Playboy Interview: Helen Thomas

Helen Thomas Playboy Interview
By David Hochman, Playboy, April 2011

For more than half a century, Helen Thomas owned the most valuable piece of real estate in the White House briefing room. Her front-row seat at presidential press conferences and its attendant benefits made her the unofficial dean of the White House press corps. She was often called on first and usually ended the gatherings with a signature “Thank you, Mr. President.” Her bold, irksome questions were like hot pokers to 10 US presidents, and her fearless approach rattled press secretaries and set a tone for generations of straight-shooting, badgering reporters. Last summer, still working full-time at 89, she saw her decades-long career fall to pieces after a two-minute video clip went viral on YouTube. A Long Island rabbi and blogger visiting the White House turned his camera on Thomas on May 27 and asked for “any comments on Israel.” Thomas instantly shot back, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine,” adding that the Jews “can go home” to “Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.” Endless media outrage ensued, prompting Thomas to issue an apology and abruptly “resign” from Hearst Newspapers on Jun 7. Her speaking agency dropped her, journalism schools and organizations rescinded awards named in her honor and she lost that prized seat in the White House. Thomas’s comments were not a complete shock to those who follow her. In recent years she practically scolded presidents and their gatekeepers for favoring Israel. She had previously asked the White House about Israel’s “secret” nuclear arsenal and why Obama did not condemn last May’s Israeli attacks on the aid flotilla headed for Gaza.

Born August 4, 1920, Thomas herself is of Arab descent. She was the seventh of nine children born in Winchester, Kentucky to Syrian-born emigrants from Tripoli, Lebanon. Her family soon moved to Detroit, where her father ran a grocery store even though he couldn’t read or write in English. News was often a topic around the house, and after college Thomas landed a job as a girl Friday at a Washington newspaper toward the end of World War II. That led her to the copy desk and a cub reporter position and eventually to a job covering government bureaucracy for the wire service United Press International. She remained at UPI for much of her career. As White House correspondent from the Kennedy administration on, Thomas had unusual prominence, despite standing just under five feet tall. Famously direct, Thomas was especially forceful with Bush 43, whom she once called “the worst president in US history.” She was relentless about getting him to explain his decision to go to war in Iraq, asking over and over, “What was your real reason? What was it? Why did you go to war?” His minions promptly moved Thomas to the back row of the briefing room. Thomas now writes a column for the Falls Church News-Press in Virginia. She still wakes early to read various newspapers delivered to her door, and she’s still out many nights talking politics at favorite Washington haunts.

Contributing Editor David Hochman got the idea to call Thomas to see if she wanted to talk. “She picked up the phone and said yes immediately,” he says. “I think she really appreciated the opportunity to do a long-format Q&A to express her side of what happened.”

Based in Los Angeles, Hochman flew to Washington to meet Thomas at her apartment near Dupont Circle. They also broke bread at her favorite Palestinian restaurant. “I was curious whether I’d find the ranting woman from the YouTube video,” Hochman says. “She turned out to be a person in full possession of her faculties and impressively articulate. Mostly she was the Thomas the public has known forever: feisty, passionate and not afraid to speak up.” Does Hochman, who is Jewish, believe Thomas is an anti-Semite? “I’ll let the reader decide. But I did think it was amusing when she presented a plate of ham sandwiches and then said, ‘Oh, I hope I haven’t served the wrong thing.’ ”

PLAYBOY: So is this how you pictured retirement?
THOMAS: I’m not retired! I was fired. In fact, I’ll die with my boots on. I’m still writing and I’ll continue to write and ask hard questions. I will never bow out of journalism.
PLAYBOY: Take us back to the White House courtyard on May 27 when Rabbi David Nesenoff pointed his camera at you and asked for your comments on Israel.
THOMAS: He pulled that thing out like a jackknife. I mean, he started out very nice, introducing me to these two young boys who wanted to be in journalism. He said, “Got any advice? Go for it.” I didn’t know it was Jewish Heritage Month, which is why he was at the White House and also why he asked “So what do you think of Israel?” That’s when I said, “They should get the hell out of Palestine.”
PLAYBOY: Did you realize how controversial those words were as you spoke them?
THOMAS: I knew I’d hit the third rail. You cannot say anything about Israel in this country. But I’ve lived with this cause for many years. Everybody knows my feelings that the Palestinians have been shortchanged in every way. Sure, the Israelis have a right to exist, but where they were born, not to come and take someone else’s home. I’ve had it up to here with the violations against the Palestinians. Why shouldn’t I say it? I knew exactly what I was doing, I was going for broke. I had reached the point of no return. You finally get fed up.
PLAYBOY: What was life like in the immediate aftermath as millions started viewing the video on YouTube?
THOMAS: I went into self-imposed house arrest for two weeks. It was a case of “know thyself.” Isn’t that what Socrates said? I wanted to see if I was remorseful, and I wasn’t.
PLAYBOY: Did the phone ring off the hook?
THOMAS: No. Nobody called. But I still have some friends in the White House press pool, who reached out to me. I understand they formed Jews for Helen Thomas at one point.
PLAYBOY: That’s interesting.
THOMAS: I also heard from Jimmy Carter. He called a few weeks later.
PLAYBOY: He did? What did he say?
THOMAS: Basically he was sympathetic. He talked about the Israelis in the Middle East, the violations. It was very nice of him to call, but I don’t want to get him into trouble.
PLAYBOY: His reaction certainly wasn’t typical.
THOMAS: No. Every columnist and commentator jumped on me immediately as anti-Semitic. Nobody asked me to explain myself. Nobody said, “What did you really mean?”
PLAYBOY: What did you really mean?
THOMAS: Well, there’s no understanding of the Palestinians at all. I mean, they’re living there and these people want to come and take their homes and land and water and kill their children and kill them. How many are still under arrest in Israel, never been charged, never been tried, never been convicted? Thousands. Why? Meanwhile, we keep giving Israel everything. Our government bribes the Israelis by saying, “Please come to the table and we’ll give you this and we’ll give you that.” Obama’s last offer to the Israelis was $22 billion in new fighter planes, a veto at the UN for anything pro-Arab or pro-Palestinian and a three-month freeze on the colonization and settlers. I mean, what is this? They gave away the store, just as Reagan and every other president did. Why do you have to bribe people to do the right thing? I don’t want my government bribing anybody. I want them demanding. Stop all this aid to Israel when they’re killing people!
PLAYBOY: It was your follow-up comment, when you said the Jews should go back to Poland, Germany and America, that really infuriated people.
THOMAS: Well, that immediately evoked the concentration camps. What I meant was they should stay where they are because they’re not being persecuted, not since WW2, not since 1945. If they were, we sure would hear about it. Instead, they initiated the Jackson-Vanik law, which said the US would not trade with Russia unless it allowed unlimited Jewish emigration. But it was not immigration to the US, which would have been fine with me. It was to go to Palestine and uproot these people, throw them out of their homes, which they have done through several wars. That’s not fair. I want people to understand why the Palestinians are upset. They are incarcerated and living in an open prison. I say to the Israelis, “Get out of people’s homes!” It’s unacceptable to have soldiers knocking on a door at three in the morning and saying, “This is my home.” And forcing people out of homes they’ve lived in for centuries? What is this? How can anybody accept it? I mean, Jewish-only roads? Would anyone tolerate something like that in the US? White-only roads?
PLAYBOY: You mean Israeli-only roads, not Jewish only, right?
THOMAS: Israeli-only roads, okay. But it’s more than semantics because the Palestinians are deprived of owning these roads. This is their land. I’m sorry, but we’re talking about foreigners who came and said, “God gave this land to us.” Rabin said, “Where’s the deed?” I mean, come on! Do you know that an Arab Palestinian trying to go home to see his mother has to go through 10 checkpoints and then is held there, while a US tourist can go through right like that? The Palestinian people have to carry their kids to hospitals and are not allowed to drive cars and so forth. What is this? No US Jew would tolerate that sort of treatment here against blacks or anyone else. Why do they allow it over there? And why do they send my US tax dollars to perpetuate it?
PLAYBOY: Do you acknowledge that some Palestinian behavior over the years, including hijacking and the use of suicide bombers, has been wrong and has added to the problem?
THOMAS: In an ideal world passive resistance and world disarmament would be great. Unfortunately we don’t live in that world. Of course I don’t condone any violence against anyone. But who wouldn’t fight for their country? What would any American do if their land was being taken? Remember Pearl Harbor. The Palestinian violence is to protect what little remains of Palestine. The suicide bombers act out of despair and desperation. Three generations of Palestinians have been forced out of their homes by Israelis and into refugee camps. And the Israelis are still bulldozing Palestinians’ homes in East Jerusalem. Remember, Menachem Begin invented terrorism as his MO, and bragged about it in his first book. That’s how Israel was created, aided and abetted by US money and arms. To annex and usurp an occupied people’s country is illegal under international law. The Israelis know that, but their superior military force has always prevailed against the indigenous people.
PLAYBOY: What’s your reaction to the changes sweeping through the Arab world as throngs of demonstrators take to the streets across the region?
THOMAS: I love the new revolutionary spirit in the Middle East and North Africa. The power of the people is removing ruthless dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, and that’s only the beginning. There is no stopping this free new movement. The Arab world is waking up to the possibilities of democratic life and freedom for its people, and I am happy to see this happening in my lifetime.
PLAYBOY: Do you have a personal antipathy toward Jews themselves?
THOMAS: No. I think they’re wonderful people. They had to have the most depth. They were leaders in civil rights. They’ve always had the heart for others but not for Arabs, for some reason. I’m not anti-Jewish; I’m anti-Zionist. I am anti-Israel taking what doesn’t belong to it. If you have a home and you’re kicked out of that home, you don’t come and kick someone else out. Anti-Semite? The Israelis are not even Semites! They’re Europeans, and they’ve come from somewhere else. But even if they were Semites, they would still have no right to usurp other people’s land. There are some Israelis with a conscience and a big heart, but unfortunately they are too few.
PLAYBOY: In the wake of your anti-Israel comments, a blogger from The Atlantic argued there’s really no distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He wrote, “Thomas was fired for saying that the Jews of Israel should move to Europe, where their relatives had been slaughtered in the most devastating act of genocide in history. She believes that once the Jews are evacuated from their ancestral homeland, the world’s only Jewish country should be replaced by what would be the world’s 23rd Arab country. She believes that Palestinians deserve a country of their own but that the Jews are undeserving of a nation-state in their homeland, which has had a continuous Jewish presence for 3,000 years… ”
THOMAS: Did a Jew write this? (Editor’s note: The writer is Jeffrey Goldberg, who is Jewish.)
PLAYBOY: “…and has been the location of two previous Jewish states. This sounds like a very anti-Jewish position to me, not merely an anti-Zionist position.”
THOMAS: This is a rotten piece. I mean it’s absolutely biased and totally, who are these people? Why do they think they’re so deserving? The slaughter of Jews stopped with World War II. I had two brothers and many relatives who fought in that war against Hitler. We believed in it. Every American family was in that fight. But they were liberated since then. And yet they carry on the victimization. The US people do not know that the Israeli lobbyists have intimidated them into believing every Jew is a persecuted victim forever, while they are victimizing Palestinians.
PLAYBOY: Let’s get to something else you said more recently. In a speech in Detroit last December, you told an Arab group, “We are owned by the propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no question about that. Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question, in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is. We’re being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.” Do you stand by that statement?
THOMAS: Yes, I do. I know it was horrendous, but I know it’s true. Tell me it’s not true and I’ll be happy to be contradicted. I’m just saying they’re using their power, and they have power in every direction.
PLAYBOY: That stereotype of Jewish control has been around for more than a century. Do you actually think there’s a secret Jewish conspiracy at work in this country?
THOMAS: Not a secret. It’s very open. What do you mean secret?
PLAYBOY: Well, for instance, explain the connection between Hollywood and what’s happening with the Palestinians.
THOMAS: Power over the White House, power over Congress.
PLAYBOY: By way of contributions?
THOMAS: Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies, which are funded by wealthy supporters, including those from Hollywood. Same thing with the financial markets. There’s total control.
PLAYBOY: Who are you thinking about specifically? Who are the Jews with the most influence?
THOMAS: I’m not going to name names. What, am I going to name the Ponzi guy on Wall Street or the others? No.
PLAYBOY: Then how do you make the claim that Jews are running the country?
THOMAS: I want you to look at the Congress that just came in. Do you think (New York Democratic senator Charles) Schumer and Lehtinen, whatever her name is, in Florida (Republican representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a strong supporter of Israel) are going to be pro-Arab? No. But they’re going to be very influential. Eric Cantor, the majority leader of the Republicans, do you think he’s going to be for the Arabs? Hell no! I’m telling you, you cannot get 330 votes in Congress for anything that’s pro-Arab. Nothing. If you’re not in, you’re eased out, just as Senator William Fulbright was in the 1960s (after claiming that millions of tax-deductible dollars from American philanthropies were being sent to Israel and then funneled back to the U.S. for distribution to organizations with pro-Israel positions). Congressman Paul Findley from a little old rural district in Illinois made the mistake of shaking hands with Yasir Arafat years ago. It ended up costing him his re-election. He later wrote a book called They Dare to Speak Out about how impossible it is to have a position in this country that takes on Israel. Maybe there is a handful that can, but in general you cannot speak against any Zionist movement in this country.
PLAYBOY: Do you begrudge people like Steven Spielberg? He created the Shoah Foundation to chronicle the life stories of Holocaust survivors. What’s your feeling about him?
THOMAS: There’s nothing wrong with remembering it, but why do we have to constantly remember? We’re not at fault. I mean, if they’re going to put a Holocaust museum in every city in Germany, that’s fine with me. But we didn’t do this to the Jews. Why do we have to keep paying the price and why do they keep oppressing the Palestinians? Do the Jews ever look at themselves? Why are they always right? Because they have been oppressed throughout history, I know. And they have this persecution. That’s true, but they shouldn’t use that to dominate.
PLAYBOY: In America you’re talking about a relatively small community. Jews make up roughly 2% of the US population. On a worldwide level, the percentage is well under 1%. Those numbers don’t exactly spell domination.
THOMAS: I get where you’re leading with this. You know damn well the power they have. It isn’t the 2%. It’s real power when you own the White House, when you own these other places in terms of your political persuasion. Of course they have power. You don’t deny that. You’re Jewish, aren’t you?
PLAYBOY: Yes.
THOMAS: That’s what I thought. Well, you know damn well they have power.
PLAYBOY: Why did it take you so long to speak out like this?
THOMAS: It hasn’t taken that long. I’ve told all my friends and so forth. This has been an issue for me since I first came to Washington.
PLAYBOY: You’ve kept quiet publicly since the 1940s?
THOMAS: It was certainly on my mind back then. The UN Partition Plan was being debated at the UN and in the Arab community, and I knew what the Arabs were going through since I have an Arab background. I was part of that community. Like I said, I’ve never hesitated to tell my views to all my friends. They knew exactly where I stood. But I finally wanted to speak the truth. And I think I’m old enough to get away with it. Well, almost. Not quite.
PLAYBOY: Were you surprised that people like David Duke and even Hezbollah came out and said you were courageous and a hero for them?
THOMAS: I don’t want to be a hero to anyone. I just want to be me, and I want to tell the truth. I want everyone to accept the truth. It’s horrible to say some of my best friends are Jews, but they are and they have been.
PLAYBOY: Don’t take this the wrong way, but the question many people have is, Has Helen Thomas lost her mind? You’re 90, after all. Do you still have all your faculties?
THOMAS: I resent that question! I thoroughly resent it. Why are you interviewing me if I’m crazy? It wouldn’t be worth it to you, would it?
PLAYBOY: It’s not an unreasonable question.
THOMAS: I resent it. You should apologize.
PLAYBOY: But it’s the question everyone wants answered, and you’re the one who always tells journalists to ask the hard questions.
THOMAS: They want to know if I’m crazy? You have to be crazy to criticize Israel? You have to be crazy to criticize tyranny? I learned before Hitler that you have to stand up for something. You have to stand up. We always have to take a stand against human tyranny wherever it occurs.
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PLAYBOY: Do you picture heaven in any way? What would heaven be for you?
THOMAS: I never thought about heaven per se. I think when you’re dead, you’re dead. If anything happens after that, you just hope you don’t go to hell.
PLAYBOY: When people write your obituary…
THOMAS: Oh, I know what they’re going to say: “anti-Semite.”
PLAYBOY: That has to bother you after all your years of hard work.
THOMAS: I’m a reporter.
PLAYBOY: What’s making you emotional?
THOMAS: I’m a reporter. I know damn well what they’re going to say because they have their print, they have their ink. They don’t give a damn about the truth. They have to have it their way, and they’ll be writing my obituary.
PLAYBOY: Isn’t that their job?
THOMAS: Well, I don’t want to be treated that way. I’m sorry. But what am I supposed to do, love every Jew because they want to take Palestine? It’s a real cause with me. They should have a conscience and they don’t if that’s what they’re going to do. Is there such a thing as a conscience? I think there is. Stop taking what doesn’t belong to you! Stop killing these people. These children throw stones at them, and they shoot them. Where is the Jewish conscience? I want to know. Have some feeling. They can’t just come in and say, “This is my home,” knock on the door at three in the morning and have the Israeli military take them out. That’s what happens. And that’s what happened to the Jews in Germany. Why do they inflict that same pain on people who did nothing to them?
I sure didn’t want to cry. But I do care about people. And I don’t care what they write about me. They’ve already written it. My family will be disappointed in me for crying.
PLAYBOY: We in the public never get to see you cry. Helen Thomas has always been the picture of toughness and strength.
THOMAS: Oh, I’ve cried all my life. I’m a crybaby. It’s not that I’m soft; I just cry at the drop of a hat.
PLAYBOY: Let’s shift gears. You have literally had a front-row seat on the presidency. What should the American people know about how the White House really operates?
THOMAS: They don’t know how intense the pressure from different special interests is on the president and congressmen. Politicians more often than not give in to that pressure. These elected officials are supposed to be doing what we want them to do. But I suppose that’s the reason we have the Tea Party. People are unhappy. The trouble is, swinging to the right is always dangerous. We end up losing so much in the rush to conservatism. But even Obama has fallen down that hole. He’s pushing a conservative agenda.
PLAYBOY: The right doesn’t see Obama that way. How is Obama conservative?
THOMAS: Look at Guantánamo. With a stroke of a pen, the day after Obama took the oath he should have said, “We’re getting the hell out of here.” Same thing with Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s no reason for us to be in a war. “They’ll all come here if we don’t go there.” That is baloney. Go halfway around the world to kill and die? Why? Now the veterans can’t get jobs. I see stories every day about soldiers being liberated from Iraq only to end up unemployed. Where is Obama? How can he continue these Bush policies that were so mean and rotten and unjust? People had this impression that Obama would be a peaceful president, but there he is, as hawkish as any of them. And Hillary Clinton is no liberal either. She put out the word to “capture or kill” for Afghanistan. What would she do that for, really? Capture or kill? What does this mean? I thought, naively perhaps, that she and Obama would bring change, that they would be different. I assumed wrongly that they would be liberal because he’s black and she’s a woman. It’s maddening.
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PLAYBOY: You certainly never had a problem asking hard questions. George W. Bush moved you to the back of the briefing room to get you off his back.
THOMAS: Actually, it was Ari Fleischer, the number one liar in the White House. He didn’t like that I was asking too many mean questions about where the Israelis were getting their arms and whatnot. So I got pushed to the back. But the first opportunity I had to challenge Bush, I did.
PLAYBOY: You asked him a bold question in 2006. You said, “Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. 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?” He danced around the answer. Did you have an answer in mind when you asked that question? What do you think has driven US involvement in these recent wars?
THOMAS: You tell me.
PLAYBOY: No, you tell us.
THOMAS: Well, no president has ever told the truth about why we’re there. I think oil has a lot to do with it. I think there’s an Israel connection. Our government feels compelled to protect Israel. With Bush, some people say it was George Jr avenging for Daddy. At least Bush’s father understood what war was about. He had been in war. He was more cautious. He certainly lined up the Arab countries to support fighting the invasion of Kuwait. The Bush family has always been rich people in search of a job, but George Sr had been head of the CIA and chairman of the Republican National Committee. He knew politics and he knew foreign policy, but he didn’t give any of that to his son. Dubya was a hip-shooter. If you look at the Downing Street Memo from 2002, you see the chief of British intelligence had come here just before George Jr’s invasion of Iraq. It concludes that the president simply was determined to go to war and that he wanted to fix the facts to do it. But there were no facts. We just went to war for no reason.
PLAYBOY: So you never believed the line that the world would be “a safer place” without Saddam Hussein?
THOMAS: I think it was wrong to hang Saddam Hussein. He should have been put before an international court for war crimes and everything else. But for us to just bypass the law and have him hanged was wrong. Not that the press called the president on it. The press rallied around the flag on that one.
PLAYBOY: Who’s your most trusted news source, by the way?
THOMAS: Nobody, really. I like the liberal press. I like E J Dionne in The Washington Post. I like Sam Donaldson. I believe he’s an honest man. I loved Walter Cronkite. I certainly loved Ed Murrow. But I don’t see replicas around.
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PLAYBOY: Is anyone asking the tough questions about Israel?
THOMAS: We’re still not getting the full story on Israel. I asked both Obama at a news conference and Hillary if they knew of any nations in the Middle East that had nuclear weapons. Obama danced around it and said, “I don’t want to speculate.” Hillary said, “Oh, Helen, you’re cute” or something to that effect. She laughed it off.
PLAYBOY: Why would our government remain quiet if Israel had nukes?
THOMAS: Years ago we made a pact with Golda Meir never to say it. In her era, they would never say it, and they can’t say it now because they can’t tell Iran and all these other countries that they have nukes. That’s my opinion. Our government won’t tell the truth, and neither will the Israelis. Everyone knows, but I can’t write “Everyone knows.” You have to attribute it to somebody. Again, you don’t see these stories in the news. You have to go to a magazine like the Nation or the offbeat press to find out what is really happening. They don’t say that in the NYT.
PLAYBOY: Or we can get our news from comedians like Jon Stewart. What’s your take on him?
THOMAS: I don’t know. He called me anti-Semitic. What is this crap? Anti-Semitic? What is he?
PLAYBOY: What about Bill Maher?
THOMAS: I like Bill Maher. Remember when he said the 9/11 bombers were not cowards? He lost his job temporarily, but he was right: Anybody who flies an airplane into a building isn’t a coward. That was too logical for people, though. You can’t be that honest. It’s like the Japanese kamikazes in WW2. They were diabolical, flying right into ships, but they certainly weren’t cowards. There are two sides to every story. I guess the trouble is certain stories just don’t sell newspapers.
PLAYBOY: Nothing’s selling newspapers these days.
THOMAS: And it’s a tragedy. I still like a newspaper in my hand. I get the Washington Post and the New York Times outside the door every morning and run to them. I like the print press. You don’t get anything in depth anymore without a newspaper. Everything is a headline, a sound bite. I worry about young people really getting to know what’s going on in our world.
PLAYBOY: How much time do you spend online?
THOMAS: Uh-uh. I’m a paper-and-pencil person. I probably should look at Facebook and Huffington Post and these other things, but I don’t. Everyone with a laptop thinks they’re a journalist and everyone with a camera thinks they’re a news photographer. Where are the standards? How can we get back to the ethics and standards of journalism? There’s no editing, no oversight. It’s just thrown to the wind. I’m afraid of what’s happening.
PLAYBOY: But you can’t deny the power of the web. Look at WikiLeaks. What did you think of those diplomatic revelations?
THOMAS: I think it’s great. It’s important to reveal what’s going on behind the scenes. We wouldn’t have known half this stuff without this information, and it’s going to change everything as far as diplomacy. It’s hard to believe we didn’t know some of this stuff before. Maybe I should have been digging into these things myself. I’m probably not a good reporter.
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PLAYBOY: What’s your hope for the future?
THOMAS: On a political level, I hope for disarmament. Billions and billions are being spent every week on the war in Afghanistan. We have 700 military bases around the world. What do you think it costs to keep that war machine running? It’s not working. I thought Obama would be for peace, but he’s not. There are no peacemakers left. There’s no antiwar movement to speak of. America just keeps going, keeps fighting, keeps spending. I want the killing to stop.
PLAYBOY: How would you like to be remembered?
THOMAS: As the person who asked why. That’s what I want as my epitaph: “Why?” It’s always been my favorite question, even though it rarely gets answered. As I said before, because of what happened recently, people are going to remember me a certain way. The truth is, I don’t hate anybody. I care deeply about people. I care for the poor, the sick, the lame, the harmed, those who’ve been treated unjustly. I like the fact that you asked me if I’m nuts. People think you’re nuts if you take a stand in this life. I’ve always cared about what happens in the world, and I think what the Israelis are doing is wrong. We have to care about our fellow man, and we don’t. Somehow we’ve lost that sense. It’s become almost a sin to care. But we are all God’s children, right?
PLAYBOY: Do you believe in God?
THOMAS: Who knows? I was raised Greek Orthodox, but I never understood what was going on. In college I moved away from religion, and then when I went to work I would go to church with the president. I’d pray to whatever god the president prayed to. I prayed to all of them, just in case. Now I just pray in hopes that something good will happen. I pray to whoever the gods may be.
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I have omitted parts of this very lengthy interview as published in Playboy’s April 2011 issue.To read the Helen Thomas interview in its entirety, click here.

For those of you in Saudi Arabia or where the Playboy site might be blocked from viewing, you might try accessing this site to read the interview in its entirety.

Click here for Paul Findley's write-up "Helen Thomas Deserves Praise."