Helen Thomas interviewing JFKRE: Helen Thomas agrees to bow out as commencement speaker at Walt Whitman High
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022000709.html
Dear Editor,
I admire Helen Thomas, she has had an impressive career and really has been a great reporter, an astute questioner as well as an excellent role model for all our children.
I do not admire Helen Thomas' detractors who have been quick to demonize her and destroy her career and her reputation by distorting what she meant. I get what she said- I understand it, not as bigotry but as deep frustration over sovereign Israel's generously subsidized settlers and apartheid polices in the illegally occupied territories.
Israel's institutionalized bigotry pushes Palestinians into an impossible situation by persecuting, impoverishing and displacing the native non-Jewish Palestinians, fragmenting Palestinian families and refusing to respect the Palestinian refugees inalienable legal and natural right to return to original homes and lands, while at the same time refusing to allow a viable real Palestinian state to emerge.
Dr. Hussein Ibish of the American task Force on Palestine points out in a recent article in The Guardian: Israel must clarify Palestine's status "While Israeli settlers live under Israeli civil law and with all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, Palestinians live under Israeli civil and military administration with a very different set of laws and without the rights or responsibilities of citizenship. This structure based on dual registers of reality in the same space extends throughout the entire system of the occupation." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/07/israel-must-clarify-palestine-status
Clarity is crucial if we want to help build a just and lasting peace in the Middle East- and for clarity we need more reporters like Helen Thomas.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
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