"Isn't it awful what happened to Helen Thomas?"

I don't know this lady? But I did quickly do a YouTube search for the comment she made.. Yes, it was a strongly phrased opinion, but what I found most telling was the amount of YouTube versions which misquoted her as saying simply:
"The Jews should go back to Germany"
rather than what she actually said which was:
"Israel [should] get out of Palestine".

In response to a further question about where "they" (interesting that the interviewer shifted so immediately and seamlessly in his questioning from (the state of) "Israel" to "they" (ie: Jewish people) - this echoes some of the points raised here regarding the common conflation of all Jewish *people* with the *state* of Israel and vice versa) should leave Palestine for and return to, she replied "Poland and Germany and America and everywhere else" [that they had relocated to Palestine from]. A controversial opinion yes, but not simply a brute "The Jews should go back to Germany", as it has been characterised.