Isn’t it a contradiction to ruthlessly punish anyone who complains about Jewish pressure?
This will not send any message but a confirmation to people who fear excessive Jewish power.
If Helen Thomas’s name is permanently tainted by this, who else should have their accomplishments forgotten for their political incorrectness Soviet-style?
Will we rename the university after some Shawnee, and stop celebrating genocidal Mad Anthony?

Either Helen Thomas is so wrong as to justify this extreme censure, or she is so right that WSU has no choice but to bow down to Zionist power. How might we determine which is the case?

“Zionists controlled U.S. foreign policy and Wall Street”
Do you know of any anti-Zionists or friends of Palestine in either arena?
Wasn’t Charles Freeman’s nomination killed because Zionists, Jewish and otherwise, decided that they didn’t like him?

Can anyone truly argue that America does not favor Israel? Does anyone really think that America is on the side of Palestinians? What Helen Thomas stated was factually true, but perhaps she could have been less aggressive in her language. I do not think that she did anything to offend diversity. When someone stands up for an oppressed people over the powerful they are not being bigoted or anti-semtitic. I think this is a huge kick in the face to the large number of Arab-American WSU students, especially those who are from “Palestine.”

Zionism and Judaism are not synonymous. Zionism is a political movement dating back to the late 19th century and is organized under the World Zionist Organization. There are many Zionist organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America, The World Jewish Congress, AIPAC, etc., etc. Judaism is an ethnic religion. Helen Thomas was talking about Zionism not Judaism.

New rule: before throwing around the word Nazi, which ignorant and careless Jews more than anyone else has rendered meaningless through over-use, you must clarify what you think that word means. There is simply no responsible sense in which Helen Thomas could be called a Nazi.

Bear in mind that Helen Thomas is of Lebanese extraction. It’s interesting that countess people are up in arms about her STATEMENTS while they remain silent regarding the war crimes of the IDF against Lebanon. These are real, and indisputable human rights violations.

IDF commander | We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon

Note that I am not citing David Duke, I am citing the leading Israeli news source. Would that we ha a press so bold and honest.

fact is wayne state is heavily invested in israel and its executive cabinet is mostly made up of zionists. thus i am not surprised.. Its such a shame that they retroactively took this action when at the time of Helen’s statements the reward was kept.. and now they go back on it.. why?
oh and i love that its ok for wayne state to invite daniel pipes and others to spread islamophobia on our campuses and there’s nothing racist about that..

Wait wait wait….Helen Thomas is Arabic right…Arabs are Semitic people too, right? How can a Semite be an Anti Semite? Alll I know is that WSU has a huge Arab student body and this will not sit well with them. We probably have more Arabs than jews at WSU. Rumor has it that she used to donate thousands of $$$ each year to WSU too.

This is college today: the self-righteous lefty in college who takes mental refuge in conspiracy narrative. yeah, fight the power! Uh huh. They jump to Thomas’ defense when she tells the Israelis to return to Germany, bring marshmellows! Imagine Jews objecting to that!
Though there are many Jews in media, they obviously don’t “push the Zionist line” but push the Palestinianist line, of which we are fed a steady media diet. The students posting here, who may not be that representative of the WSU student body, clearly breath that narrative.

Anyhow, Helen Thomas, Arabist, sounded pretty hateful to me. Pretty as a picture though.

Semite refers to several ethnic groups around the Mediterranean and other parts of Asia including Jews and Arabs.

Anti-Semitic has come to mean specifically prejudice against Jews. Prejudice against Arabs would be referred to as “anti-Arab”.

Word games don’t help this discussion.

It’s not word games to point out that “anti-Semite” has not been used in a particularly responsible fashion by such self-appointed guardians of morality as Abe Foxman, who is willing to coddle racists so long as they say the right thing about Israel. Let’s call their bluff and examine the allegation that Jews, as Jews and for no other reason, are in any way threatened in the way they were in the 30s, and that somehow Helen Thomas’s rejection of the Zionist dream is he same thing as attacking or calling for attacks against Jews. It’s a lot of bad logic and loose connections. Modern Germany cannot be compared in any responsible way to Nazi Germany, Berlin is the ironic hot spot for the very wealthy jet-set Jewish youth, and Germany’s Jewish population was increasing last time I checked. In fact one of the wikileaks cables reveals the rather embarrassing fact, consistent with other evidence of a failure of modern zionism, that people are leaving in droves: specifically that more Israelis are immigrating to Russia than vice versa. Now if you really do know anything about Jewish history, Jews choosing to immigrate to Russia from Israel ought to bother you much more than Germany. But none of these places can touch Helen Thomas’s other advised haven for Jews which seems to have escaped notice, the best place in the world to be a Jew precisely because of its unique character, the USA.

here

I want to commend The South End for its outstanding coverage of the Helen Thomas issue. You’ve put the mainstream media to shame with a fair report.

I commend you further for having the courage to seek the Arab voice on this issue. You haven’t gone far enough, but you have done more than others.

I hope to prod you to take the next step: The South End needs to post an opinion on this issue.

I will be waiting to see where your editors stand on the true issue here — free speech — and whether you agree that the university administration overreacted in getting rid of Helen Thomas’s award a day after she made her controversial remarks.

Shame on toady Ben Burns and others in the journalism program who know better and should have stood up for free speech instead of protecting their paychecks by being yes men. Burns should have set his Wayne State bosses straight, that free speech outweighs censorship in an educated society.

You don’t throw away the illustrious accomplishments of Wayne State graduate Helen Thomas, the first female reporter ever to cover the White House, because she has an opinion that lother folks loathe. People in the Arab community might call Helen Thomas courageous for the opinion.

For me, journalism has always been about telling divergent viewpoints. Isn’t diversity supposed to be an opportunity to learn from people who are different than you are? Or does diversity mean say the right thing or I’ll bring you in to the boardroom with Donald Trump?

This is a perfect debate for me because I think both sides of the Israel-Palestine debate are wrong. I don’t share Helen’s view. But I do think she as an American she is entitled to her opinion without being professionally vilified.

It’s not like Thomas is Mitch Albom, who deserved vilification for fabricating facts for his column in the Free Press — and then got away with it Scot free and remains as popular as ever. Mitch broke the cardinal rule of journalism by making things up when writing about a Michigan State basketball championship, and nobody cared, not really.
Then there was a Detroit editor I worked with at The News who thought it was OK to pee in front of co-workers in the Executive Garage of the daily newspapers. A friend defended him just the other day after I complained that the idiot somehow is still working as a part-time journalist and as a PR person in Oakland County.
These people deserve vilification for their ethics mess-ups because there are no mitigating circumstances that excuses their behavior. Mitch wasn’t entitled to make it up. And that editor wasn’t entitled to whip it out in front of his co-workers. Those mistakes were just plain stupid.

At the same time, Helen Thomas is being hung out to dry. Are we really THAT sensitive? Let Helen Thomas say what she wants. Ignore her if you don’t like the message. I will. That’s the American way.

Finally, Wayne State needs a good spanking for the my-way-or-the-highway message. It’s immature and inexcusable.

As if the world needs another chilling effect.

HAWKE FRACASSA

I too am proud of the South End editorial staff for publishing the stories regarding Helen Thomas and the thrashing she has taken among her “peers.” Their courage is the more remarkable when considering the reaction of those who purport to teach them the duties and responsibilities of a free press. It is discussions like these that create a marketplace of ideas. It is stories like these that make a paper relevant.

If some big shot “Journalist” said “ Muslims are terrorists”, what would the result be ? Much more extreme than what happened to Helen Thomas.

Helen Thomas is a racist. she is peddling the same crap of one Adolf Hitler. She is an embarrassment. The remarks her are indicative of the latent racism towards the Jew. Having studied The Holocaust I am not surprised by some of the comments here. I support Wayne pulling Helen Thomas. Who ever was watching her that day should be reprimanded for leaving the door unlocked. Watch out folks Helen got out again.

What a stupid idea which comes from an institute of repute. Helen Thomas is wholly semitic. If you say anti Jewish, maybe we could accept, but not anti semitic.

If some big shot “Journalist” said “ Muslims are terrorists”, what would the result be ?

Bill O’Reilly
Juan Williams
the whole morning crew at Fox and Friends
the new political racism in Europe
roughly a third of Israeli journalists and politicians

The Zionist censorship machine is its own argument against itself. You people never did figure out how to have a self-sufficient country, and the massive US gifts you depend on necessitate massive debt to China. Where is your future? Like the Ayatollah Khomeini actually said, unlike the lying mistranslation from Israeli government organ MEMRI, Israel is unsustainable (for many different reasons) and will eventually pass away. Meanwhile there are safe an prosperous Jewish communities in the US and to a lesser but growing extent throughout Europe (in fact yeridah has overtaken aaliyah, and non-Jews are being brought in by the droves to hide this). Can Helen Thomas or I be an anti-Semite if I invite Jews to come be my neighbor? That doesn’t sound anti-Semitic to me.

Just like this paper, WSU is a violator of free speech.

First: this is not a first amendment issue, and shame on the muddle-headed slackers who bandy about this accusation without understanding the first thing about the constitution: the government is not interfering with anyone’s right to self-expression.

Second, sure, the US supports Israel, as it should: we should always support liberal democracies of fascist theocracies. Only anti-liberal and anti-democratic thinkers would think and act otherwise.

Third, Helen Thomas is clearly no agent of diversification. She is, in a word, a racist.

Good job Wayne State!

typo: I meant “ we should always support liberal democracies OVER fascist theocracies”