{"id":5707,"date":"2011-01-13T08:02:48","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T12:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=5707"},"modified":"2011-01-13T08:02:48","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T12:02:48","slug":"diane-shammas-on-helen-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/diane-shammas-on-helen-thomas\/","title":{"rendered":"Diane Shammas on Helen Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The shameful dismissal of journalist <strong>Helen Thomas<\/strong> for supposedly &#8220;antisemitic&#8221; remarks has passed more or less unnoticed or buried on the back pages. It is useful therefore that <em><strong>Counterpunch<\/strong><\/em> has just published an article by <strong>Diane Shammas<\/strong> on these matters. Here are the opening paragraphs. You can read the full article in <strong>Counterpunch<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman,Times,serif; color: #990000;\">Helen Thomas: Freedom of Speech and the Zionist Albatross<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman,Times,serif; font-size: xx-small;\">By DIANE SHAMMAS<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On  January 8 the Society of Professional Journalists\u2019 Executive Committee  voted to retire the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award. The SPJ\u2019s  full board is expected to give their final approval within 10 days. In  the meantime, amidst the unrelenting backlash, Helen Thomas has  rebounded as a columnist for a North Virginian community paper, Falls  Church News Press.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The core criticism against Helen Thomas is not  so much her one comment captured on video May 27, 2010, or the  subsequent round of comments shared at a diversity workshop in Dearborn  on December 2 that both Wayne University and the Society for  Professional Journalists assert is their reason for pulling her awards.  Rather, it is what all of the comments symbolize &#8211;an opposition to  Zionism. Please how long do many of us who fight against social  injustice, including a growing number of anti-Zionist American and  Israeli Jews, have to engage in this tireless defense that we are not  against Jews or Israelis, but a racist ideology? A racist ideology that  was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of three quarters of the  indigenous population of Palestine in 1948 similar in impact to the  catastrophe of the dispossession of American Indians and the  redistribution of the tribal lands of the Five Civilized Tribes [1887  Dawes Allotment Act].<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">(&#8230;)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>You can read the full article on <a href=\"http:\/\/counterpunch.org\/shammas01122011.html\"><strong>Counterpunch<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The shameful dismissal of journalist Helen Thomas for supposedly &#8220;antisemitic&#8221; remarks has passed more or less unnoticed or buried on the back pages. It is useful therefore that Counterpunch has just published an article&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,59,61],"tags":[259,924,923],"class_list":["post-5707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectuals","category-israel","category-journalism","tag-counterpunch","tag-diane-shammas","tag-helen-thomas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5707"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5726,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5707\/revisions\/5726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}