Veteran, almost-90 newswoman Helen Thomas had to quit her forever job after saying in an interview that Israelis should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Germany, Poland, the U.S., etc. Her status as a beloved fixture in the White House press core couldn't save her after that.
It is a time of intemperate and ill-considered remarks, but most have no consequences. Hers did.
Nearly all Americans think Israel has a right to exist. And virtually our entire right wing is rabidly pro-Israel and would be critical of that country's government only if it took risks to get peace with the Palestinians, as the Obama administration would have it do.
Obama might be inclined to want to reprieve Thomas, putting in a good word for her with her bosses; but under the circumstances he can't. If she had attacked Mom or apple pie, her chances would have been better.
I don't think Thomas is an anti-Semite, and her remark was not anti-Semitic. I suppose it to have been an expression of her frustration with the lack of progress and the ongoing violence against civilians on both sides in the the Israeli-Palestinian standoff. In resigning, she repudiated her idea that Israel should dissolve itself and emphasized her belief in the necessity of making peace there.
Benyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is only Israel's latest right-wing prime minister. All of the previous ones, like Bibi products of the Likud party, have been the same in their harsh and unreasonable attitude.
Palestinian land gets gobbled up in more Israeli settlements. The Palestinians live in a state of siege that keeps them pinned down and blights their economic future. And this is represented as Israeli self-protection. It is a curious kind of self-protection that can only lead to more hate, fury, and conflict.
It has seemed to me for many years that the Israeli right really believes that it can wait out and wear out the Palestinians. If it just goes on being intractable - so I suspect it thinks - the Palestinians will give up and accept whatever deal they're offered. That's as hard-nosed as it is unrealistic, as we should all see by now.
An earlier Likud prime minister, Menachem Begin, a onetime terrorist, was compelled by President Carter to drop the intransigence and come to terms with Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat. Sadat was the rarest of Mideast birds, a person of peace. This general, politician, and Muslim mystic had the U.S. and the world with him, and Begin had to go along.
Later a Mapai (Labor) prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, a former general and veteran of high office who had always been cautious and tough, decided to take a run at peace and was assassinated by a rightist fanatic during an election campaign. Then terrorism increased and Likud won again in spite of expectations.
Israel's Likudniks and Palestine's Hamasniks bolster each other, just as the American and Soviet hard-liners did. Anybody who is "soft" is discredited in favor of warlike words and acts.
It appears to me that Bibi is taking advantage of the American right's adulation for his regime and Obama's political weakness. He thinks he can get away with just about anything now and maybe bring down his critic Obama in the process; this is a reversal of how things have been.
Obama must get him on the defensive and bring into play everyone's hopes for a settlement and the world's distaste for the Likud mentality.
Israel is at heart too good and fair a country to want to remain the oppressor of Palestine. But for now, Helen Thomas is only the latest and most conspicuous victim of Bibi's trust in cynicism, injustice, and realpolitik.
Whether you vote rightist here or in Israel, you should have no illusions about what it is that you are voting for.
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