Sanctimonious hypocrisy

It is perhaps supremely ironic that the country with the strongest legal protections for free speech will place such exacting requirements of politically acceptable commentary as those now being faced by Helen Thomas, the erstwhile dean of the White House press corps. Americans are generally a tolerant lot. They invented the phrase “have a nice day” but there are certain “no-go areas” when it comes to political discourse in the US and criticism of Israel is one of them. Under the current presidency, this taboo has lifted somewhat in government circles but it remains deeply prevalent throughout much of the media. Thomas, the veteran journalist who has been a White House correspondent for various organisations for the past 50 years, has been facing a storm of criticism from her colleagues for saying “tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” She went on to suggest that Jewish settlers should “go home” to Germany, Poland, the US and elsewhere.

Her choice of words may have been poor but her views reflect the sentiments of much of the world — outside of America’s borders of course. Her lecture tour agents have dropped her as a client and the high school that had asked to her to speak at their graduation has asked her not to come. A colleague with whom she had collaborated on books in the past has refused to work with her in the future. All of this is faced by a woman who broke many barriers in her time, becoming the first female White House correspondent, the first female president of the correspondents’ association and the first female member of the Gridiron Club, the oldest and most prestigious journalistic organisation in Washington. She is an American institution in her own right. Which then begs the question: if Helen Thomas is not free to speak her mind about Israel, then who is?

Published in the Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2010.