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Kevin Myers: 'There is little freedom of speech on subject of Israel'
by Kevin Myers
Tuesday June 15 2010
It wasn't good enough that Helen Thomas's career ended in humiliation, isolation and obloquy. No, what was really needed was a good lynching
Freedom of speech is freedom of speech. Any freedom of speech that is contingent upon who is speaking is not a freedom but merely the statutory and limited privilege of princes. And any freedom of speech that depends upon its content is not a freedom, but merely a road sign marking where liberties end and censoriousness begins.
The fate of the veteran Washington correspondent Helen Thomas is a sobering reminder that upon the subject of Israel, there is very limited freedom of speech in the US.
She is 89 years of age, and has been reporting on the White House since Jesus had a foreskin. She was caught unawares by the activist Rabbi David Nesenoff, who asked her for her comments on the Middle East.
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."
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?"
After which, the roof fell in on her life, even though she later issued a full apology for what was, after all, an unscripted aside. Various journalists -- including the White House Correspondents' Association -- attacked her.
She has been dropped as a public speaker, and she was obliged to resign her position with Hearst newspapers. President Obama said her remarks were "offensive" and "out of line".
But the destruction of the remains of the career of this nonagenarian, for some off-the-cuff remarks, was not enough for Caroline Glick of 'The Jerusalem Post'. She wrote. "In other times, Hearst Newspapers' White House Correspondent Helen Thomas's demand that the Jews 'get the hell out of Palestine,' and go back to Poland, Germany and America would have been front page news in every newspaper in the US the day after the story broke. In other times, had the dean of the White House Correspondents' Association expressed such hatred for the Jews, the White House would have immediately removed her accreditation rather than wait three days to criticise her.
"In other times, the White House Correspondents' Association would have expelled her. In other times, her employer -- Hearst Newspapers -- would have fired her. But in our times, it took days for anyone other than Jews and conservatives to condemn Thomas's vile statements to Rabbi David Nesenoff. And she was not fired. She was allowed to retire. Our times are times of Jew hatred. . ."
In other words, it wasn't good enough for Caroline Glick that Helen Thomas's career ended in humiliation, isolation and obloquy. No, what was really needed was a good lynching, and the absence of such a lynching was proof that, "Our times are times of Jew hatred."
This is too absurd, too preposterous, too vile for words. If Zionists are allowed to say that the descendants of Diaspora Jews can migrate to Israel, then surely anti-Zionists are similarly allowed to say that a reverse process might occur? For I do not believe that anti-Zionism is axiomatically the same as anti-Semitism.
Nor do I believe that freedom of speech should be vouchsafed only to those who support inward Jewish migration to Israel, but denied to those who advocate an opposite movement, or that they may be pilloried, marginalised and destroyed. That is not freedom of speech.
It's not coincidental that the only country in the Middle East that allows true freedom of speech is Israel. It alone allows commentators to deny the right of the state to exist. No such right exists in any of its Arab neighbours. Freedom of speech, if it has any meaning at all, must allow such as the Greek Orthodox Helen Thomas to speak her mind, as it would then allow her critics to publicly contemplate the consequences of what she was saying. Are they too thick or too bigoted to allow consideration of what this is?
It would mean the triumph of Arabism over Jerusalem, Jaffa and Galilee, just as Arabism has already triumphed over great multi-ethnic cities such as Libya's Tripoli and Egypt's Alexandria, and destroyed their essential liberties, not least of the now-vanished Greek Orthodox communities. And which of us today can confidently put the words, 'technological breakthrough', 'freedom of thought' and 'Arabic' in the same sentence without a negative?
The key to any free society is that it allows commentators to dissent from agreed and central pieties. It even allows political activists to entrap the gullible and unaware. But it is not the mark of a free society to destroy those who have dissented from those pieties, or the headstrong victims of such entrapment. Moreover, if freedom of speech is one of the great keystones of a free society, its companion-stone in the archway of civility is wisdom. For what goes around comes around; and he who lynches Helen Thomas today, might very well be lynching Caroline Glick tomorrow.
kmyers@independent.ie
- Kevin Myers
Irish Independent
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-there-is-little-freedom-of-speech-on-subject-of-israel-2220558.html