Helen Thomas, the opinionated White House correspondent who used her seat in the front row of history to grill 10 presidents and often exasperate them, lost her storied perch on Monday in a flap over saying Israelis should get “out of Palestine.”
Thomas, 89, who made her name as a bulldog for United Press International (UPI) and was a pioneer for women in journalism, abruptly retired as a columnist for Hearst News Service. The announcement, in a terse statement by Hearst, came after videotaped remarks she made to an independent filmmaker spread virally through the Internet.
She apologized, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denounced her comments as “offensive and reprehensible.” Her press corps colleagues with the White House Correspondents Association issued a rare admonishment calling them “indefensible.”
PHOTO: REUTERS
Thomas, a daughter of Lebanese immigrants, joined UPI in 1943 and began covering the White House for the wire service in 1960.
Fiercely competitive, she became the first female White House bureau chief for a news service when UPI named her to the position in 1974. She also was the first female officer at the National Press Club, where women had once been barred as members.
Thomas retained her place on the front row of the White House briefing room after joining Hearst in 2000 and remained persistent to the point of badgering.
She aggressively questioned former US president George W. Bush and his press secretaries about the war in Iraq, which many of Bush’s supporters said would make Israel safer by ridding the Middle East of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
She gave US President Barack Obama similar handling about Afghanistan.
“Mr President, when are you going to get out of Afghanistan? Why are you continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don’t give us this Bushism, ‘If we don’t go there, they’ll all come here,’” she said in an exchange two weeks ago.
Her retirement was set in motion by a Web site, rabbilive.com.
Rabbi David Nesenoff, an independent filmmaker from Long Island who runs the Web site, said he approached Thomas outside the White House after being there for Jewish Heritage Day on May 27. He said he was there with his teenage son and a friend, who were both wearing yarmulkes. He asked whether she had any comments on Israel.
“Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine,” she said. “Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land. It’s not Germany, it’s not Poland.”
Asked where they should go, she said: “They should go home.”
“Where’s home?” Nesenoff said.
“Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else,” Thomas said.
Writing on her Website on Monday, Thomas said, “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians.”
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