To the Editor:
Re “Reporter
Retires After Words About Israel” (news article, June 8):
My mother, growing up in Poland in the 1930s, heard demonstrators
shouting “Jews, go to Palestine!” Now Helen Thomas tells me that Jews
should not be in “Palestine.” They should go back to Germany and Poland.
So, in other words, 65 years after my mother was liberated from a
concentration camp in Germany, Jews are still being told that they don’t
belong.
No, Ms. Thomas, I think that my 85-year-old mother will stay right where
she is, in Netanya, Israel, with her great-grandchildren, who were born
in the Jewish state.
Sheba Mittelman
West Orange, N.J., June 8, 2010
To the Editor:
I fully and strenuously disagree with the comments made by Helen Thomas.
But that said, why isn’t she entitled to her opinion? And why is she
precluded from stating her opinion without risking the loss of position
and livelihood?
We like to think that we are a free and open society, but sometimes we
seem more conventional and restrictive than free. When did we Americans
become so afraid of ideas outside the norm, or that are different or
even wrong?
John Fishman
Ghent, N.Y., June 8, 2010
Note from KBJ: Entitlement to an opinion does not entail entitlement to be shielded from the consequences of expressing it. I wish the second letter writer would say, to his boss's face, that, in his opinion, his boss is an asshole. Better, I wish his employee said that to his face. Would the employee still have a job?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 