“She’s re-emphasized it,” said Nesenoff. “At the time, everybody was saying, ‘Oh, the devil must be in the details, maybe I asked it a certain way or maybe she’s old or was caught off guard.’ They were trying to figure out why she said this. But she spent the last year reconfirming her feelings, and those feelings being that Israel should not exist in no uncertain terms.”

“Whatever served as the trigger to bring her hateful beliefs out into the open is a matter for sociologists and historians to ponder,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “But it has become clear since the controversy erupted a year ago that her remark that Jews should ‘get the hell out of Palestine’ and return to Europe was anything but a one-off slip of the tongue. We now know from her subsequent remarks that she was, and is, deeply infected with anti-Semitism.”…

Thomas rejects such criticism.

“I was called anti-Semitic, which is the automatic reflex for people who don’t think Israel is doing the wrong thing or on the wrong track. … I’ve never shut my mouth about Israel and its aggression and brutality against Palestinians. It’s never been news to people who know me.”