The First Cousin of Holocaust Denial

A number of Goldblog readers have written to ask, in essence, why the big deal over batty Helen Thomas? What is so especially offensive about her comments (comments that now seem to have gotten her fired)? I think the answer is fairly obvious. While it is one thing (not a good thing, of course) to argue in euphemism for the destruction of Israel by invoking the so-called one-state solution, it is quite another to advocate for the "return" of Israeli Jews to their German and Polish homelands, not merely because such advocacy is almost comically absurd and cruel (or, at the very least, stunningly ignorant of recent European history) but because this argument denies to Jews what Helen Thomas, and people like Helen Thomas, want to grant the Palestinians: Recognition that they comprise, collectively, a nation.

The Jews, of course, are an ancient nation, a nation whose history took place in a sliver of land called Israel. Helen Thomas's argument, if you can call it an argument, centers on the pernicious belief that Jews are strangers in a place called "Palestine." Palestine, of course, is the name that was given by the Romans to the Land of Israel precisely in order to sever the connection between the Jews and their homeland. Helen Thomas, and people like her, are thus soldiers in a (Roman-inspired) war against history. This particular war is not as offensive to most people as the war against the memory of the Shoah, but it is rooted in the same grotesque motivation: To deny to Jews the truth of their own history.   

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/06/the-first-cousin-of-holocaust-denial/57792/