{"id":34273,"date":"2011-05-25T15:55:35","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T12:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=34273"},"modified":"2014-01-06T02:04:44","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T00:04:44","slug":"helen-thomas-tells-playboy-jews-control-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/05\/25\/helen-thomas-tells-playboy-jews-control-white-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen Thomas tells Playboy: Jews &#8216;control&#8217; White House"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Palatino,Georgia,Times New Roman,Times,serif;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Ex-dean of Washington press corp: &#8216;Everybody is in pocket of Israeli lobbies&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr size=\"1\" \/>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Palatino,Times New Roman,Georgia,Times,serif;\">By Drew Zahn<\/span><br \/>\n<span> \u00a9\u00a02011\u00a0WND<\/span><\/p>\n<div>Helen Thomas, the former &#8220;dean&#8221; of the White House Press Corps who  lost her position over a string of anti-Semitic comments, is interviewed  in the April issue of Playboy, renewing her criticism of Israel and  Jews in &#8220;control&#8221; of America.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_34275\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34275\" style=\"width: 175px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-34275\" title=\"helenthomas\" src=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/helenthomas.jpg\" alt=\"Helen Thomas\" width=\"175\" height=\"166\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-34275\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Helen Thomas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;[The Jews are] using their power, and they have power in every  direction \u2026 power over the White House, power over Congress,&#8221; Thomas  told Playboy Contributing Editor David Hochman. &#8220;Everybody is in the  pocket of the Israeli lobbies, which are funded by wealthy supporters,  including those from Hollywood. Same thing with the financial markets.  There&#8217;s total control.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s real power when you own the White House, when you own these  other places in terms of your political persuasion. Of course they have  power,&#8221; Thomas continued, then addressed Hochman: &#8220;You don&#8217;t deny that.  You&#8217;re Jewish, aren&#8217;t you?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 90-year-old journalist was a correspondent with United Press  International for 57 years, an opinion columnist with Hearst Newspapers  for 10 years and the senior White House reporter, covering every  president since Eisenhower, until damaging comments last year pushed her  to retirement.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas resigned in June after telling a rabbi on camera that Israelis should &#8220;get the h&#8212; out  of Palestine&#8221; and &#8220;go home&#8221; to &#8220;Poland, Germany and America and  everywhere else.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Though Thomas published an apology for her statements last year,  writing, &#8220;I deeply regret my comments,&#8221; Thomas expressed a different  sentiment in her interview with Playboy:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I knew exactly what I was doing \u2013 I was going for broke. I had  reached the point of no return. You finally get fed up,&#8221; she told the  magazine. &#8220;I finally wanted to speak the truth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Part of that &#8220;truth,&#8221; Thomas told Playboy, is her claim that  Israel is perpetuating its people&#8217;s victim-of-the-Holocaust status to  escape criticism over wrongdoing against the Palestinians.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The slaughter of Jews stopped with World War II. \u2026 They were  liberated since then. And yet they carry on the victimization,&#8221; Thomas  told the magazine. &#8220;American people do not know that the Israeli  lobbyists have intimidated them into believing every Jew is a persecuted  victim forever \u2013 while they are victimizing Palestinians.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She continued, &#8220;Sure, the Israelis have a right to exist \u2013 but  where they were born, not to come and take someone else&#8217;s home. I&#8217;ve had  it up to here with the violations against the Palestinians. \u2026 [The  Palestinians] are incarcerated and living in an open prison. I say to  the Israelis, &#8216;Get out of people&#8217;s homes!&#8217; &#8230; I mean, they&#8217;re living  there and these people want to come and take their homes and land and  water and kill their children and kill them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still, Thomas insists, she doesn&#8217;t hold any hatred for the Jewish people.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh, I know what they&#8217;re going to say: &#8216;anti-Semite.&#8217;\u2026 The truth  is, I don&#8217;t hate anybody. I care deeply about people. I care for the  poor, the sick, the lame, the harmed, those who&#8217;ve been treated  unjustly,&#8221; she told Playboy. &#8220;I think [the Jews] are wonderful people.  They had to have the most depth. They were leaders in civil rights.  They&#8217;ve always had the heart for others but not for Arabs, for some  reason.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not anti-Jewish,&#8221; she explained, &#8220;I&#8217;m anti-Zionist.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Thomas, therefore, explains why she blames Israelis for Palestinian terror attacks:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of course I don&#8217;t condone any violence against anyone. But who  wouldn&#8217;t fight for their country? What would any American do if their  land was being taken? Remember Pearl Harbor,&#8221; Thomas told Playboy. &#8220;The  Palestinian violence is to protect what little remains of Palestine. The  suicide bombers act out of despair and desperation. Three generations  of Palestinians have been forced out of their homes \u2013 by Israelis \u2013 and  into refugee camps.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Following her comments last year, made on the White House lawn  during American Jewish Heritage month, President Obama criticized  Thomas&#8217; statement, supporting her departure from the White House press  corps.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Her comments were offensive,&#8221; Obama said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a shame because  Helen&#8217;s someone who has been a correspondent through I don&#8217;t know how  many presidents, was a real institution in Washington, D.C. But I think  she made the right decision. I think those comments are out of line, and  hopefully she recognizes that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, however, Editor &amp;  Publisher reports, Thomas told a national conference of campus  journalists from College Media Advisers, &#8220;I want an apology from the  president.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I also heard from Jimmy Carter,&#8221;  Thomas revealed. &#8220;He called a few weeks later. Basically he was  sympathetic. He talked about the Israelis in the Middle East, the  violations. It was very nice of him to call, but I don\u2019t want to get him  into trouble.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She also reiterated her statements that Israelis  should leave homes occupied by Palestinians prior to 1948, only this  time suggesting they come to the U.S., rather than &#8220;go home&#8221; to &#8220;Poland,  Germany and America and everywhere else.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ex-dean of Washington press corp: &#8216;Everybody is in pocket of Israeli lobbies&#8217; &nbsp; By Drew Zahn \u00a9\u00a02011\u00a0WND Helen Thomas, the former &#8220;dean&#8221; of the White House Press Corps who lost her position over a string of anti-Semitic comments, is interviewed in the April issue of Playboy, renewing her criticism of Israel and Jews in &#8220;control&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":34275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,34],"tags":[3271,2462],"class_list":["post-34273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","category-usa","tag-us-jews","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}