Chapter Sixteen DOROTHY THOMPSON, PLAYED BY KATHARINE HEPBURN by Alison Weir

 Chapter Sixteen
DOROTHY THOMPSON, PLAYED BY KATHARINE HEPBURN
& LAUREN BACALL
America’s most famous female journalist of the time also attempted valiantly, but unsuccessfully,
to tell Americans about Palestinian refugees.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dorothy Thompson was “one of the most famous
journalists of the 20th Century.”[365]
Thompson‘s column was in newspapers all over the country, and her radio program listened to by
tens of millions of Americans. She had been married to one of America’s most famous novelists,
graced the cover of Time magazine, been profiled by America’s top magazines and was so well-
known that “Woman of the Year,” a Hollywood movie featuring Kathryn Hepburn and Spencer
Tracey and a Broadway play starring Lauren Bacall, were based on her.[366]
She had been the first journalist to be expelled by Adolph Hitler and had raised the alarm against
the Nazis long ahead of most other journalists. She had originally supported Zionism, but then after
the war had visited the region in person. She began to speak about Palestinian refugees, narrated a
documentary about their plight[367], and condemned Jewish terrorism.
Thompson was viciously attacked in an orchestrated campaign of what she termed “career
assassination and character assassination.” She wrote: “It has been boundless, going into my personal
life.” She wrote of this organized attack:
“…when letter after letter is couched in almost identical phraseology I do not think the authors
have been gifted with telepathy.”[368]

She was dropped by the New York Post, whose editor Ted Thackrey, and his wife, Dorothy Schiff,
were said by other Post editors to be “very close to the Irgun and Menachem Begin.” Begin, the
Irgunists, the Stern Gang and other Zionist organizations had, according to one commentator,
“inordinate access” to the Post’s editorial board.[369]
(Dorothy Schiff, granddaughter of financier Jacob Schiff and owner of the Post, later divorced
Thackrey and married Rudolf Sonneborn.[370])
Thompson‘s mail was filled with ferocious accusations that she was “anti-Semitic” for
publicizing Zionist cruelties. One such correspondent told her that her “filthy incitements to pogroms”
would not be tolerated by New York’s Jews.[371]
Before long, her column and radio programs, her speaking engagements, and her fame were all
gone. Today, she has largely been erased from history.[372]
In the coming decades, other Americans were similarly written out of history, forced out of office,
their lives and careers destroyed; history was distorted, re-written, erased; bigotry promoted,
supremacy disguised, facts replaced by fraud.
Very few people know this history. The excellent books that document it are largely out of print,
their facts and very existence virtually unknown to the vast majority of Americans, even those who
focus on the Middle East. Instead, false theories have been promulgated, mendacious analyses
promoted, chosen authors celebrated, others assigned to oblivion.
George Orwell once wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present
controls the past.”[373]
Perhaps by rediscovering the past, we’ll gain control of the present, and save the future.
WORKS CITED
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“Abraham Feinberg’s FBI File.” The Israel Lobby Archive. Accessed January 1, 2014.
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Abu-Sitta, Salman H. Atlas of Palestine, 1917-1966. London: Palestine Land Society, 2010.
Alexander, Michael. Jazz Age Jews. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2001.
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Anson, Daphne. “The Mosque-Founder’s Nephew Who Drafted the Balfour Declaration –
Leopold Amery, the ‘Secret Jew’” Daphne Anson Blog (web log), November 1, 2010.
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Arendt, Hannah, and Albert Einstein Et Al. “New Palestine Party.” New York Times, December
4, 1948, Letters Sec. Online at
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“The Assassination of Count Bernadotte.” Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed January 1, 2014.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/folke.html.
“Balfour Declaration Author Was a Secret Jew, Says Prof.” Jweekly (San Francisco), January 15,
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Baumel-Schwartz, Judith Tydor. The “Bergson Boys” and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist
Militancy. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005.