Criticizing Israel is considered bigoted and anti-Semitic. The US was complicit in taking land from Palestine to establish the state of Israel. Helen Thomas, a long time White House correspondent employed by the Hearst Corporation, was fired for suggesting that Jews should get out of Palestine and go back to Germany, Poland, the US, or wherever else they came from.
The anger her comments unleashed reflects a deep insensitivity to the injustice of the state of Israel’s creation, which the US supported by forcefully displacing Palestinians. It has led to intractable issues that continue to plague the Middle East. Those responsible for creating the state of Israel do not want to acknowledge that by doing so they committed a crime against the Palestinians, who were displaced because they were powerless against the US forces that supported taking their land to establish the Jewish state. Homeless and helpless, they were victims of U.S. racism. The U.S. likes to be portrayed as a welcoming country, but our prejudices are deep and disruptive.
Those who criticized Helen Thomas’s comments try to equate her statements with telling American black people to go back to Africa. However, the circumstances could hardly be more different. Blacks were brought to America as slaves, much against their will, to provide free labor for white plantation owners and to enrich slave traders. Jews wanted their own state, so the US offered them land in Palestine to create one. Palestine is a region, not an official country. The Arab world has justifiably resented the US forces which took their land to create the state of Israel. There was no consideration or compensation for those who were displaced, thus fomenting an enduring hostile environment.
The US had no right to confiscate land in Palestine to provide Israel the special privilege of being a separate state within Palestine. The Israeli State may now have a right to continue to exist, but must we compound the injustice of its creation by censuring any discussion of the topic?