Rosie O’Donnell is using her Sirius radio show to defend that Israeli hater Helen Thomas, OMG!!!! Haha. I’m just kidding. Everyone in the world is weighing in on the political correctness of Thomas’ comments about Israeli Jews in Palestine, so why not Rosie too?
“The homeland was originally Palestinians, is what she is saying, and that it’s now occupied by Israel, and that Palestinians should be afforded human and civil rights,” is how Rosie interprets Helen’s comments.
PauL
Yay, Rosie!!!
Cam
Rosie, take your new girlfriend over to Palestine, walk down the street holding hands and then if you make it out alive tell us about all the human rights they afforded you.
Queer Supremacist
Rosie O’Donnell is a fucking Nazi, just like Helen Thomas.
Human rights are for human beings, which leaves out Palestinazis and their supporters. There were Jews in that region before the child rapist Mohammed was even born.
mspsfo
speak the truth Rosie. Its always considered a crime
mk
Rosie’s version isn’t what Thomas said. Thomas said the jews should all leave and “go home”, and in an amazing bit of insensitivity she said they should go back home to Germany and Poland (why might they have left those places? why might they not consider them homey?).
It’s more complicated than that. People relocate over time and become established in lands. The jewish people were in the area originally, so you might as well say the descendents of the invading forces should “go home” from where they came from. For that matter I’m sure the native americans would appreciate it if Rosie went home to Ireland and they could get their homeland back to themselves.
DillonS
MK is right. Thomas specifically said the Jews should leave the area and go ‘home.’ Rosie’s spin is a gross misrepresentation of what was said. Surprised? Nope.
Taylor Siluwé
I’ll never understand why here in America to speak anything but POSITIVE things about Israel and its actions is tantamount to cussing in church.
Why can’t we believe Israel has every right to defend itself AND call it out when its becoming the oppressor it so desperately wants to never again succumb to?
The world is an insane asylum and we’re all off our meds.
Go Rosie! As for Helen Thomas – sees like two hundred, leave her alone.
TomEM
@mk: Excellent point MK.
Phyllis Fordham
I am appalled that Helen Thomas’s comments on Israel prevent her from speaking at Walt Whitman High School’s commencement. I am also disgusted that Ari Fleischer and Lanny Davis conducted a campaign to punish Ms. Thomas, no doubt as retribution for her outspoken questions when they served in earlier administrations. Freedom of speech, however, is lost to their petty maneuvering.
Most of us would not agree with Ms. Thomas’s unfortunate and seemingly uninformed comments about where Jews might live in peace. But she has the right to say what she thinks, and listeners can decide whether she is foolish, biased and out of touch. Had she spoken at Whitman, perhaps she would have retracted, perhaps she would have lamented further . . . or maybe not.
Whitman’s cancellation under fear of protest makes a sham of the belief in freedom of expression espoused by the poet the school was named for, not to mention his belief in the irrepressible strength of our common citizens to come to good conclusions about the ideas they confront.
Walt Whitman’s America cannot be heard “singing” at the moment.
Queer Supremacist
@mk:
I’m up for chipping in for plane fare to send Rosie back to Ireland, but I thought they got rid of all the snakes. Does she still claim membership in that other Jew-murdering, child molesting cult, the Catholic “church”?
@Taylor Siluwé: Nice fucking red herring there, Arabist pig.
Israel is not the oppressor. It is the victim. Islam is the oppressor of Israel, the Jews, and all non-Muslims. The Palestinazis are just a pawn in the Islamonazi’s vile little chess game against Western Civilization. If the Palestinazis had a state they would find something else to attack Israel with. Why is it okay for the Palestinazis to forbid people to live there on the basis of their religion, yet not okay for Israel to fight back against the Palestinazis who, when offered huge concessions by Ehud Barak, Yassir Arabpig sulked off and started another round of war crimes euphemistically called an “Intifada”, in which he sent his “people” into Israel to kill as many innocent people as possible?
Some fucking genocide the Israelis are supposedly committing when the Palestinazis are still breeding like Hitleresque, child-molester worshipping rabbits.
You dumb Queers For Palestine need to stop believing the Muslim Blood Libel Machine and face facts: Islam is the agressor. Islam is the enemy of gays. And when gay rights and, in many cases, gay lives, are at stake, no tactics are off limits in their defense.
There is no goddamn “Palestine” for Jews to get out of. There is Israel, Jordan (who does to them what the Muslim Blood Libel Machine accuses them of, because even they don’t want them around), and a bunch of land-robbing squatters who don’t really want nationhood. They just want to kill Jews. If there were no Israel, they would still want to kill Jews. Because that’s what goyism is all about: kill Jews and queers.
Should the Nazis get their own country (I forgot, they had one for twelve years, 988 short of their goal)? Should the Ku Klux Klan get one (they ran the South for a hundred years)? How about the Westboro Baptist Church? How about the Mormons (whoops, forgot they practically own Utah)? If the Palestinazis want human rights then they need to start acting like human fucking beings, and stop killing Jews and gays. Otherwise, I will continue to rejoice in their self-imposed, well-deserved misery.
Taylor Siluwé
No. 10 · Queer Supremacist
Anyone who chooses that moniker and throws around words like “Palestinazis” & “Arabist pig” doesn’t deserve further comment, but you have my pity.
No. 9 · Phyllis Fordham
I couldn’t agree more. What’s really sad is Helen Thomas’ long career ends on this ‘senior moment’ note. Truly sad.
edgyguy1426
I don’t think you can attribute Thomas’s thoughts to a ‘senior moment’. She’s speaking as a person of Labanese descent and she has self-admitted bias.
As for her commencement cancellation, I doubt she’d repeat or even broach this subject again but what is commencement about? Is it about her or the graduates? If she were to speak, undoubtedly it would turn all the focus on Thomas. It’s like being upstaged on your wedding day. No one wants that.
Taylor Siluwé
Edgyguy,
I’d certainly say it was a senior moment. I’m sure she said what she believes, the senior part being she probably should’ve kept it to herself.
christopher di spirito
Poor Helen. She dared to criticize Israel and immediately, she was branded an anti-Semite. Of course, the fact is, what the government of Israel is doing to the Palestinians is Apartheid. When the former South African government carried out what amounted to genocide against peoples of color, the world rightly repudiated them. But, when the Knesset does that same thing, the U.S. government cheers. What’s the phrase that jackbooted, Zionist hoodlum Bibi Netanhayu said? “The blood of one Jew is worth more than 10,000 Palestinians.” This is what our $3 billion a year in foreign aid is supporting and frankly, from what I see and hear, many Americans and Europeans are beginning to say, “Enough.” But, Israel won’t stop until every Palestinian
either leaves Israel or dies. Peace in the Middle East? Please. It won’t happen in my lifetime.
Shade
@Queer Supremacist: So cut an dry eh?
Christians, Jews, and Muslims all seem to be trying to win what happened years and years ago. Very few seem to be working toward a solution that includes compromises. Jews want to win, Muslims want to win, Christians want to win – I wish them all the best.
Damien
This two minute video is not representative of everything she has been saying about Helen Thomas on her radio show. She has repeated over and over again that she simply does not want to join the hate parade on an 89 year old woman caught in an unexpected moment and sad that her career had to end with this.
Bill Perdue
Helen Thomas is a hero for telling the truth. And so is Desmond Tutu, who says: “People are scared in this country (the US), to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what?
“The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists.
“Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust…”
Apparently Helen Thomas’ ‘hate crime, in the eyes of those who routinely ignore the crimes of the IDF thugs was to suggest emigration to Germany. However, Jewish emigrants from the CIS, the former USSR, are flooding into Germany, wary of getting caught in a deathtrap in zionist occupied Palestine.
The zionists are not happy about it.
From EJP, the European Jewish Press:”Since the fall of the Berlin wall, about 200,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union have come to Germany as contingency refugees, those who could prove Jewish ancestry and therefore gained a status that almost guaranteed a visa to Germany… An Interior Ministry source confirmed the accepted belief that Germany has become the country with the fastest growth rate of a Jewish population since 1990.
“Jews from the former Soviet Union have only two places where they can go to relatively easily. That is Israel or Germany…”
From the New York Times:
“This change (a German tightening of immigration laws for Jews) was welcomed by Israel, which has complained for years that Germany’s encouragement of Jewish immigration had the effect of discouraging former Soviet Jews from going to Israel itself. Indeed, last year for the first time, more former Soviet Jews, many of them no doubt attracted by Germany’s generous social services network, settled in this country than in Israel.
“It shouldn’t come as a surprise that at the end of the day Israel would like to see the Jews immigrate to Israel, not to Germany,” Shimon Stein, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, said in an interview.”
Helen Thomas has 200,000 very relieved Jewish accomplices in her ‘hate crime.’
Palestine for the Palestinians
ohbullshit!!
Helen Thomas is right – kudos, Helen. It’s about time someone spoke of the unspeakable white elephant that has our government by the balls. We’re being sucked dry by Israel and our lopsided blind support of the Israeli causes contributes more than can be imagined to instability in the Middle East. Quoted from wiki: “The main expression of Congressional support for Israel has been foreign aid, with Israel being the largest recipient of US aid from 1976 to 2004” with .001% of the world’s population
and from http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html#source
“Beginning in 2007, the U.S. has been increasing military aid by $150 million each year. By FY2013, we will be sending Israel $3.15 billion a year (or an average of $8.6 million a day) and will continue to provide military aid at that level through 2018. U.S. tax dollars are subsidizing one of the most powerful foreign militaries” and “By all accounts the United States has given more money to Israel than to any other country. The Congressional Research Service’s conservative estimate of total cumulative US aid to Israel (not adjusted for inflation) from 1949 through 2009 is $106.1647 billion.”
and from the CBO here are some statistics:
US AID
FY ISRAEL PALESTINE
2004 2,687.25 74.5
2005 2,612.15 230.4
2006 2,534.53 153.243
2007 2,500.24 69.488
2008 2,423.8 414.5
——– ——–
12,757.97 942.131 both in millions
POPULATION (2008)
7,308,800 3,761,000
PER CAPITIA
$1745.56 $250.50 dollars
How would you feel if, for every $100 you got, your neighbor got $700?? and for some real eye-opening, see http://wrmea.org/component/content/article/245-2008-november/3845-congress-watch-a-conservative-estimate-of-total-direct-us-aid-to-israel-almost-114-billion.html
Jon (the old cranky one)
seems like everyone on this thread forgot that O’Donnell brought rational thinking to a radio conversation. .. with grace and patience.
Posting a 2 minute clip from the broadcast? ..well we can expect that from queerty.
Jesse Helms
I support free speech and the old ugly hag Helen Thomas had a right to speak how she felt. I bet Helen wears depends. LOL
EM!!
Well, this of course raises issues in both sides. It’s just a shame that there’s no such thing as journalism subjectivity anymore. So the only thing left to do is to find a reliable, balanced source.
I liked this guy’s commentary, funny as hell but also smart and witty:
http://www.entertainmedaily.com/2010/06/helen-thomas-deserves-a-punch-in-the-face-but-rabbi-david-nesenoff-should-be-kicked-in-the-balls/
What do you guys think?
geoff b
Does she not remember why the Jews left Germany and Poland in the first place? I’m guessing she didn’t come from a place of hate when she said it, but Jeez…
Scott in NYC
I love how commenters on this post attempt to reduce the criticism of their argument to some unstoppable force fighting anyone who criticized Israel. It is not criticism of Israel that spurs the ire of many, it is the propaganda needed to do so that is problematic. When will you learn?
The flotilla, for instance, was very clear about it’s goal, and it had nothing to do with Humanitarian aid, even BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION. When told they were approaching a naval blockade, the Israelis were told to “Go back to Auschwitz.”…and then refused to go to Ashdod where they were directed. Nice, huh? This is the level.
As far as accusations of apartheid…I say, BULLSHIT. Over 1.2 millon Arabs live in Israel, and some serve in government. Try that in reverse where most Muslim countries and territories, including the PA, do not knowingly have a Jew among them. Nice, huh? Why let the truth get in the way of some good propaganda.
Rosie is free to continue to defend anyone on the far left, no matter how gross what they say. But Helen Thomas is a piece of shit for saying so God damn offensive and she has probably said worse. This time she had the good judgement to say it on camera at a Jewish event. Good…let her be seen for what she is.
A
@Cam:
Cam, so because a certain people who have not been given education through their disenfranchisement have traditional and homophobic values means we should not give them civil rights?
You are racist.
Cam
Oh give it a rest, everybody saying “Poor Helen Thomas, she dared to criticise Isreal and for that she is crucified”. I love how everybody says there is some huge Jewish conspiracy as the reason people are upset. Nobody points out that Thomas is Lebanese and could perhpas have an opinion stemming from her background. Additionally, If Thomas truly believes what she says, then will she be signing over her home to a local Native American Tribal govt. and going back to the land her ancestors came from? It is the exact same thing she is telling the Isreali’s to do.
Rosie’s defense of people who would gladly imprison and kill her is as ill thought out as when she claimed that the U.S. brought down the World Trade Center.
Cam
@A: said…
“No. 24 · A
@Cam:
Cam, so because a certain people who have not been given education through their disenfranchisement have traditional and homophobic values means we should not give them civil rights?
You are racist.”
_________________
You are an idiot. Do you know why? Because nothing I said stemmed from race. I said that defending people who would imprison and kill you was idiotic. Defending the Klan is idiotic. Defending Russia where gays are mistreated is idiotic, and defending the Palestinians where being gay is illegal is idiotic. You have no real defense to what I said, so instead you try to end the argument by saying “Waaahhh! you disagree with me, you’re racist!”.
You can excuse behavior any way you want but it is irrelevent. I don’t care WHY somebody would attack, imprison, tortoure and murder my gay brothers and sisters. The reason is moot. You must have massive amounts of self-hate to defend such behavior. Do you defend rapists here in America and say they shouldn’t be arrested for their crimes if they came from a bad home? Do you defend Matthew Sheppard murders and say they shouldn’t have been arrested because in their homes they weren’t educated correctly? If you don’t then YOU are the racist only offering your defnse to one group but not others.
Cam
@Shade:
Very well said.
edgyguy1426
The Israeli Defense Forces? You mean the ones that have women and gays in it?
christopher di spirito
@Scott in NYC:
You’re correct, Scott in NYC. Comparing the treatment of Palestinians by the Israelis to Apartheid in South Africa was over the line and I apologize. Maybe you can provide a better label?
For example, free expression is targeted, and Israeli Arabs threatened, denied equality, education, employment, and their citizenship without “declaring loyalty” to Israel — in other words, on condition they abandon their national identity, culture, language, and historic heritage that’s the equivalent of asking Jews to renounce Judaism.
Financial means involves regarding social rights, including healthcare and education, as commodities, accessible to those who can pay. And for Occupied Palestinians, Gaza was devastated by war, remains under siege, and sustains near daily assaults, killings, and targeted assassinations.
In the West Bank, security forces enforce land seizures, home demolitions, displacement, segregation, isolation, closures, movement and travel restrictions, the Separation Wall’s construction, daily home invasions, arrests, attacks on peaceful protestors, imprisonments, and torture of detainees under a rigid “matrix of control” involving checkpoints, bypass roads, roadblocks, curfews, electric fences, and various other harassments to cow all Palestinians into submission or make them give up and leave.
Since 1948, Israel denied its Arab citizens fundamental human and civil rights. In the Territories, it’s far worse under military occupation and Israeli laws affording no protections to Palestinians. Nor has the Supreme Court upheld the law that should be sacrosanct in a legitimate democracy. When it’s compromised, no one is immune from abuse and neglect as greater numbers in Israel are learning, including Jews.
I don’t know what I was thinking using the term Apartheid.
Scott in NYC
@christopher di spirito: Christopher,
Your response is baffling. Israel is by far the freest nation in the Middle East. By virtually any objective account, Arabs living within her borders are the freest in the region. They even serve on the Knesset. When a Jew takes a leadership role in, say, Ramallah or Riyadh, get back to me, okay?
Israel left Gaza in 2005. You know what happened then? Hamas took it over and rather than attempt to build any infrastructure or industry, used it as another launch pad for missile attacks on Israel. Perhaps that’s why Egypt closed its border and forced anyone attempting to enter Egypt back into Gaza.
No decent person would deny the hardships innocent Palestinians have to endure. But one would do well to point the attention at terrorist groups, like Hamas, who send rockets, missiles and suicide bombers into Israel with the explicit goal of murdering as many innocent Israelis as possible with the ultimate objective of eradicating the country rather than point the finger at Israel without explaining the attacks that make the blockades and checkpoints necessary. Using buzzwords like “occupation” may get you nods from your comrades but it’s nonsense…Gaza and West Bank were holding pens for 20 years under Egypt and Jordan respectively and were only taken by Israel in a defensive war Israel neither started nor wanted.
While the Arab population supposedly masochistically chooses to live in a place where all their rights are trampled on, much of the Muslim world remains purposely Judenrein, there are “Muslim-only” roads, there is no free press, no ability to connect to dissenting opinions, etc. About this, you seem to have very little to say.
For shame, Christopher.
Cam
@christopher di spirito:
You have an amazing case of battered wife syndrome.
christopher di spirito
@Scott in NYC:
I remember the story of Avi Shapiro and 12 other Jewish settlers who put on their skullcaps, grabbed their semi-automatic rifles and headed toward Highway 60.
There, they pushed boulders, stretched barbed wire and set tires afire to form a barricade that, they said, would stop even the biggest of Palestinian taxis. Then they waited for a vehicle to arrive. As they crouched in a ditch beside the road, Shapiro, the leader of the group, gave the settlers orders: Surround any taxi, “open fire” and kill as many of the “blood-sucking Arab” passengers as possible.
“We are driving these sons of Arab whores from the land of Israel,” said Shapiro, 42, who moved here with his wife and four children, from Brooklyn. “If he won’t get rid of the Muslim filth, then we will.”
For shame, Scott. For shame, that you believe Israel has a Biblical certitude and moral infallibility to behave lawlessly and outside the boundaries of human decency.
Dmitriy
@christopher di spirito:
these good muslim arabs are also responsible for expelling the jews of the arab world: in 1948 there were nearly 1,000,000 now there are some 5000
Dmitriy
@christopher di spirito:
on top of this since 1948 a favorite book of the muslim and arab world has been the protocols of zion, oh i forgot there’s also the eternal jew
they also believe the christians and jews are the brothers of apes and pigs
that israel is responsible for 9/11
that they holocaust never happened (in fact there was a conference not too long ago hosted in Tehran to “reconsider the facts” of the holocaust)
yeah they don’t harbor any prejudice
not to mention the fact that until the the europeans colonized this region: they still had the dhimmi system: where christians and jews as well as other religious minorities had to pay a tax in order to not have their heads chopped off: and had to follow regulations about what jobs they could have, where they could live, down to what side of the street they could walk on (during the middle ages)
on top of this there were still pogroms against religious minorities throughout history…yet they conveniently take some sort of non-existent moral high ground
ewe
I give Helen Thomas a pass considering all the things this woman has done before this unfortunate comment. And many many rational people feel the exact same way. Please. The woman is 90 years old i think.
Dame Helga von ornstein
Does anyone remember that 3 gay Israeli teenagers were killed last year in Israel and to this day their killer has not been brought to justice? I wonder is it being anti-semitic to bring this FACT up?
Personally, I think their killer was Jewish and the authorities in Israel have no intention of finding him due to the fear he has instilled in gay Jewish kids who would have no doubt spoken out against the ultra-orthodox (who no doubt cheered on this killer, though not publicly).
A ninety-year old woman speaks her mind………oh, what’s the use.
Willhelmina
Rosie is hot…I´d have a 3ways with her and Helen Thomas
Taylor Siluwé
No. 37 · Willhelmina
First off, ewwwwll!
Secondly … oh, no, that was it. Love Rosie to death, but the mental picture of her in a sweaty threesome kinda fucked up my Sunday. Just a little bit though. Enjoy ur fantasy …. 😉
Scott in NYC
@christopher di spirito:
Christopher,
That is a horrible story…but it speaks of a couple of nutjobs and not a state-sponsored, religiously-driven, violently-enforced state position on Palestinians. In this way, this is a bit of a red herring…I never said there aren’t crazy, bigoted people in any country.
That is, of course, if this story actually happened. A quick check on it seems to reveal a lot of heated debate about its authenticity. For one thing, there was never anyone named Avi Shapiro living in Hebron, nobody who matched the reporter (Kelley) description of him, no identificaiton of the people who supposedly joined him on this mission, and even the PA had no record of this man and doubted his existence. The reporter ultimatley was fired for having “fabricated articles, plagiarized quotes, lied in speeches and attempted to deceive investigators.” Now, if you were intersted in the TRUTH, you would at least mention that this all happened. But if you’re interested in generating anti-Israel sentiment (i.e., propaganda), you wouldn’t. I think you’ve answered for everyone where your priorities are.
Even so, let’s take it at face value that this actually happened. A horrific tragedy (they have happen in every society) but one that had no government backing (unlike, say, the PA, which glorifies suicide bombing). In other instances where an Israeli civilian attacked a Palestinian civilian, the Yeshu council has condemened the attack and “called on Israeli security forces to apprehend the culprits.” Contrast that to what would happen in Ramallah if a Palestinian civilian killed an Israeli. There would be (and have been) parades in the streets for this sort of thing.
Again, about that, you have very little to say. I still say for shame Christopher. YOu seem either ill-informed or willing to spew propaganda without critically thinking about what you are saying. If you thought about any of it, you’d come to a different conclusion. It’s sad, really, when otherwise intelligent people suddenly become sheep when it comes to this issue.