. Last week, Shirvell took a leave from his position with the attorney general’s office.

The First Amendment seems so clear, but applying it in practice can get pretty complicated. Perhaps some people need to be reminded that freedom of speech carries with it the responsibility of dealing with the consequences of their expression.

Nesenoff: Any comments on Israel? We're asking everybody 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[55]

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?

Thomas: And America and everywhere else. Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries? See?

Tom Jones wrote:Jews, despite their small numbers, do, in fact, yield a lot of power in America

shafique wrote:Saddam Hussein was an Arab, wasn't he? When did the Arab lobby stop supporting him

shafique wrote:Hey, I'm all for freedom of speech.

I love to hear guys talk about the flat earth, Nasa conspiracy and now the 'powerful' Arab lobby. As I said, I'm glad you shared your belief with us - humour is always welcome.

Cheers,
Shafique

shafique wrote:We all know what makes you happy eh.

But why are you equating Mexicans with people who steal the land of people - surely you've got it the wrong way round?

Cheers,
Shafique