Political Blog

When a staunch critic of Barack Obama and long-time contributor and supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu tells the Israeli prime minister he a bigger part of the problem than the solution in the search for Mideast peace, it's important.

Update: JTA is reporting that Thomas has retired, effective immediately.

Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, MD, a prosperous Washington suburb, had a graduation speaker all lined up for the June 14 event. But then the proposed speaker was caught on camera saying Israels should “get the hell out of Palestine” and maybe just go back where they came from – presumably places like Germany and Poland.

That was Helen Thomas, the Hearst Newspapers columnist and a member of the White House press corps for 60 years.  Her comments produced the predictable reaction, with some Jewish groups calling for Hearst to give her the ax because of her  blatant bias against the Jewish state and some Jewish Republicans trying to lay the controversy in the lap of the Obama administration.

White House Jewish outreach on steroids

Pretty much every Jewish reporter was focused this week on President Barack Obama’s meeting with 16 Jewish leaders at the White House – a presidential performance described as masterful even by some participants uneasy about his evolving Middle East policies and his determination to speak bluntly to Israel about issues such as settlements (read the Jewish Week story on the meeting here).

I generally admire human rights watchdog groups, even if I agree they sometimes show a little more enthusiasm in criticizing Israel than in criticizing its neighbors.  Human Rights Watch has always struck me as reasonably fair and balanced – contrary to the views of some pro-Israel groups, which regard any criticism of Israel as blasphemy.

But for the life of me I can't figure out what the group was doing in Saudi Arabia recently, fundraising by allegedly bragging about their battles with the pro-Israel lobby here.