Disgraced former White House correspondent Helen Thomas says she's not anti-Semitic.
"Baloney!" she told WMRN-AM radio's Scott Spears in a pre-recorded interview broadcast Tuesday. "I'm a Semite."
In her 35-minute chat with Spears, Thomas was completely unapologetic about the disgusting remarks she made in June that led to her termination from the Hearst Newspaper group.
Quite the contrary, she completely stood by her comments as "the truth" (audio follows with transcribed highlights and commentary, relevant section at 18:00, h/t Hot Air headlines):
- "I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive."
- On why she made the comments: "Because it’s the truth. Because the Israelis are very aggressive. They have refused to enforce or go along with some 65 UN resolutions condemning their cruelty to the Palestinians. Jewish only roads, can you believe, in the West Bank? You think any American would tolerate that? And everything else? The total control. Their armed to the teeth. Palestinians are not armed, and they’re helpless. And I think the Americans should wake up to the kind of brutal aggression they have against the Palestinians: usurping their land and water, torching their orchards, killing their people."
- "I was not talking about Auschwitz or anything else...They distorted my remarks, which they obviously have to do for their own propaganda purposes, otherwise people might wonder why they continue to take Palestinian land."
- On being anti-Semitic: "Baloney. I’ve never been anti-Semitic. I’m a Semite."
Sadly, Spears didn't ask Thomas about receiving a lifetime achievement award at Saturday's Council on American-Islamic Relations banquet or the gala being thrown for her next month by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
I wonder why.
