The doyenne of the White House Press Corps, Helen Thomas, 89, has had to resign from the Hearst publications group over remarks she made to a rabbi (filmed by his son). She said Israelis should “get the hell out of” the Middle East and move back to Poland and Germany and America. Ms Thomas, born in Kentucky, is of Lebanese Greek Orthodox Christian heritage. She made her remarks before the Israelis killed 9 volunteers sailing to Gaza in violation of the Israeli blockade intended to stop the supply of weapons to the Hamas regime. So she was not reacting to Israel’s stupid raid.
No one is suggesting that Ms. Thomas should be banished to her ancestral home in Lebanon. As a first generation American, I do not think anyone can advocate sending me back to the Germany from which my parents fled. Had they stayed, they would have been murdered for their religion. If Jews are not to be allowed to remain in Israel where they found refuge, what is to stop them being expelled from the USA where they also found refuge? If people have to go back to their ancestral homes, why should Irish Americans not be sent to the Auld Sod, and Italian Americans hauled home to Sicily. Pres. Obama would have to choose betwen England and France, where his mother’s ancestors came from, or Kenya, whence his father came.
Sending people where they belong or where you would like to push them has dangerous precedents. Think of the partition of India and Pakistan. Another personal example. My mother’s parents, who did not escape to America, were shipped from the Germany where they were born, for which my grandfather had fought in a war, where they had lived all their lives, deported in cattle cars to what is now Belarus, where they were killed because Hitler wanted Germany to be Judenfrei. In 1943 when this happened, Ms. Thomas was 23 years old and working for UPI. A few years later, when the Concentration camps were liberated, she was 25, still with UPI. As a newshen, she would have learned the facts.
So Ms. Thomas’s suggestion for Israelis to move from the Middle East to the site of the Holocaust is indefensible. Jews lived in what became Israel (and the West Bank) not just in Biblical times. Jews were driven from Hebron and east Jerusalem after the creation of Israel when Ms. Thomas was 28 and presumably devouring newspapers she was writing for. Some of them are Israeli refugees who could also seek a right of return. The Jewish communities of most Arab countries were expelled after Israel was founded and voted into existence by the Security Council of the United Nations. Do Egypt or Algeria want to take their Jewish refugees back? Do Iran or Iraq? Will Tunisia and Yeman welcome former Israelis home? What about Jews from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Russia, Kurdistan, Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, Kazakhstan? Surely they will not be sent to Germany or Poland. Will their ancestral homelands welcome them? What about Lebanese Jews, Ms. Thomas? Will they be treated any better in that country than the Christian minority you parents belonged to?
I am opposed to the Gaza blockade as readers know. But to deny Israeli Jews the right to their homeland is not a solution. Ms. Thomas is old enough to know better. So is reader MA who has just cancelled his sub because I am considered too Zionist, presumably because I cover Israeli shares.
Just the facts ma’am.
Trained to sell at 3 pm EST, Wall Street dropped as programmed yesterday without any clear catalyst. As usual, there was no discernable reason and pundits were reduced to citing the low-jobs recovery data from last week to explain the move. Meanwhile German factory orders rose 2.8% in April after a 5% surgee in March. Annualized, that’s 30%. Good numbers also came from the UK Engineering Employers Federation. Taiwan reported boosted exports and imports (mainly to and from China.)
In fact global manufacturing and trade is resurgent.
So what are the bears up to? The answer is that they are fearful, very afraid. But as I have been saying for weeks, this fear is irrational. Last year bears suggested the world faced “a global growth coma” for years to come. How wrong they were.
Recall what bears said in early May. Greece was about to default on its debt, and maybe leave the euro zone. The common currency would collapse. That didn’t happen. The new bear song is that Euro austerity will push the world into a double-dip recession.
There is plenty of talk about austerity but not many countries are practicing it. Germany’s announcement yesterday that it would cut public spending by €80bn (roughly 5% of expenditures) does not count. And given union reaction, the beleaguered Merkel govt may not even follow through.
Today’s Financial Times reports that Britain is keeping a host of silly subsidies to older folks (who vote) like a winter fuel allowance left over from Good King Wenceslas, and free city transport for anyone over 60. I have a “Freedom Pass” for London Transport myself, which I use when I am at our pied-à-terre, but surely I could afford to pay my own fares. In reality, we are in a V-shaped recovery here and in Asia, thanks to demand picking up.
Mr. Bear, stop the panic. Give me a real reason for selling stock. I’m not interested in bearish forecasts, fear, conspiracy theories, Chicken Little panics. Just the facts, ma’am.
More for paid subscribers follows from the Iberian Peninsula, Australia, China, India, Switzerland, Brazil, Britain. Today’s blog is late because we had a recommendation for a share I could not get a quote for so I had to kill the article; and because my personal ATM account was compromised.
