HELEN THOMAS TAKES BACK HER APOLOGY

Six months after apologizing for her televised remarks about Israeli settlers in the Palestine Territory (They should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go home to “Poland, Germany … and America and everywhere else”), Helen Thomas appeared to rescind her apology. Banished from the White House press corps, where, as its longest-serving member, she had held a front-row seat, the 90-year-old Thomas told the Detroit Free Press at a diversity conference that she “paid the price” for her remarks last June, “but it was worth it, to speak the truth.” She then underscored her previous comments. “We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs,” she said. “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.” Her latest remarks touched off new — and angrier — condemnation. Detroit’s Wayne State University, which hands out the annual Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in the Media Award, said it will no longer do so because of her “anti-Semitic remarks.” And the Anti-Defamation League urged groups that had honored Thomas in the past to withdraw their awards, since Thomas, it said, had now “clearly, unequivocally revealed herself as a vulgar anti-Semite.”