V.D. Hanson brings his usual careful insight to Helen Thomas' statement:
By picking Poland and Germany as the ultimate destinations to which she wishes Israelis would go, Thomas was, deliberately or carelessly, saying that they should be uprooted and sent to places where 6 million of them were liquidated. In other words, Thomas was not voicing the usual prejudice, but something much creepier, a sort of flippant pop blueprint for a repeat of 1939–45, echoing the shout from one of the seaborne "peace" protestors, "Go back to Auschwitz!"
Um, no.
Not to excuse her statement, but Thomas was saying that the many Jews of European descent could return to their families' countries of origin. It's still a ridiculous and outrageous statement, but hardly one that equates to suggesting a revival of the Holocaust.
In fact, if Hanson would bother to do the tiniest bit of research he would find that so few Jews agree Germany=Auschwitz (or, to be geographically correct, Bergen-Belsen) that Israel has actually tried to get Germany to keep Jews from immigrating there.
The mass migration of Jews from the former Soviet Union to Germany likely will come to a swift end with the introduction of a new law drawn up by Germany’s 16-state governments.
German authorities presented the new restrictions on Jewish immigration to Germany’s two national Jewish organizations last week. As put forth, the restrictions effectively will end the wave of migration that has brought almost 200,000 Jews and their relatives to Germany from the former Soviet Union, causing a Jewish renaissance in the most unlikely of places.
The law drew praise from Israeli authorities, who have long been uncomfortable with Jewish immigration to Germany, especially since it began topping immigration to Israel in the last few years. Michael Jankelowitz, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency for Israel, a quasi-government agency responsible for immigration to Israel, said the changes were "positive." Jankelowitz said that his organization aggressively had lobbied the German government for the new law.
But the new restrictions provoked concern in German and Russian circles. "This means the death of our immigration," said Larissa Sysoeva, European director of the World Congress of Russian-speaking Jews.
The law has created confusion among German Jewish communal leaders, who were informed of the changes only on December 13 and soon will be responsible for administering parts of the new law. In particular, communal officials are scrambling to understand the consequences of a clause requiring that all new Jewish immigrants to Germany be certified as Jewish by one of the country’s two national Jewish organizations.
In other words, Israel--not Helen Thomas--fought for a law that limits the mobility of Jews and requires them to be "certified as Jewish" for the purposes of the German government. Take from that what you may.
(h/t Juan Cole)