This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/1784

The Real Helen Thomas - Islamist poster girl addresses "Fellow terrorists" at Al Hewar Center in DC

March 22, 2006

http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=thomas32206%2Ehtm

The Real Helen Thomas

March 22, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Though CBS still believes Helen Thomas is relevant enough to lead the evening edition of its March 21st broadcast:

"...on the CBS Evening News Jim Axelrod featured the far-left question from Hearst Newspapers columnist Helen Thomas at Tuesday morning's presidential press conference. Thomas blamed Bush for deaths and charged that he employed subterfuge to launch a war: "Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war?" - Media Research Center 3/22/06

There is an agenda that drives the Hearst mini-chain's [12 newspapers including the redoubtable Albany Times Union, The Laredo Morning Times and of course its flagship the once queen of yellow journalism the San Francisco Chronicle] Thomas - aside from a perverse sense of self-importance.

Fact - Helen Thomas is an Islamist apologist, and that characterization has nothing to do with her Lebanese heritage.

In a 2004 speech presented at Virginia's Al-Hewar Center [available in its entirety below] Thomas reveals herself to be a moonbat of the highest order.

Al-Hewar itself is a controversial assembly point for Wahhabists of all stripes.

As the Al-Hewar website states:

"Over a period of two years ending in the summer of 1994, Al-Hewar Magazine invited a diverse group of Arabs and Arab-Americans in the Washington metropolitan area to hold regular discussions at the offices of the International Institute of Islamic Thought..."

The International Institute of Islamic Thought [IIIT] is a radical Islamist organization with ties to al-Qaeda.

While the association between Al-Hewar and IIT should be cause for concern to anyone entertaining discourse with them, it should be even more daunting for an American journalist.

Consider just two of Al-Hewar's speakers:

Bassem Khafagi, the former CAIR employee, pled guilty to making "false material statements on his nonimmigrant visa application on Nov. 8, 2000, in Kuwait City, Kuwait and (2) passing bad checks for thousands of dollars at two U.S. banks in early 2001. Khafagi faces up to a $250,000 fine on the visa fraud conviction and 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for each of the two counts of bank fraud."- Daniel Pipes.

Khafagi was sentenced to 10 months in prison and deported to Egypt.

Al-Hewar has also hosted Edward Abboud, whose book "Invisible Enemy: Israel, Politics, Media, and American Culture," is widely held to be anti-Semitic in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" mold - from the book, [Israel is] "beyond a doubt the most serious threat to U.S. democratic institutions, freedom, and society since the Civil War." Abboud claims that Israel "can control the outcome" of Washington policies, is in control of the U.S. media and goes on to say that it is "effectively in control" of the CIA.

What is probably most troubling about Thomas' speech is its critique of American society which in some ways is more extreme than recognized leftist loons such as Alexander Cockburn. Thomas' jaunty welcome to "fellow terrorists" three days before the third anniversary of America's worst terror event is disgustingly inappropriate as is her comparison of terrorist to freedom fighters, something that could have easily come from the lips of al-Qaeda theorist Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

--------------------------

The following are excerpts from Ms. Thomas's presentation:

Good evening, Fellow Terrorists… or is it Evil-Doers? [laughs from the audience]. I simply say so because I presume that most of you are against the invasion and the occupation of Iraq. If I am not in the wrong, phew, of course. But then, everyone is a terrorist who thinks our foreign policy is misguided and ill-fated… That blanket covers our whole policy in the Middle East, not just Iraq, but of course that is where we have lost our halo, our great respect, our prestige in the world, our ideals of democracy. How did it happen? Easy. The 9/11 attack, which paved the way for the loss of so many of our liberties and manipulation of truth beyond the pale. It amazes me how much people are willing to be deceived and even to a point where thousands of lives are at stake. 9/11 segued into war and anyone who opposed our policies in both events feared being called unpatriotic and un-American, and that's what happened to the press...

"....It turns out (can you imagine?), that even Middle Easterners – Arabs, will fight for their own land. They are what we call the insurgents, or terrorists, or even the enemy. They are the enemy in their own country, trying to defend their own land..."

"...During WWII, those who resisted the Nazi occupation were heralded for their resistance against human tyranny. But when Arabs do that, do they get that kind of salute? The Palestinians who resist every day the tyrannical occupation are in the same boat..."

"...I've been blacklisted from the White House, and of course I have a lot of questions. I was accused after the first presidential news conference of blindsiding the president because I asked him why he did not respect the wall of separation of church of state by setting up a religious office in the White House. Well this took him totally by surprise. There's a video where he looks like he's been shot!..."

------------------------

MIM: For more on Al Hewar Center see:

Al Hewar Center - Terror International in the heart of DC.

This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/1784