Thank you, Helen Thomas
At the White House: Helen Thomas had occupied a front-and-center spot in Washington for decades.
By Michael Medved
Now that the controversy has begun to subside over the anti-Israel comments of veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas, supporters of the Jewish state ought to thank the abruptly retired journalist for a profoundly valuable gift: new clarity on the essence of the Middle East conflict.
During a Jewish Heritage Celebration at the White House two weeks ago, Thomas laughingly suggested that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Germany and Poland. She thereby made clear that her opposition to Israel isn't based on the Gaza blockade, or settlement construction, or border disputes, or the decisions of the current Netanyahu government. It centers, rather, on the very existence of a Jewish state at the heart of the Arab world.
The most shocking aspect of her remarks wasn't the suggestion that Holocaust refugees from 70 years ago should still look on nations that murdered their family members as "home," but that the Israeli-born grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those survivors still had no real right to the nation they've built and defended.
An illegitimate homeland
Like other harsh critics of Israel, Thomas considers the whole idea of Jews returning to their ancient homeland as illegitimate. Her comments show rejection not just of specific Israeli policies, but of the entire Zionist enterprise — the notion that Jews deserve a homeland like all other enduring national groups, and that the logical site for that rebirth is the Holy Land of their ancestors. Her remarks not only reveal the contours of the existential conflict between Israel and its implacable enemies in Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and elsewhere, but also highlight two false notions at the heart of modern-day anti-Semitism.
First, Thomas' demand that Israelis should return "home" to central Europe assumes most of them originated in Germany or Poland. This recycles the utterly misleading, puzzlingly popular belief that the Jewish state originated in some sort of compensatory gesture for the horrors of the Holocaust. Actually, the Jewish population at the time of Israeli independence (May 1948) was 600,000 — registering mostly natural birth increases (after a decade) from its pre-World War II total of 450,000. The British rulers of the area, eager to placate the deeply anti-Jewish Palestinian Arab leadership, restricted immigration of Jewish refugees to the Middle East during the peak years of Nazi persecution and even after the war.
The fleeing Jewish masses that flooded Israel shortly after independence were, in fact, overwhelmingly non-European. More than 800,000 arrived from Islamic nations such as Morocco, Egypt, Yemen and Iran. These North African and Middle Eastern Jews and their descendants far outnumber Holocaust survivors as the demographic core of modern Israel. Today, more than 100,000 black Jews from Ethiopia play a proud role in Israeli life. Would Thomas and like-minded commentators want them to return to their destitute and brutally oppressive homeland in East Africa?
Second, the thoughtless references to Israelis as "occupiers" who seized "Palestinian land" echo familiar charges. Even some well-meaning friends of Israel accept the erroneous idea that a new home for Jews meant homelessness for Palestinians, and that Zionist settlers could build their population only by driving out the indigenous population. In fact, widely available census data from Turkish and then British authorities who ruled the area during the period of Israel's pioneering generations (1880-1948) show that as the Jewish population soared, the Arab population rose even more quickly — growing by more than 300%.
The Palestinian boom
In no major census before the 1948 Arab invasion of the newly independent Israel did the Palestinian population decline. The famous refugees who have inspired more than 200 United Nations resolutions didn't flee Jewish settlement of the land but rather desperate warfare, initiated by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon — which all promised to strangle infant Israel in its cradle. By the same token, population figures provide no basis for the claim that genocide characterized the post-1967 Israeli occupation of disputed territories in the West Bank, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Gaza. In all these areas, the Arab population has grown since the Israeli takeover, with greatly improved life expectancy and other indicators of health. This hardly demonstrates genocidal intent by Israel.
While supporters of Israel felt wounded by off-the-cuff nastiness from Helen Thomas, they ought to express appreciation for the public service she unwittingly performed in highlighting that Israel's survival remains the only real issue in the conflict with its neighbors, and that those who challenge that survival rely on misinformation and false history of the most irresponsible sort.
Michael Medved is host of a national radio talk show and author of The 5 Big Lies About American Business. He is also a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.
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