Tribute to Helen Thomas by a Hezbollah/Hamas supporter and 9/11 "truther" (update)

I mentioned that Helen Thomas was honored in a Washington ceremony last week as the recipient of the "Courage in Journalism" award last week by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. My conjecture was that she received her award not in spite of her anti-semitism, but because of it.

It appears I am right.

The person who presented the award to her was James Abourezk, former senator - and terrorist supporter.

When Abourezk gave a glowing review to the Walt/Mearsheimer book on the Jewish Lobby, I noted that he had been on Hezbollah TV praising Hamas and Hezbollah, and saying that Zionists were involved with the 9/11 attacks. This gave rise to a comment thread on the review site where he and I argued a bit. I'm fairly sure I won that argument, decisively.

Here's part of what Abourezk said at the Helen Thomas tribute:

from People's Cube

Even Barack Obama, who has been advertised as a tolerant man, had to join in the denunciations of Helen. He, along with the others in the press corps, acted very much like children in a school yard. When one of the children falls down, the rest start kicking.

Helen was not necessarily done in by her statement about Israel. What she said is what I’ve been saying for years - the Zionists should get the hell out of Palestine.

Where they go when they leave there is not my concern, just as it is not the Zionists' concern where the Palestinians went when they were driven out of Palestine.

...As the Zionists and the Israelis are working very hard to get our country into a war with Iran, there remains almost no voice in the press or in the Congress to call a halt to this madness.

That is why we are all paying tribute to Helen tonight, and I hope, for a long time after this night. We pay tribute to all soldiers who act with bravery, and tonight, we add Helen Thomas to that company. She deserves our thanks, and she deserves the thanks of our nation.

So indeed Thomas was not honored by the ADC for her decades of journalistic work but for her anti-semitic and genocidal comments about Jews in Israel.

And James Abourezk is proud to agree with her.

(The rest of his speech shows that his regard for the truth has not gone up at all since my little exposure of his lies.)

By the way, i see that previous award recipient Ray Hanania finds my earlier mention of Thomas to be reprehensible:

On the one hand, the writer argues that Helen Thomas did not say that Jews should get out of the occupied territory, making the precision of the words their strongest case. And then they hypocritically violate principle, morality and even truth, arguing that Helen Thomas said that Jews should get out of Israel. The fact is Helen Thomas NEVER used the word "Jews." She was asked by a racist rabbi what Israelis should do and she said "Get the hell out of Palestine."

And then that "racist rabbi" said to her "So you are saying the Jews should go back to Poland and Germany" and she added "And to America, and everywhere else."
Hanania knows this, of course, as he attacks EoZ as "an often racistly anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate site."

Sorry, Ray, but you are a liar. Helen made very clear what she meant, and the video shows that. Your defense of her is indefensible.

UPDATE: Not that this is the first time that I caught Ray Hanania lying....