Eleanor Clift must go

We now have the view of liberal apologist Eleanor Clift on the Helen Thomas affair. Writing in Newsweek Clift says: "She [Thomas] was talking about the settlers, and if she had said they should go back to Brooklyn, where many of them are from, she probably wouldn’t have made news."

Clift is wrong on so many counts. First, I have watched the video of thomas (I wonder if Clift has). Thomas was not talking about settlers. She was talking about all israeli Jews. If she meant the settlers, then she would have told them to go back to Israel since that is where they came from. Clift just makes up the settlers slant to Thomas' remarks. Such creative writing is not unusual for Clift, but it is still incorrect.

Second, the settlers do not come from Brooklyn. There are about half a million Israeli Jews who live in areas that people like Clift classify as settlements. That is more than the number of Jews in Brooklyn by far. It is also more than five times the number of people who have immigrated to Israel from the entire United States over the last fifty years. Again, Clift makes it up as she goes along, but she is still wrong.

Third, if Thomas had only said that all Israeli settlers shold go back to Brooklyn, there still would have been uproar. Imagine this: If David Broder had said all blacks should go back to Africa, there would have been uproar. Now suppose what he said was that all black activists should go back to Nigeria. would the uproar have been any less. I hope not. Indeed, I know that it would have been just as large and loud.

Clift is an apologist for anti-semitism. whether or not Thomas was a dependable liberal, she is also clearly an anti-semite. Clift should also be dumped. It is time for Newsweek to step up to the plate and take a stand.