With all the recent buzz around Israel, the Gaza siege, and the aid flotilla, a video surfaced online of reporter Helen Thomas caught in “off the cuff” remarks about Israel/Palestine. Helen said that Israel should get out of Palestine and people should remember that it is their land and it has been occupied. When asked specifically, she said that Jews should get out of Palestine and return to Poland and Germany.

Of course that kind of language does not play well in America and the expected storm of accusations of anti-semitism, bias, and calls for resignation has been ensued. Helen has apologized for her remarks.

Here is my thought; it is internationally recognized that the lands of the West Bank and Gaza are occupied by Israel (even the US recognizes this). It is also internationally recognized that the future Palestinian state will be established on the West Bank and Gaza (the pre-1967 war borders). So Helen Thomas’s remarks were not that far off base. She can just explain (and I think that is what she actually meant) that Israeli settlers should get out of Palestine (which is something that can be argued and defended in American politics). After all, this is exactly the same line that Jimmy Carter drew in his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.

Here is the video if you’re interested:

Traveling thousands of miles to start my graduate education, i was disconnected from the world for about 10 days. With a couple of days driving on the road, and no internet set up at home yet, i had no means to check the news or anything. So, when i was planning to write my next post, i was thinking of talking about my 2-day driving road trip.

However, as soon as i got connected, the stark dark news was hard to escape. The mass punishment of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza is just inhumane. No words can really describe what is going on. It is truly frightening. What would happen if this was done to people in Europe or the USA ? How would the world react ? What description would be given to the country/people applying such mass punishment ? Why is it not done now ? Why is the world turning its blind eye ?

Words escape me trying to come up with something different that what many great bloggers have said about this. I leave you with this nice article by Sabbah.

I found this via this post on Sabbah’s Blog. An upcoming documentary (not sure where it will air, but i am on the look out) features six Israeli female soldiers recalling their experiences in the Israeli army torturing Palestinians. Good to hear that this is finally coming out more vocally.

Anyway, this is originally a Reuters news report that you can read here.