White House Reporter Remarks Top 'Anti-Semitic Slurs' List
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — Two comments by longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas topped the list of the "Top 10 Anti-Semitic Slurs of 2010" released by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
In response to a question from Rabbi David Nesenoff in connection with an American Jewish Heritage Month celebration at the White House May 27, Thomas said, "Jews should get the hell out of Palestine. They should go home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else."
Thomas retired as a columnist for Heart Newspapers four days after video of the comments was posted on Nesenoff's website.
In a Dec. 2 speech in Dearborn, Mich., Thomas said, "Congress, the White House, Hollywood and Wall Street are owned by Zionists. They put their money where their mouth is."
Second on the list were comments by movie director Oliver Stone claiming there is greater focus on the Holocaust than suffering in the Soviet Union during World War II because of "Jewish domination of the media."
The list also includes comments from former CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, Christina Patterson, a journalist with the London-based newspaper The Independent, former Malaysian Premier Mahatir Mohammad, Karel de Gucht, the European Union's chief trade negotiator, Thilo Sarrazin, then a board member of Germany's central bank, and Petras Stankeras, an advisor to Lithuania's interior ministry.
"Never before, in recent memory, has the Simon Wiesenthal Center seen such a proliferation of anti-Semitism going mainstream," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which bills itself as one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations.
"Our list shows that anti-Semitic canards normally thought to belong to the lunatic fringe have in fact been bought into by major elements of Western society."
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