Go home, Helen Thomas...

After nearly 50 years (longer than the furniture in the White House Press Room has been there), Helen Thomas has surrendered her front row, center seat to "retirement". Is it because 50 years is long enough? Is it because at age 89, she wants some peace and quiet in her life?

Nope. It's because she finally came out and plainly stated that the Jews should "go home" to Poland and Germany, and leave Palestine to its original inhabitants.

Don't get me wrong here... hating Israel isn't the same as hating "Jews", and I don't know that her anti-Israel statements should be what gets her out of that personal, named seat in front of the podium in the Press Room. Lots of people have issues with the Israelis, and our Constitution guarantees their right to freely and publicly state those issues when and where they please. I'm not even sure that the comments she made (which were NOT made in the Press Room) cast a bad reflection on the White House Press Corps... dumber and more bigoted things have been said by better, believe me. usually from the people BEHIND the podium, not in front of it.

I'm not even sure that Thomas' words were "anti-Semitic" in nature. She cast no disparaging remarks on "Jews" as much as she did their place of residence (i.e. Palestine). What they were was simply and utterly stupid... and for that, she should lose her job, either by resignation or termination.

It would seem she feels the Jews don't belong in Palestine because it isn't their ancestral home. Even the most Bible-hating atheist isn't going to deny that the most famous (or second-most-famous) King of the Jews, David, is known to have built most of the oldest fortifications around the city that still exist, and that he did this 1,900 years before the birth of Mohammad and the founding of Islam as a faith. If the land that we know as Israel today, and as Palestine as little as 50 years ago, doesn't call the Jews the "aboriginal" people of the area, then who is? The Canaanites? The Hittites? Surely, the Muslim Palestinian people have no greater claim to the land than the Christians or Jews that have called it "MINE" for the last two millennia or so?

That is a HUGE up-side to the First Amendment promise of free speech and a free press... nothing shows IGNORANCE like writing (or saying) what she did, about what she did. She wanted to further an liberal point of view with her comments, and did nothing more than show exactly where that point of view originates... ignorance and bigotry.

Go home, Helen... and good riddance.