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Why we should not forgive Helen Thomas.
by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
In the aftermath of the Helen Thomas fiasco, the bloggers and the pundits and the second-guessers are having a field day. Why are we harassing her, they ask, just because she happened to respond to a rabbinic interviewer on the lawn of the White House with the kind of vitriolic anti-Semitic venom worthy of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in his heyday?
Yes, she did say Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and go back to the places they came from like Germany and Poland, (although she would probably concede that 6 million of them would be spared making the trip because they are already interred there as victims of the Holocaust).
But that's not the point, we're beginning to hear from some in the media. She may have said something that's unjustifiable, but come on, she did finally apologize.
When faced with public outcry and the realization that she had gone too far for any kind of reasonable defense, she managed to come up with this remarkable supposed expression of contrition: "I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."
She is sorry that her speakers bureau dropped her, that she was forced into retirement and that she's losing her front row seat at the White House press conferences.
While they may not reflect her “heartfelt belief” about how peace will come to the Middle East, they certainly made admirably clear her feelings about Jews and her insensitivity to the horrors they experienced in the lands she would wish them to consider their national homelands in place of their biblical heritage -- something to which she seems totally oblivious.
There is absolutely nothing about this apology that smacks of an apology.
There is no remorse about having gone beyond the pale of civilized discourse or of realizing upon reflection that her remarks were not only intemperate but illogical, insulting and totally lacking any vestige of the “mutual respect and tolerance” she claims as her guidelines.
It is an apology clearly motivated solely by the price she now realizes she had to pay for truthfully baring her soul. She regrets not so much the content of what she said as the recognition that the public is appalled by the discovery of her innermost feelings.
So she is sorry. Sorry that her speakers bureau dropped her. Sorry that she was disinvited from serving as the keynote speaker at a graduation ceremony in Washington. Sorry that she was forced into retirement from the Hearst Corporation, sorry that her 90th birthday party to be attended by President Obama was cancelled, and sorry that she is losing her front row seat at the prestigious White House press conferences.
And yet there are those foolish enough to express outrage at our inability to embrace her once more in spite of her admitted “mistake” because according to their mindset an apology, no matter how exculpatory, incomplete or comprehensible, should trump any offense.......
Cijeli članak pročitajte u prilogu, veoma je poučan i za naše prilike jer se "isprikama" ne mogu oprostiti izrečene ksenofobične i antisemitske izjave, a pogotovo ne počinjeni zločini.